Posts tagged LGBTQIA

POC Zine Project’s 2013 ‘Race Riot! Tour’ Dates & Cities

Community,

Last year’s inaugural tour was amazing but that was just the beginning. 14 cities last year = 12 more cities this year <3 

Dates may shift slightly before October and we are still accepting invites from academic and community spaces, collectives, orgs and individuals. If you haven’t contacted us already, please do: poczineproject@gmail.com.

If you look at this list and think “Why the heck do they keep missing the full Midwest?” Don’t trip, chocolate chip. The 2014 NATIONAL Zinester Conference is going down in YOUR house! Yeah! Midwest all the way! And we’ll be bringing in FIVE international zinesters/activists to share their work! Yeah, buddy! If you want to help, reach out! 

Thoughts become things. Be intentional with your thoughts.

2013 TOUR DETAILS: What we know so far

#IdleNoMore solidarity will be a core component of this tour. If you’re actively involved in local efforts in your city, please reach out. We want you to speak at our events & help you distribute your printed zines/materials nationwide. We hope our small platform helps to make a difference.

We will be doing TWO events in each city, just like last year’s tour. There will be an academic event at a participating university in the daytime and one DIY/community show in the evening. The academic events will be free and open to the public, while the evening DIY shows will be a sliding scale cover. NO ONE TURNED AWAY FOR LACK OF FUNDS <3

The DIY show covers pay for our gas and food, so give what you can.

We will be able to share accessibility/child care details for each city once we have more information.

The Race Riot! touring member lineup will be revealed in the coming weeks. HINT: Think more people, rotating members and lots of guest readers in each city.

OK, enough context. Here are the dates & cities!

1) 10/1: Atlanta, GA (Tuesday)

2) 10/2: Montgomery, AL (Wednesday)

3) 10/3: Jackson, MS (Thursday)

ALERT: Jackson has the only remaining abortion clinic in the entire state, which is in danger of being shut down.

4) 10/4: New Orleans, LA (Friday)

10/5: Travel Day (Saturday)

10/6: Research/Advocacy Day (Sunday)

5) 10/7: Austin, TX (Monday)

10/8 Research/Travel Day (Tuesday)

6) 10/9: New Mexico - but where??? Let us know! (Wednesday)

7) 10/10: Tucson, AZ (Thursday)

It is very important for POC everywhere, and especially in Arizona right now, to have access to independent publications by and for people of color.

10/11: Travel Day (Friday)

8) Los Angeles, CA as recharge zone/multiple events

10/12: Research/Advocacy Day in L.A. (Saturday)

10/13: Los Angeles, CA (Sunday evening DIY show)

10/14: Los Angeles, CA (Monday academic daytime event)

10/15: Travel Day (Tuesday)

9) 10/16: Bay Area, CA (Wednesday)

10/17: Research/Travel Day (Thursday)

10) 10/18: Sacramento, CA (Friday)

10/19: Travel Day (Saturday)

11) 10/20: Portland, OR (Sunday)

12) 10/21: Seattle, WA (Monday)

——

All details subject to change. We will share specifics about each city as we finalize tour logistics.

MICHIGAN FOLKS: Wow, such love! We’ve received a few requests from y’all to come out this year. We did two events there in 2012 and cannot return in 2013 (we are not a funded entity - we rely on donations and have day jobs/other obligations <3). If you’re in Michigan and want to support this tour in other ways, contact us, thanks.

We can only do so much, and we do a lot with very little. Richmond, VA and other cities: We wish we could be everywhere for this tour, but we can’t. Let’s figure out ways to partner that will yield long term outcomes for local POC orgs and collectives. Thanks for understanding.

OTHER WAYS TO PARTICIPATE

We are looking for the following:

• Guest readers in every city (you must be a person of color)
• Rotating tour buddies: Join us on the road and participate in 1-3 tour events as a panelist/reader/tabler
• POC (or POC fronted) bands to perform at each #raceriottour event!
• More POC & ally tablers for each city: come to a POCZP event in your town and table for your zine/org/collective/creative project (check out some of the POC artists/merchants who tabled last year) <3

We’re also looking for folks to help us produce #raceriottour fundraiser events between now and September. This might be a good solution for you if you are unable to travel.

Contact poczineproject@gmail.com for more details. Make sure to use “2013 RACE RIOT TOUR” as the email subject.

ABOUT THE RACE RIOT! TOUR

POC Zine Project held its first Race Riot! Tour in 2012, producing 20 events in 14 U.S. cities, which included speaking engagements at six universities. Click here to view photos from the POC Zine Project: 2012 Race Riot! Tour tour finale at Death By Audio in Brooklyn and access all the tour stop recaps.

We will be taking the Race Riot! Tour through 12 more U.S. cities in 2013. Stay tuned for updates as we work on partnering with POC-affirming orgs overseas. If you are outside the U.S. and want to be a part of our emerging POCZP Global Ambassadors program, email poczineproject@gmail.com. 

SUPPORT POC ZINE PROJECT

If everyone in our community gave $1, we would more than meet our fundraising goal for 2013. If you have it to spare, we appreciate your support. All funds go to our 2013 tour, the Legacy Series and the poverty zine series.

DONATE link via PayPal: http://bit.ly/SHdmyh

Meet POCZP’s Chief Fanalyst for the Legacy Series: Julia B. aka Ju!

NAME: Julia B. (also goes by Ju)

ROLE: Chief Fanalyst for POC Zine Project’s Legacy Series

REGION: East Coast (Brooklyn), USA

COMMUNITY: Ju has been a POCZP member since the beginning. You’ll be seeing more of their contributions manifest on this Tumblr and in other digital and physical spaces very soon …. <3

IN JU’S OWN WORDS

Hi there. I’m Julia B., or Ju (if we’re being informal, which suits me fine), and I’m the first Official (and Chief) Fanalyst to participate in the POC Zine Project’s Legacy Series!

I’m very excited to be part of this series, and I’m looking forward to sharing more about the first Legacy Series selection: Fire!!: A Quarterly Devoted to the Younger Negro Artists, published in 1926. I should probably begin by explaining what my role will be.

fan: As in, amateur. I’m not a professional historian, just an enthusiastic history lover with library access. Whether it’s sci-fi fans swapping self-written stories through the mail, or specialized distros offering up all manner of self-published work at concerts, zine readings and the like, zine culture has consistently been defined by its place outside of the traditional publishing world. Keeping that in mind, the folks writing this series are taking part because we genuinely love the works we’re talking about, and want to share those works as laypeople in an accessible way.

analyst: I’ll be doing a close read and giving background details about the magazine, page by page. Sort of like “Pop-Up Video” but in written form.

 In lieu of elaborate on-location choreography, I’ll be taking you further into not only the text of Fire!!, but also the world in which it was published—from the author’s contemporaries to the neighborhood in which their office was situated, and more. Ideally, by the time you’re done checking out what I’ve got for you, you’ll have music to listen to, visual artists to check out, books you’ll want to look for. Like I said, I’m enthusiastic about history, and my goal is to make sure that you’re just as thrilled about learning more as I was doing the research.

So why exactly am I so thrilled to be working on Fire!! in particular? Well, as a literature fan, I’ve loved Zora Neale Hurston’s, Langston Hughes’, and Countee Cullen’s writing for years. For many, those names might be the most familiar in the list of contributors to Fire!!, and I’m sure a lot of you out there are already fans of their work. But what of the other contributors alluded to in the “younger negro artists” of the magazine’s title? I see this as a chance for those who are more familiar with the writers in this publication to learn more about the visual artists who contributed, and vice versa, while I take a look at the perspectives that link them all together.

I’m also excited because Fire!! was controversial in its time. The contributors were not interested in perpetuating the politics of respectability. They did not create the magazine to keep in step with the artists of generations before them. In short, they were uncomfortable because they refused to conform to more (Black middle-class) palatable sensibilities.

I mean, check out some of the stuff people were saying when this little magazine out of Harlem made its way into print:

Rean Graves of the Baltimore Afro-American [newspaper] was incensed by the magazine and wrote in his review, “I have just tossed the first issue of Fire!! into the fire.” Benjamin Brawley went so far as to say that if the U.S. Post Office found out about Thurman’s “Cordelia the Crude,” the magazine might be barred from the mail.[1]

Pretty strong reactions to a fledgling publication! The contributors wrote about touchy subjects such as colorism among Black Americans and prostitution. They made deliberate use of Black American vernacular, in an effort to make the voices of their works ring true to the people they represented. And pissed off a bunch of uptight people in the process, even though only one issue of Fire!! was ever published. It’s easy to think of “cutting edge” in the present tense, but in exploring the magazine, we get the chance to check out what the Black American nonconformists of 1926 had to say, and what value those messages hold for us in the present day.

Anyway, enough out of me! I’m looking forward to talking with you further… hopefully we can start a cool conversation (or several) about this classic work. Stay tuned!

[1]: Patton, Venetria K., and Maureen Honey. “The Harlem Renaissance.” Oxford African American Studies Center: Guest Scholars. Oxford University Press. Web. <http://www.oxfordaasc.com/public/featureded/guest_5.jsp>

DO YOU WANT TO BE A FANALYST FOR THE LEGACY SERIES?

The only criteria is that you have to be a person of color! Submit here and tell us a little about yourself. Please include links to some writing samples. Good luck!

White allies: There are other ways for you to support the Legacy Series. Please email daniela@dcapmedia.com for details.

ABOUT THE LEGACY SERIES

Kicking off with FIRE!!, POC Zine Project will make zines by people of color created from the 1700s-1990s available to read and share.

Every Friday (Editor’s note: date pushed to February), you will find a legacy zine by a person of color on poczineproject.tumblr.com. We will share more details in 2013.

WHY WE ARE FOCUSING ON LEGACY ZINES

People of color in the U.S. have produced independent publications (zines) for decades. Many of these zines were political in nature, creating cracks in the lens of white supremacy that shaped (and continues to inform) popular culture and legislation.

These zines were new maps to our liberation, countering the negative propaganda of what people of color looked like, thought and were capable of achieving.

We want the world to know about these legacy zines, so we are going to archive and share them to the best of our ability.

We look forward to partnering with distros, academic spaces, libraries, anti-authoritarian collectives, literary journals, bloggers and more to share the Legacy Series.

“NEW” ZINESTERS: We will still share information about new and upcoming zines by people of color :) Please continue to submit your zines to the archive.

ABOUT THE RACE RIOT! TOUR

POC Zine Project held its first Race Riot! Tour in 2012, producing 20 events in 14 cities, which included speaking engagements at six universities. Click here to view photos from the POC Zine Project: 2012 Race Riot! Tour tour finale at Death By Audio in Brooklyn and access all the tour stop recaps.

We will be taking the Race Riot! Tour through 14 more cities in 2013. Stay tuned!

SUPPORT POC ZINE PROJECT

If everyone in our community gave $1, we would more than meet our fundraising goal for 2013. If you have it to spare, we appreciate your support. All funds go to our 2013 tour, the Legacy Series and the poverty zine series.

DONATE link via PayPal: http://bit.ly/SHdmyh

Meet POCZP’s first Legacy Series intern: Itoro Udofia!

NAME: Itoro Udofia

ROLE: First dedicated intern for the POC Zine Project’s Legacy Series

REGION: West Coast, USA

COMMUNITY: Join us in welcoming Itoro! You’ll be seeing her contributions manifest on this Tumblr and in other digital and physical spaces very soon …. <3

Bio: Itoro is a first generation writer, artist, and educator of Nigerian origin living in the Bay Area. She develops programs for youth of color (Youth Programs Associate at the Museum of the African Diaspora) where they have a space to honor their histories and thrive. You can find her writings on Your World News, People of Color Organize, Rain and Thunder: A Radical Feminist Journal, Womanist Musings, and her own blog Thoughts of my Mind. Her writings focus on the intersections and dynamics of race, class, gender, power, survival/healing and education.

She also teaches an African History course and when she is not doing that, she works closely with a community organization dear to her heart, working to abolish the school to prison pipeline and hearing the youth speak their truth to move to action. She is happy to be a Bay Area resident and feels like here, she has found a bit of peace and a bit of home!

Itoro’s excited to be an intern with the POC Zine Project because it is a collective that uplifts and cares about what people of color have to say and acknowledges what they have always said.

Some texts that furthered her political consciousness and commitment to uplifting the voices of POC and their struggles are The Revolution Starts at Home, This Bridge Called My Back and Steve Biko’s I Write What I Like: Selected Writings. All these zines and texts named what it means to speak out from the margins and hold to ones principle in building a world that includes us all, and calls for a life of love and continued struggle in ALL our spaces, seen and unseen. Moreover, with many people coming out from the margins, she did not feel alone.

Ultimately, Itoro hopes to be a part of a larger community committed to making our written word available, accessible and visible. Other perks to the internship are gaining more knowledge and organizing with radical zinesters. As an intern, she hopes to further her knowledge about zine culture and help get our Voices out. She is excited and ready to begin this journey and is happy to call the POC Zine Project her media home.

COMMUNITY: Learn more about POCZP internship & volunteer opportunities here. We are still accepting applications for the Summer and Fall sessions. 

IN ITORO’S OWN WORDS

Here are some excerpt from her application that are important to share:

Zine culture, specifically the material production of our knowledge is important to me because our voices are often co-opted, misused or completely erased in the literary canon. I have experienced this dangerous and painful trend most profoundly as an educator within the context of radical and progressive education. Save for bell hooks, Sonia nieto, Michele Foster and a few other people of color directly explaining the intricacies of power and privilege as a teacher of color, outlining a liberatory pedagogy through navigating a hostile terrain and offering something invaluable to the field through articulating underlying race, class and gender dynamics, it was difficult to fully relate to radical literature. I found that much of its thought and analysis was filtered through a white liberal/radical context. Even the class analysis was lacking because the white elephant in the room, white supremacy, was not directly dealt with. These power dynamics alone, the dynamics of who gets listened to, who controls the written word, who controls the publishing house, the way information gets told is what fuels my commitment to writing and working with people of color to have complete autonomy over their material.

… The POC Zine project is necessary at this particular time where knowledge and overall experiences are actively ignored.  Centering people of color’s material contributions as a source of  is important, and is a part of honoring a larger history of people who kept going in spite of these hurdles.  

SOME OF ITORO’S WRITING

In a Quiet Place, A Radical Profeminist (Fall 2012)  

In a Quiet Place, The Black Feminist Manifesto (Fall 2012)

In a Quiet Place, Your World News (Fall 2012)  

Missy Anne’s on the lookout for me, Your World News (Summer 2012)  

And When You Leave, Take your Pictures with you, Your World News (Spring 2012) 

Black Power, Leadership and Privilege, Your World News (Winter 2012)

Shedding the Tears, Looking Back, Moving Forward, People of Color Organize (Winter 2012) 

Conversations with a Student Teacher of Color, Womanist Musings (Fall 2010) 

ABOUT THE LEGACY SERIES

Kicking off with FIRE!!, POC Zine Project will make zines by people of color created from the 1700s-1990s available to read and share.

Every Friday (Editor’s note: date pushed to February), you will find a legacy zine by a person of color on poczineproject.tumblr.com. We will share more details in 2013.

WHY WE ARE FOCUSING ON LEGACY ZINES

People of color in the U.S. have produced independent publications (zines) for decades. Many of these zines were political in nature, creating cracks in the lens of white supremacy that shaped (and continues to inform) popular culture and legislation.

These zines were new maps to our liberation, countering the negative propaganda of what people of color looked like, thought and were capable of achieving.

We want the world to know about these legacy zines, so we are going to archive and share them to the best of our ability.

We look forward to partnering with distros, academic spaces, libraries, anti-authoritarian collectives, literary journals, bloggers and more to share the Legacy Series.

“NEW” ZINESTERS: We will still share information about new and upcoming zines by people of color :) Please continue to submit your zines to the archive.

ABOUT THE RACE RIOT! TOUR

POC Zine Project held its first Race Riot! Tour in 2012, producing 20 events in 14 cities, which included speaking engagements at six universities. Click here to view photos from the POC Zine Project: 2012 Race Riot! Tour tour finale at Death By Audio in Brooklyn and access all the tour stop recaps.

We will be taking the Race Riot! Tour through 14 more cities in 2013. Stay tuned!

SUPPORT POC ZINE PROJECT

If everyone in our community gave $1, we would more than meet our fundraising goal for 2013. If you have it to spare, we appreciate your support. All funds go to our 2013 tour, the Legacy Series and the poverty zine series.

DONATE link via PayPal: http://bit.ly/SHdmyh

You can also send well-concealed cash or a check! Email daniela@dcapmedia.com for details or if you have questions.

Info about the poverty zine series: http://bit.ly/RLVTVt