This dissertation explores of various modes of musical activism within the Mount Pleasant neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Music is an important aspect of life in Mount Pleasant, and it has become the conduit and mirror for many other issues about urban life in the neighborhood. From arguments about noise pollution, to protests featuring local popular musics, to concerns about the gentrification of the soundscape, people in Mount Pleasant live their lives as residents in an urban city often in relation to music. Within an ethnographic study of the neighborhood underground radio station, Radio CPR, I investigate how the station acts to encourage activists for the Mount Pleasant community while also building an alternative community within the station. Musical activism is found in group settings, such as Radio CPR meetings, protest rallies or punk fueled benefit concerts, and in the individual actions of Radio CPR DJs during their radio shows. The activism in this neighborhood connects to larger national protest movements, such as the anti-globalization and anti-media consolidation movements. I also seek to understand the nature of place memory in the Washington, D.C. punk scene, as well as question the difference between scene, neighborhood and place. I aim to demonstrate that the complexities of place, class, gender, and race all inform how music is celebrated, discussed and advocated for in urban neighborhoods in the United States. In addition, through a discussion of the field of applied ethnomusicology, I theorize a different sense of scholarly engagement, that of activist-driven applied ethnomusicology. I argue that as responsible scholars, we cannot look narrowly at places and communities, singling out musical traditions for study without also examining the ways in which lives are lived in these same places. In the end, this dissertation is an exploration of how people live in communities, how they express themselves in twenty-first century America, how music contributes to self-expression and protest, and how media contributes to peoples' understandings of cultural diversity.