Computer getting packed. If you need to get in contact with us quickly, use phone. We have a broken smartphone that SOMETIMES can access DW or email, but don't count on it.

See y'all at the new place!

Mori: I textually transcribed this zine I raved about earlier! It's a mad pride manifesto with influences from Thich Nhat Hanh, the Icarus Project, Inner Family Systems, and anarchist concepts like mutual aid and collective liberation. Its beautiful imperfection means a lot to my hothead self, so here it is!

This zine is anti-authority and anti-medical. You may not want to read it, especially if you're in a place mentally where your brain is causing you a lot of havoc and doesn't seem at all your friend. Paris Williams's Rethinking Madness: Towards a Paradigm Shift In Our Understanding and Treatment of Psychosis covers some similar territory with more research, page count, and moderation.

Knocking from the Inside: Breaking Free from Mental Imperialism
by Jimmy Dunson

( You have lost your mind? So? There are worse things to lose. You have found the heart and soul of the universe. You simply stopped being the false god to the universe within you, you stopped being the dictator to your differing parts. )

Mori: Carolyn Gage is a radical lesbian feminist playwright who didn't get diagnosed with autism until her sixties and writes about sexual abuse and incest a lot. I first became aware of her years back when a roomy at the time had a book of hers on the shelf, and today I learned she did a one-woman play about Joan of Arc, so of course I had to look what else she'd done.

Then I found her short 1994 article, "Invitation to a Trashing." I immediately had to add it to my self-hate and social justice bibliography.

Damn. Thirty years old, and this woman sums up beautifully what now gets called "cancel culture." (I vehemently disagree with her criteria of “unacceptable targets,” RequiresHate/winterfox was a master of using “you sound white” to shut down women of color, but I DO agree there’s a cynical, cultural calculus at work deciding how to paint a trashee as a privileged oppressor.) Other lesbian feminists talked about these dynamics before Gage, but what I find especially interesting is how Gage cuts to the heart of how dissociation and lingering abuse effects can be used as weapons in these situations, trashee's and trasher's alike. That's something I haven't seen dealt with in other discussions, certainly not with the concise incision she does:( Anything can be a weapon if you're holding it right! )

Still working through that big stack of zines from Jimmy Dunson and Rebel Hearts Press, and we're down to the last thing: a paper back anthology of essays entitled Building Power While The Lights Are Out: Disasters, Mutual Aid, and Dual Power. It's really making my brain buzz with ideas! I'm only midway through, but so far my favorites are "Mutual Aid and Anti-Racist Organizing in Rural Appalachia" by Rural Organizing and Resilience, "Love My People: Following in the Footprints of the Panthers" by Suncere Ali Shakur, and "Survival Programs: Then And Now" by Malik Rahim (an old guy in his seventies who was part of the Black Panthers in the '70s). Like the other stuff from Rebel Hearts, it looks to be a paper-only release.

I just want to quote a few paragraphs from Shakur here, because... how could I NOT love this book? He cut his teeth on mutual aid in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, where black men were getting murdered as looters by vigilantes, cops, and others. It was not a safe time and place, and he describes the following events: