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.