Mark Andersen

Who is Mark Andersen?

Mark Andersen is a punk rock community activist and author who lives in Washington D.C. He was born and raised in rural Montana, and moved to Washington D.C. in 1984 to attend graduate school at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

Andersen co-founded the punk activist organization Positive Force D.C. in 1985, and the We Are Family Senior Outreach Network in 2004. Together with his wife Tulin Ozdeger, he is the co-director of We Are Family, which serves low-income seniors in the Shaw, North Capitol Street and Columbia Heights neighborhoods of Washington, D.C. We Are Family aspires to bring advocacy, services, organizing, and companionship into the homes of the elderly, while helping to build friendships across boundaries like race, class, religion, age, culture, and sexual orientation.

He is the author of two books, Dance of Days: Two Decades of Punk in the Nation's Capitol and All The Power: Revolution Without Illusion, and a contributor to several others including Sober Living For the Revolution: Hardcore, Radical Politics, and Straight Edge, We Owe You Nothing: Punk Planet, the Collected Interviews, Rad Dad: Dispatches From the Frontiers of Fatherhood, and Rock Politics: Popular Musicians Who Changed the World.