A poetic-prose zine aimed at queering & “trans”forming love!

DM me your email for free PDFs of this & other recent zines of mine.

(Big thx to @oneironaut17.bsky.social
for these two “shades of love” photos)

Call for contributions, round 2, for zine,

“Everyday Antifascism:
XX Ways That Solidarity Keeps Us Safer”

Share widely, esp. with anarchist(ic) folks engaging in imaginative and/or bold forms of sticking side by side with others to keep everyone safer from fascism. I’m seeking a diversity of strategies, tactics, and actions embodying substantive solidarity, from friendly antifascist BBQs in parks, to defending drag shows from fascist disrupters, to blocking ICE kidnappings, etc.

Deadline: on or before June 27
Length: 75 to 250 words
Email submissions: cbmilstein {at} yahoo

To give you an idea of what I’m looking for, here are pieces I’ll be including:

On more than one occasion in occupied Palestine, amid clouds of US-made, Israeli-fired tear gas in an urban center or Israeli forces marauding through a small village, I’ve had to knock in panic on the door of a complete stranger’s home, seeking safety. Invariably that door was opened and a haven was offered, despite the supposed gulfs of nationality or language. We both understood which side we were on, and that was cause enough for complicity. Be they an infirm elderly couple or parents with a house full of young children, they sheltered me, aware of the costs involved if their act was discovered. On the surface, we could exchange nothing more than basic pleasantries and gestures. Beneath that, there was a solidarity that needed no interpretation. In opening that door and letting me in, they risked far more than I did. They taught me we all play a role in the struggle with the tools that we have. Sometimes it’s as simple as opening the door.
—Scott Campbell

In the small town I live in, one of the leaders of Unite the Right was outed, and people got super pissed. Rallies happened at the university where the neo-Nazi went to school. There was a march on the city council. People flooded the campus with flyers and wheat-pasted posters on walls. They did a call-in campaign, and banners were dropped. The pressure mounted as the school bent over backward to protect this guy. It got so bad that he dropped out and took online classes. As a community, we literally ran that fucker out of town. Pretty soon after that, he also dropped out of his fascist group.
—small-town antifascist

It feels apropos to put “Ritual as Resistance” into the world as brave LA folks engage in “resistance as ritual” — the ritual of yet again having to take to the streets in inspiring displays of community self-defense against icy-cold cops — and a brave flotilla of 12 people — now kidnapped, and for the moment, jailed — have helped to spark what many hope is the “ritual” of many flotillas and many land convoys trying to resist genocide with the “weapon” of food, of breaking bread with those who have little to none in Gaza.

Of course, as I note in the intro to this new curated zine, it is “a sampler of some of the modest ways that anarchistic people from varied traditions” go about “defending the sacred” through “rebellious spiritualities.” The 18 examples — each penned and contributed by a different person, and interwoven in this 20-page offering — are not nearly as grand as the neighborly solidaristic uprising in LA (see @jailsupportla to lend support from afar) or seaworthy solidarity of the @gazafreedomflotilla.

Yet as I say in the intro, “my hope is that this humble zine inspires you to imaginatively blur the line between ritual and resistance, until the death machine sputters and stalls, and all that then moves freely is life. For it is us, side by side, that can make all sacred against the profane of this world. Because our love knows no borders.”

Indeed, our power, as this zine — and the streets and sea — assert, lies in our “faith” that we have millennia of wisdom, “beyond the imposed time-space of colonialism and capitalism, states and fascism,” in how to give meaning to the messy beauty of life in unquantifiable, uncontainable, and otherworldly ways. “Authoritarian regimes, also over millennia, have well understood this power. If they break people’s connection to ritual, to spirituality, they sever people’s connection to life itself.“

Let there be “no spiritual surrender,” to borrow words from @kleebenally, of blessed memory.

I’m grateful to the zine’s 17 contributors, @landonsheely for cover art, @_hey_casandra_ for the PDFs, and @stormbringer_press (also a contributor) for the photos.

For readable and print-ready PDFs, DM me your email!

(Photos feature the zine’s cover [outside by a tree and some green plants], which boosts a stylized drawing of a three-headed person with plants “growing” out of their legs and a flower with a circle A coming out of one the heads, with broken chains between their legs)

Call for contributions, round 2, for the zine:
“Ritual as Resistance: XX Stories of Defending the Sacred”

PLEASE share this widely, esp. with friends of various cultural+spiritual traditions.

I got some spot-on submissions in the first round, but not enough for a whole zine. So as inspiration—and tangible examples of the “recipes” for rebellious ritual that I’m looking for—see the excerpts below from stories I’ll be using.

Length: up to 230 words or so
Deadline: on or before May 24
Email to: cbmilstein {at} yahoo

“‘Good morning, revolutionaries!’ Her glossy hijab gleams with the 7:00 a.m. dew. It’s gray out. The drizzle drips off her megaphone as she makes her rounds, tent to soggy tent. ‘It’s time to build the world of the future!’ “The raindrops, bolder, smack the tent roof in the center of the university quad. Our bat mitzvah girl looks at me quizzically. ‘Kiss here,’ I unroll the Torah and gesture. The tassel of her keffiyeh could be the fringes of a prayer shawl without too much imagination. She takes the tassel, touches the scroll and kisses it.” …
—Robin Banerji

Rhinestones still sparkle under red umbrellas hoisted around the globe even as tears fall when the list of names is read on December 17: International Day to End Violence against Sex Workers. … The list is a central feature of every D17 vigil, even when the name of the deceased is ‘anonymous.’ [Also, the] most derogatory terms for sex workers in the local language of each D17 gathering are openly reclaimed as an act of resistance by an unapologetically grieving crowd clad in fishnets, lingerie, harnesses, and high heels, all refusing to accept ‘dead hookers’ as a punch line or expected outcome of the hustle.”
—Maggie Mayhem

As my ancestors had once hidden cloves of garlic in their pockets for protection, I plant garlic every Octobe.r … My cousin aided me last fall because I procrastinated, buried in the grief of my mom’s illness. … Plants have always been our ritual. We dug up plants around our ancestral home before it was to be demolished. We mourned, taking plants to our new homes, tucking them into the earth. Bringing something we love with us as we watch the world crumble. A little seed of solace for a people of the diaspora.
—Dana G

(photos: ritualistic visit to Waldheim cemetery on the outskirts of Chicago to pay homage to the blessed memory of anarchist ancestors, including with offerings of stones and stickers, such as pictured on the Haymarket martyrs monument as well as the graves of Lucy Parsons and Voltairine de Cleyre)

Ken Paxton has filed a lawsuit accusing a New York doctor of prescribing abortion drugs to a Texas resident in violation of state law. This lawsuit is the first attempt to test what happens when state abortion laws are at odds with each other.

https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/health-science/abortion/2024/12/13/508782/ken-paxton-sues-new-york-doctor-accused-of-prescribing-abortion-pills-to-texas-woman/

#Abortion #Court #HealthScience #MedicineWellness #National #News #Texas #AttorneyGeneralKenPaxton #Mifepristone #Misoprostol #TexasAbortionBan #TexasAbortionLaws #TexasAbortionLawsuit