Mark McLaughlin, known as MC Diatribe in local hip hop circles, released this album last year.

By Charles Tarabour

Mark McLaughin might be the first city activist to examine life in Somerville through rhymes and beats.

McLaughlin, a Bridge Over Troubled Waters caseworker and co-founder of the grassroots activist group Save Our Somerville, records and releases hip hop music as MC Diatribe. On his album, A Villen Story, McLaughlin raps about the city and its problems – political, social, and more.

McLaughlin said his music is shaped by his hometown, its working class immigrant communities and battles against heroin and Oxycontin abuse.

“Especially, nowadays, when you think of Somerville, you don’t think of these experiences anymore. And those are still very much alive in my life,” he said.

McLaughlin has worked with Save Our Somerville to hold candlelight vigils around the city for deceased Somerville youths and their surviving families and his music is soaked in personal experience of friends who have succumbed to drugs and violence.

During this interview at Lincoln Park, two of McLaughlin’s old friends walked by. McLaughlin took the chance to offer some advice. “Everyone makes mistakes. What’s important is that you learn from them,” he said.

Young people in Somerville are not given nearly enough motivation to succeed, said McLaughlin, and they are cast as bad kids who have no chance at making it – so they turn to drugs and crime. He calls it “the Somerville Slump” the time after high school “when dreams fail to come to fruition.”

In his activism and in his job reaching out to help people on city streets, McLaughlin is fighting against that hopelessness.

He is an active member with Villen, a local arts collective and fashion line that pushes t-shirts, stickers and McLaughlin’s CD on their Web site, BeAVillen.com. Villen, a play on the term Somervillian, was the brainchild of Brian Liberatore, who screen printed a set a t-shirts for his friends and began selling them. He passed away in 2007 and McLaughlin, along with other young, creative minds keep the line alive through grassroots marketing and simple networking.

“There’s a circle of people in the city share this dream like say, ‘If one of us makes it, we could put everyone on.’” He said, “we work as a network to help each other out.”

On his shoulder, McLaughlin sports a tattoo, a shamrock, and inscribed is the initial LP, which stands for Lexington Park. On the top and bottom is written “Beyond the Neck” a historical slang for Somerville, and “We Shall Overcome” in Gaelic.

McLaughlin is moving forward, but he does not forget his background. As Somerville experiences the benefit of improved transit options with the pending arrival of the Green Line, he hopes longtime Somerville residents can enjoy the advances.

“The quality of life is better, but lots of the lower class people don’t get to be around to see all this great improvement,” he said. “I want people to stay around for the benefits, see how great the city’s become.”