Freshly birthed zine: “Shades of Love”

I actually wrote this “new” one in spring–summer 2012 for a pal’s anarchist anthology on love, but they never ended up publishing the book. So at long last, I’ve turned it into a zine. May it touch your heart in these icy-unloving christofascist times!

As always, my zines are labors of love, freely gifted, for you to freely share. DM me your email for readable and print-ready PDFs.

On a strictly voluntary basis, in this case it would warm my weary heart if you’d contribute $5 or more to your favorite anarchist(ic) labor-of-love project, whether to a bail or abortion fund, mutual aid or solidarity (not charity) effort, or collective space.

This zine is less “practical” than other recent ones, and more of a poetic, hopefully tender “love letter” of sorts from me to you, my sweet fellow rebels.

Thx to @dioishh for the gorgeous cover art, @_hey_casandra_ for kindly turning my layout into PDFs yet again, and @the_bejeweled_narwhal for this lovely photo!

Excerpt from the zine’s opening:

“When I was a little kid, we had this big weeping willow tree in our backyard, and when it was in full bloom, its slender overhanging branches would form a porous pale-green umbrella arching from sky to ground with expansive space underneath. Open space. Yet delicately screened too.
From inside, seated on the gently compacted earth, you could see outside, softly, through the millions of little leaves playing gaily as the wind touched them. You could look outward through tiny peepholes, which in turn let in winking shapes of light like stars on a crystal-clear night, with each glimmer held in the embrace of the shadows cast by leaf after leaf.
I recently asked my six-year-old bio-niece what she meant by the word love, which she says several times a day to her mom, and she responded matter-of-factly, ‘Love is all that’s good.’ She doesn’t have a weeping willow in her Orlando-sprawl backyard; only crunchy-dry grass and a too-small palm tree and blindingly unmediated sunshine.
Still, maybe my niece is onto something.”

#FallInLoveNotInLine
#TryAnarchismForLife
#LoveAndSolidarity

Today is a good day to buy something from a small business in Canada.

I just ordered something.

#LoveAndSolidarity

Zukiswa Wanner, the first African woman to be awarded a Goethe Medal, has today returned it, in protest of the German government's participation in genocide in Palestine. #NeverAgain #FreePalestine #LoveandSolidarity

(From @LizzyAttree on X)

The good people of mastodon are legion. They often worry about what is racist, homophobic or transphobic. This is a very good thing. We want a #fediverse and a world free of these this things.

They also worry about the violence done to #unhoused people and refugees. This is a very good thing. We want a world where all our free.

Here is a project that combines all those things and its leader and founder @Swabulah4321 is on Mastodon.
https://fundrazr.com/LGBTKakuma

I urge you to support the project if you can. That way you can turn your worry into action and build the world you want to see.

#Racism, #LGBT, #NoBorders #LoveAndSolidarity, #MutualAid, #Kakuma
@immigration

Not my New Years.

Not this date established by a dictator, Julius Caesar, and his empire, then reaffirmed by the Papal State, and now upheld by capital and its food+alcohol industry.

Not this date that tries to hide, erase, and obliterate the new years that move in relation to the moon and sun—the lunar and solar calendars that offer life rhythms and meaning-filled rituals for most cultures, save for the death cult in power.

On January 1, 1916, Antonio Gramsci wrote about why he hated New Years, which “fall like fixed maturities, which turn life and human spirit into a commercial concern with its neat final balance, its outstanding amounts, its budget for the new management. They make us lose the continuity of life and spirit.”

This past year, we’ve lost profound amounts of life and spirit, not to mention lives. “Fuck [12] 2022,” as tagged on a wall I saw this summer, is an understatement, and wishing for a better 2023 feels false. That’s another reason to hate New Years: it suggests that some force outside us—like turning a calendar page—can right this wrong world.

Ahead of the “highest” of the four Jewish lunisolar new years annually, Rosh Hashanah, many days are spent, individually and communally, in reflecting on how well we did in terms of mending this world. When on Rosh Hashanah the world is symbolically created anew, all we have moving forward is ourselves and each other, messy and beautiful, in terms of doing better at it.

This 2022 may not be the worst of human history, but it feels that way, when mass death, fascism, and ecocide are some of its highlights. They and other social ills have not only stolen our moon and sun but also nearly everything else, leaving most of us stripped to the bone, having lost everything from trust and faith to friends and community to health and more.

I recently saw this print on a friend’s wall, created by Levi Coven, reading: “Nothing left but each other.” When we’re all so depleted, so traumatized, it’s hard to act—and with kindness and collective care—on that abundance: us, ourselves, each other, our life force. Yet if we don’t try harder, daily, in the days of 2023 ahead, we’ll have nothing at all.

#NotMyNewYear
#RitualsAsResistance
#LoveAndSolidarity

For Gramsci’s full “I Hate New Year’s Day” essay (with thanks to Zoé Samudzi for sharing it earlier today on social media):

https://viewpointmag.com/2015/01/01/i-hate-new-years-day/