I come from a southern white family, was born in Nashville, raised in Austin, and my parents are Catholic. Yet until my mom remarried I was raised by a single mom.
I began reading skateboarding magazines at the age of 13 or 14 and checking out skateboarding VHS videos at the same time. I heard mind-blowing music on those VHS videos I never would hear on the radio.That seemed really weird and striking to me.
And I noticed Thrasher Magazine had full page ads for t-shirts for bands that I had never heard of, and which seemed to be coming from some other planet, So I checked out these bands - MDC, Dead Kennedys, Crass, SUB HUM ANS, Minor Threat, Fugazi, etc., and reading their lyrics blew my my shit wide apart. That punk/skate subculture initiation somehow segued into reading Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, somehow. And then realizing my single mom's poverty was not part of the"natural" order of things bu was actually quite unjust.
It's complicated, but I credit skateboarding videos, hardcore punk lyrics, my own dawning realization f my own socioeconomic position vis a vis my single mom who busted her ass and tried her damnedest to avoid welfare, and me being teased at school by the same fuckers who later would go to "punk" shows to be aggro, slam-dancing, jock douchebags, as being a very major component.
So: 1) (Real) punk lyrics (MDC/Crass/Minor Threat/Fugazi/riot grrl/etc.), 2) Being raised by a single mom on poverty wages, and 3) skateboarding zines/magazines - that is how I came to "leftism." Noam Chomsky played a huge role, too. You know, the guy who is so overrated he is underrated. And thankfully still alive! :)
-B.