How Punks Make an Authentic and Alternative Community

Contributed by Davy from Hattiesburg

Fascism is on the rise around the world, and as I’m writing this from Hattiesburg, Mississippi, USA, things seem especially blatant and brutal in the U.S. deep South and the former Confederate States. When you’re at your next punk show, you should be noticing how authenticity and alternative expression is encouraged and just how incredibly rare that is. For us in a smaller, conservative city, it’s one of the last remaining places we have for this.

Our interactions with the community start with music and punk shows to be sure. During shows, we are talking about global and local topics from the stage like “Free Palestine” and “Fuck Governor Tate Reeves,” and we’re printing and distributing zines at shows for free so people can take media and information home to study and analyze for themselves. The Counterforce is an amazing series that we bring and share which helps us with some very practical items. Similarly, when I first started coming around to punk shows here, I felt one of the best ways I could help to contribute towards the scene would be to make a zine called Hattiesburg Alternative and share it with the community.

Hattiesburg Alternative

is a submissions-based zine that comes out twice a year and prints poetry, art, and prose by local and national artists and includes local music reviews and interviews from the punk and hardcore scene. At first glance, it may look more like a literary journal, but by applying the ethos of punk and DIY, the zine operates distinctly from the elitism and gatekeeping of academia. I did this by making the zine free for anyone to send submissions or to receive a final copy, open to any genre, subject, or medium, and unashamed to address heavy topics like systemic oppression and economic injustice.

When I began working on the first issue, I asked my friends who drew or painted art, wrote poetry or prose, or played music if they would be ok with me printing something they created or letting me interview them, but as time went by and people started to recognize and anticipate the next issue, I put out printed flyers for a “Call for Artists” and shared them digitally. Now I’m able to fill the zine fully based on submissions from across the local and national community. I completely credit this with making the zine free and accessible and the appeal of being presented with an authentic and conscious community.

To print the zines, I did have to spend some initial money and got myself a Brother DCP-L2540DW, but any laser printer that can print on both sides is fine! It being black and white turned out not to be a bad thing at all and ended up making ink cheaper and gives the zines a very cool and traditional look It also comes with a scanner which makes adding drawings and cut outs to zines a little easier. Sometimes, I have someone willing to help me print zines from their office on the down low, but they can’t always help. We print out around 500 copies of each issue before it’s time to make the next one and that can take a good bit of paper and ink. Speaking of ink, it’s always difficult to source cheaply or ethically or to dispose of it responsibly. So let me know if anyone has suggestions!

If you’d like to read a how to guide on printing zines, check out FLIP ON SHORT EDGE: A Punk's Guide to Printing Zines, under “how-tos” at the-counterforce.org. I follow a similar method.

For distribution, I take the zines to punk shows, of course, and give them out to anyone who’s interested. I also pass out stacks to the people who contributed a submission or interview to the zine so they can give some to their friends. It helps to have 10-12 people involved with each zine! I also give some to my friends who table other types of events like farmers and makers markets or who just have a lot of friends or classmates who are interested in the arts. Then I’ll also put stacks at a few cool places around the city. The trendy coffee shop, record store, and music venue are usual suspects. I’ll mail a few off at a time to fans who don’t make it to Hattiesburg often or are fans from the internet. I also like to send some with local bands when they go off on tour.

When we go out into the community outside of music,

I realize what a skillset we’ve developed for community activism just by putting on punk shows. We know what an event needs to feel satisfying for someone attending. We know what information is required for an event flyer and how to make it catchy and interesting to someone walking by. We know how to set up a PA and speak to a crowd. We know how to affordably and effectively create physical media and share it. We also know now how to communicate with encrypted messaging, host our own websites, and not be so reliant on corporate social and other media (again check out the “how-tos” at the-counterforce.org.) So, while it’s essential to listen and learn from civil rights leaders, when we want to organize a protest, march, or start a community watch group, we’re already practiced and prepared.

We care about politicized issues because,

the conservative direction our government and culture has gone is antithetical to the ethos of punk and hardcore. Our scenes and communities should stand for something. What that is, is up to us. We can stand for compassion, anti-racism, and anti-authoritarianism or we can stand for empty pride, revisionist history, America-first, and scorn. We can have freedom, liberty, justice, and opportunity, or we can have limits over our bodies, identities, and education. We can have migrants flourish in this country or we can have squads of roaming masked federal agents, killing and kidnapping in our streets and endless wars.

These are not just lofty ideals but are ongoing oppressive measures with immediate consequences. We oppose Mississippi bill 1193, which bans diversity, equity, and inclusion, transgender identity, and true U.S. history in all levels of education. We oppose the supreme court case, Louisiana vs. Callais, which removes protections for Black representation in U.S. congress. We oppose the Mississippi “Heartbeat Bill” which bans abortions after 6 weeks of pregnancy. We oppose the ICE-lead ethnic cleansing of the U.S. We oppose the U.S. war in Iran, the U.S. blockade of Cuba, and the U.S.-Israeli genocide in Palestine and Lebanon. We oppose casual use of AI and the resource draining data centers. We oppose the people, systems, and institutions that back these things and the bastard President in this country.

We’re constantly improving how to lessen the damage of these governmental decisions, and we still have a lot to learn. However, there is always something we can do to help right now. So, when you’re at your next punk show, you should be noticing what a gift the scene is, and how it needs to be nurtured and supported because it’s an increasingly rare space that values thinking and behaving alternatively and authentically. It’s a space that tries and is successful at doing better.

Contact me:
somethingsalternative@tutamail.com
https://hattiesburg-alt.neocities.org