Below is a series of common questions we’ve received in the past, and especially since re-launching in 2024. We hope they will help guide you on your journey towards (hopefully!) joining our movement.
Before diving in, we highly encourage you to read the statement we published in July 2011 (“It’s Bigger Than Jello”) when Jello Biafra & the Guantanamo School of Medicine cancelled their planned gig in Tel Aviv after major international pressure (which we helped to coordinate along with PACBI and other groups). This will not only help you to understand the historical juncture that gave birth to PAA in the first place, but will give you a taste of our vision for the network at its founding.
Despite changes & lessons since, much of that vision continues to serve as our horizon as we move into a new era of PAA, so it is a useful starting point for anyone thinking about joining us.
And now, on to the FAQ!
Who can sign up to join Punks Against Apartheid?
Our network is open to any artists or organisation which feels aligned with our Points of Unity & overall mission. You can be a solo artist or a huge collective or anything in between.
In addition, we have always been open to membership from groups that are more politically-focused, or even ones not necessarily in the ‘artistic’ field, but which organise around cultural BDS or Palestine more generally. That means everything from workers’ co-ops to indymedia outlets to student groups and more!
The only exceptions are individuals with no political, artistic, or other affiliation at this point in time. While we want as many people as possible to join the network, signing our Points of Unity is not quite like signing a petition–we are looking for folks who have a ‘public persona’ (even if that means just in your small local area!), because the purpose of BDS is to apply as much coordinated pressure as possible, which ‘named’, public individuals are better poised to do than ‘civilians’.
If you still want to support and you’re not an artist, group, or collective of any kind–drop us a line anyway, and let’s chat about what signing up or simply supporting looks like for you!
But what if I/we don’t fit the ‘punk’ label?
What we will say is–when in doubt, sign up anyway! More than ever, we need all hands on deck in this critical time to support the Palestinian liberation struggle with every ounce of strength we can muster. So this is no time to get precious about ‘genre’ and the endless, circuitous debates that that usually entails.
We have historically been quite broad with our understanding of ‘punk’ anyway, and at our peak, we even had a few folk and ska crews alongside all of the stereotypical punk/Oi/grindcore/etc. die-hards!
So whether you are now or were previously a punkie something-or-other, or whether you simply feel aligned with the ‘spirit’ of grassroots, DIY, radical autonomous cultural production, or even just aspire to move that way with your art & your work…we want you on board!!
What if I/we REALLY aren’t ‘punk’, like, at all?
Maybe we’ll consider rejecting your application if you’re apolitical hyper-pop Madonna clones (though to be honest, that could be fun…)–but we doubt you’d even sign up in the first place, if her kind of politics are your brand.
Even so, if you feel like the aesthetic polar opposite of whatever ‘punk’ is and still really wanted to sign up…maybe this is the perfect excuse for some artistic experimentation! Go ahead and make a great one-off single with just enough grunge for it to ‘feel’ right for you and use it as a springboard to announce your membership with us. Or start another band-within-a-band just for the purposes of signing up!
However you need to do it for it to feel authentic to your artistic vision, it’s entirely up to you. Get creative, get surreal, and let’s get organising!
What happens when I/we sign up to PAA?
If you have provided us with all the correct contact info, we will send you an e-mail & invite you to link up with us on Signal. We are really keen to have representatives from each group on a chat with us so we can check in about campaigns & share our different regional organising needs. And it’s a barrel of laughs too, so that’s a bonus!
We will then arrange to have some patches, zines, and hopefully t-shirts printed in the print shop(s) of your choice in your area for you to pick up. For now, we can shoulder these initial costs for a small print-run in your locale for free, after which we will ask bands to start chipping in when they need to re-up. If multiple bands/groups are in the same region, we may ask some of the reps to help distribute the materials amongst themselves.
Some groups have already planned DIY days with their communities to make banners & agit-prop with PAA slogans on them, which is also totally welcome & a great way to save money! We’d love to see any designs once they’re done. Check out our gallery for some historical examples with the battle-worn PAA banner that we used to carry everywhere with us!
We will then announce you publicly on our social media accounts based on the short statement you provided on your form (see examples here). From there, we ask that you help boost & re-share content about our activities and those of fellow signatories wherever possible, as well as to put your PAA-affiliation out there publicly so folks can learn more about us & sign up to join too.
Is that it? What is expected of us once I/we’re all set up?
This is where the real fun begins. We have always been a decentralised, member-driven network, which means that our organising has always adapted to the needs & desires of our signatories–meaning that you get to help democratically determine what our organising priorities are at any given time along with the global network.
At its most minimal, membership of course entails an expectation of fulfilling the 6 Points of Unity in your work as well as the standard social media PR stuff mentioned above. However, we are a proactive organising network as well, which has historically meant stuff like:
- Coordinating with PACBI to support larger campaigns against BDS-violating artists and music festivals by signing on to existing petitions or drafting our own (see historical examples)
- Organising events to raise awareness about Palestine & BDS, raise money for Palestinian organisations in need, and encourage more artists to join the network & refuse to cross the international ‘picket line’ (see historical examples)
- Taking part in local & international Palestine solidarity campaigns wherever we can, in the form of solidarity statements, endorsements, marches, demonstrations, direct actions, and more (see historical examples)
- Creating original artistic works & benefit albums to support all of the above (work in progress!)
- Actively forging alliances with other anti-racist/anti-colonial/queer/trans/feminist/etc. liberation movements and using our platform to mutually support each others’ work (see historical examples)
This last item is a point of pride for us. While Palestine is our network’s ‘North Star’, we have always practised a radically intersectional ethos at PAA, wherein solidarity with other movements has been just as important as our own work. We have therefore gone out of our way to seek out and cultivate alliances with other groups/initiatives, like Equality For Flatbush in NYC & the Black & Brown Punk Show in Chicago, and more.
We don’t plan on stopping that cross-movement organising anytime soon, and welcome any support from our signatories in creating these meaningful opportunities to advance radical objectives. Some of our most powerful collaborations came from members themselves who have worn multiple ‘hats’ as artists & organisers throughout their lives. So if that kind of wondrous heretical mix & matching sounds like your cup of tea, well…what are you waiting for? Sign up already!!
How can this work be sustainable? All the merch stuff sounds expensive.
That’s a great question. Fundamentally, PAA is not focussed on profit-making as a primary objective, and does not have paid ‘staff’. And we are lucky to still have lots of funding that has been lying untapped for years, and the support of a few large donors.
However, this is very clearly not a sustainable structure, and we can’t rely on good luck & good will forever. We also understand that purely-‘volunteer’ collectives can run the risk of not only burn-out, but wholesale replication of ‘NGO Industrial Complex’-style pseudo-organising, which frames political work as a kind of ‘charity’ or ‘sacrifice’ taken out of one’s free time, and not intimately tied up with & connected to our very survival–which in our capitalist hellscape still sadly requires money & other material resources.
In short: artists need to eat! And our movement will be even stronger if we can give our people more incentives to–and fewer excuses not to–re-orient away from exploitative, unprincipled labels & cultural institutions complicit in genocide if we build real alternatives.
So we take inspiration from groups like ABC No Rio in the US & the Piehouse Co-Op & How to Catch A Pig in the UK, who have been part of a larger movement to help artists to not only boycott and withdraw their labour from mainstream capitalist music production, but to truly foster a parallel cooperative ‘solidarity economy’ of independent artists who get to live their principles and get paid for their work without having to compromise either.
We aspire to contribute to that beautiful, brash, visionary DIY ‘undercommons’ that resistance music tends to gravitate towards out of necessity some day too. For now, this is far in the future, but keep your eyes peeled & watch this space for updates!
That sounds cool as fuck. But it also seems pretty far off. You got anything more realistic?
Hey, watch your tone! But in all seriousness, we have given this some thought.
In the medium-term, one possibility is moving towards a simplified ‘trade union’-style structure–when & if the time is right. In this model, signatories would commit (where possible & respecting their circumstances) to a very small yearly membership cost to support merch printing & other ‘internal’ costs, and fundraisers would earmark a very small percentage of donations for administrative costs. We would always do this transparently, electing treasurers & keeping ‘open books’ as much as possible in order to maintain trust with our members & supporters.
Ultimately, whatever we end up doing, you can rest assured that it will be discussed & voted on by the signatory members themselves. That consensus-based, rank-and-file, revolutionary-democratic mentality is the life-blood of our network and the heart of our understanding of solidarity. So if that sustainable future ever plays out for us, it will only ever be because of thoughtful folks like YOU reading this now who have made the effort to build those structures by signing up and figuring it out together.
If you have any other questions, concerns, or proposals, please drop us an e-mail or contact us on any of our social media pages and we’ll do our best to answer promptly.
In the meantime, if it feels right, bring the Points of Unity back to your band/collective/Politburo, have a chat…and come back and freaking sign up already!!!