DIY ASSETTS

This quote that I found on a friend’s blog about the Allied Media Conference made me think about some things I find missing in DIY Punk:

“There’s very few spaces where you see such amazing, ground-breaking, do-it-yourself activists coming together with all these young people from all these communities where they’ve traditionally been told not to do try to do it themselves or that they can’t do it for themselves. You get to see the best of both communities coming together in this space.”

Often discussions about punk and diversity or punk and politics surround how to bring issues or people from other communities into the space occupied by DIY punk. Do-it-yourself ideals and practices are a pretty special thing, but it is also a thing that to a large extent mainly middle or upper class Americans have been able to easily utilize or have been encouraged and empowered to pursue. I’m interested in how DIY punk can share the things it has learned how to do and does well: creating a youth-centered and youth-run culture, collaborating over distance, building social networks, aggregating resources, etc. – with people from other community backgrounds or identities or those pursuing goals other than media creation or traditionally punk political campaigns, and using that exchange to question and refine DIY punk’s practices and paradigms.

Cheers,
Geoff

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