Local Heroes

The impact of punk on the lives of local activists is examined in a new pamphlet recently released by the Freedom Shop: Dumb Enough to Actually Try It: How Punk Rock Can Make You a Better Manager by Sam Buchanan.

Part history, part self-help guide for aspiring managers, the essay sets out how punk developed an economic structure and organising methodology. This not only sustains it, but has given many people skills which have proved effective well beyond the punk movement. Punks have taken these skills into many areas, both expected and unexpected.

Several local punks are quoted in the essay, including Kate Pussycat who went on to establish fundraising opshops and a rural animal sanctuary.

“Years of being broke living on the dole and loving opshopping prompted me to set up an opshop in Wellington as a way to fundraise for animal rights work. It was wildly successful! So then we got ambitious and borrowed money from anyone we knew who had anything to lend and bought 26 acres of land to set up a sanctuary. Without my years of DIY in the punk and animal rights scene I would never have had the skills or confidence to do half of what we do in our sanctuary project.”

Punk is characterised by a DIY ethic, an emphasis on participation, setting a deliberately low bar of technical standards, and a radical politics based on personal experiences rather than political theory. Punk has clearly had a significant impact on art, fashion, design and music. What is less recognised is its impact as a training ground for facilitators and managers, a subject explored in this annoying, yet ground breaking, essay.

Dumb Enough to Actually Try It was first published in 2021 on the web at www.pyramidclub.org.nz.