Flier by Daniela Capistrano

We’re so excited for our next event, co-organized with POC Zine Project & Barnard Zine Library on Wednesday, November 16th. You can RSVP on Facebook.

Wednesday, November 16 · 7:00pm – 9:00pm

Barnard College
307 Milbank Hall (3rd floor)
North end of campus
3009 Broadway
New York, NY 10027

The People of Color (POC) Zine Project, Barnard Zine Library and For The Birds Collective are excited to announce a zine reading/community event featuring poc zinesters with diverse backgrounds in zine culture and activism. This is an ALL AGES event, so spread widely!

We’ll be adding more details to this event listing, but here are the confirmed readers and details:

MIMI THI NGUYEN (EVOLUTION OF A RACE RIOT)
http://mimithinguyen.com/home.html

OSA ATOE (SHOTGUN SEAMSTRESS)
http://wemakezines.ning.com/profile/ShotgunSeamstress

JAMIE VARRIALE VELEZ (ROCK AND THE SINGLE GIRL)
http://rockandthesinglegirl.blogspot.com/

DANIELA CAPISTRANO (BAD MEXICAN)
http://www.danielacapistrano.com/

MARIAM BASTANI (MAXIMUM ROCKNROLL)
http://maximumrocknroll.com/

JORDAN ALAM
http://thecowation.blogspot.com/

BRING YOUR ZINES!
We are encouraging folks to bring any zines they want to share, sell or trade. We’ll have space to do that.

LIVETWEET: #poczines
We’ll be sharing details in real time on Twitter @poczineproject, so feel free to follow along and send us your questions and comments with #poczines!

VENUE INFORMATION

Milkbank Hall is on the north end of the Barnard College campus. There
will be signs posted to guide you to the 3rd floor location.

Barnard College information:
http://www.diigo.com/user/barnardlibjenna/barnard%20directions

RELATED LINKS

Barnard Zine Libary: http://zines.barnard.edu/
Barnard’s zines are written by women (cis- and transgender) with an emphasis on zines by women of color. We collect zines on feminism and femme identity by people of all genders. The zines are personal and political publications on activism, anarchism, body image, third wave feminism, gender, parenting, queer community, riot grrrl, sexual assault, trans experience, and other topics.

FOR THE BIRDS: http://forthebirdscollective.org/
FOR THE BIRDS is a New York City-based feminist collective. We work towards establishing alternative spaces that promote the creative interests of women-identified community members. For the Birds is a collaborative group of organizers with backgrounds in feminism, social justice work, and various artistic pursuits. Through DIY feminist cultural activism, For The Birds aims to empower and support radical women of action.

POC ZINE PROJECT: https://www.facebook.com/pages/POC-Zine-Project/304152466201
We want to make it easier for POC (People of Color) zine fans and their supporters to find a diverse selection of zines made by POC. Zines are a vital component in the long tradition of self-publication. They share knowledge and experiences that supplement (and often contradict) the information that other sources distribute, encouraging free thought. There are many valuable zine collections in the United States (many accessible online) but none that are devoted to curating POC zines. POC Zine Project’s mission is to makes ALL zines by POC easy to find, share, and distribute.

ANY QUESTIONS, COMMENTS OR SUGGESTIONS
info@poczineproject.org

FTB would like to announce the next event in the Birds of Summer Series: A benefit show to celebrate “The Worst”–a compilation zine exploring contributors’ experiences with grief and loss from radical, D.I.Y., and alternative viewpoints.  The show will help to raise money to cover printing costs for the zine, which has sold nearly 1500 copies since its inception in 2008.  There will be music, readings, snacks, awesome raffle items, and even a puppet show!  Provided that by Saturday, September 3rd, everyone is safe, dry, and mobile again after the hurricane, we’d love to welcome everyone to come out and have a good time supporting a zine which seeks to build community around the universal (and often difficult) experience of loss.

Details below:

“Who’d ya lose & How ya Dealin’?”:
A benefit show for The Worst: Compilation Zine on Grief and Loss

Saturday September 3, 2011
Death by Audio // 49 S. 2nd St. between Kent & Wythe
L to Bedford or B62 to Driggs/S. 2nd
ALL AGES // NO BYOB
$6-10 Sliding Scale
Doors @ 8pm

FEATURING:
Bands:
Bridge and Tunnel
Worriers
Slingshot Dakota

Readings by:
Cynthia Schemmer
Tommy Pico
Maria Arettines
Sarah Hanks
Kathleen McIntyre
and more!

Tabling by:
For the Birds Collective
Birdsong Collective

Puppetry by:
Geppetta Whimsy-Core Puppet Theater

There are a number of ways you can support the Lower East Side Girls Club. You can apply to volunteer, join their CSA (Community Supported Agriculture, starting July 5th so hurry!), support their summer camp by sponsoring a camper or toasting their success at Cocktails for Camp!, join or donate to their marathon team, devour some sugary goodness at Sweet Things Bake Shop online or LES storefront, or buy some awesome swag online or at La Tiendita Fair Trade and Girl Made Gift Shop at the Essex Market.

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!
March 20th
1 – 4 pm
Brooklyn Free School
372 Clinton Ave btw Lafayette & Clinton (G or A/C to Clinton-Washington)

South Brooklyn ABCF cordially invites you to ‘Brunch Through Bars,’ a free brunch where we write to Political Prisoners & Prisoners of War at the Brooklyn Free School!

We’re doing this in solidarity and tribute to the bi monthly NYC ABCF Political-Prisoner Letter-Writing Dinner running for the past four years and counting– also with a salute to the letter-writing crew operating out of the Morales-Shakur Center in Harlem!

No experience corresponding with prisoners is necessary! We’ll briefly discuss a few prisoners to help inspire and prepare each other to write a letter, whether it’s a first-time introduction or part of a long-term correspondence between comrades.*

Brunch food and letter-writing materials will be provided, but anyone who is so moved is welcome to bring additional vegan or vegetarian food. That said, food-bringing is STRICTLY OPTIONAL. We aim to create an inclusive, welcoming space for building community and resistance. This event is open to all ages and there will be basic drawing and card-making supplies available for children.

*We’ll generally focus on long-term, class-struggle, anti-imperialist Prisoners of War & Political Prisoners while making connections with other prisoners as well. Briefly, Political Prisoners and Prisoners of War (PP/POWs) are, “those persons incarcerated as a result of political beliefs or actions consciously undertaken and intended to resist exploitation and oppression, and/or hasten the implementation of an egalitarian, sustainable, ethical, classless society, predicated on self determination and maximization of all people’s freedom (Bill Dunne). Our chapter of the ABC Federation also shares affinity with prisoners from the LGBTQ community and those imprisoned for acts of self defense.

South Brooklyn ABCF
PO Box 132
Brooklyn, NY 11218
sbrooklynabcf [at] riseup [dot] net

http://sbrooklynabcf.wordpress.com/

ABCF.net

The first is a discussion at Bluestockings on Wednesday entitled Women’s Radical Research, hosted by Kate Angell and Jenna Freedman. The event starts at 7pm, with a $5 suggested donation. According to the Bluestockings calendar:

Join librarians Kate Angell and Jenna Freedman for a look a 10 important resources for fostering your own critical pedagogy, including: zine libraries, open access scholarly journals, and carefully selected websites. Please bring notes about your favorite resources too! Angell is a reference librarian at Sarah Lawrence College and a zine librarian at ABC No Rio. Freedman is a research librarian at Barnard College and the creator of the Lower East Side Librarian zine.

The second is a Support NY benefit show on Thursday at Hank’s Saloon in Brooklyn where we will also be tabling! Hope to see some of you there.

featuring:
Aye Nako
The Butts
The Facts We Hate
Hey Baby
Hot Mess
Titfit
Very Okay
and more!
8pm // $6-10 sliding scale (no one turned away)
Thursday, October 21 @ Hank’s Saloon, 46 3rd Ave, Brooklyn, NY

And the grand finale of the week is the SPARK Summit at Hunter College.  This all-day event is designed to push back against the sexualization of girls in the media and will work with girls age 14-22, along with other leaders and activists, to start a grassroots movement. The day will include panels, workshops and other speakers highlighting media literacy, social justice issues, and concrete ways to take action against harmful representations of girls and women in the media. Their roster of panelists is impressive, including members of Feministing.com, Women’s Media Center, Holla Back, Girls for Gender Equity and the American Psychological Association, among others. And if that’s not enough, Geena Davis will also be speaking! You can find out more and register at their website and even participate remotely, for those outside the NYC metropolitan area.

Hello Everyone!

First and foremost thank you for an amazing turn out and great participation–we felt that this year’s Big She-Bang was a great success! However, what’s most important is what you thought! We have gained invaluable insight into how we can better work with our larger community from conducting post-event surveys in the past and we take your responses very seriously. Please take a moment to fill out our survey about this year’s event: what worked for you and what didn’t? What could we have done better? What was the most important part of the day for you? Your responses will be anonymous.

SURVEY

We look forward to your responses and to another year of working together to create spaces where New York City’s D.I.Y. feminist culture can thrive!

xoxoxo,
For the Birds

Notable participants included curators Camille Morineau (Musee national d’art moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris) Ivet Curlin (What, How & for Whom Collective, Croatia) Catherine Lord (author of the forthcoming Art and Queer Culture, 1885-2005), and Connie Butler (Chief Curator of Drawings at MoMA) along with artist Sonia Khurana, and author Michelle Wallace, among others.

While an effort was made to convey the slowly changing tide of feminist politics within mainstream art institutions, overall I felt there was a tangible lack of pushing the political boundaries therein and even some of MoMA’s curators admitted to suffering from self censorship. However, the mere existence of these panel discussions signals a hopeful note for the expansion of more radical examinations of gender, sexuality, patriarchy and feminist politics both at MoMA and other venues within the US and abroad.

One participant, Emily Roysdon, spoke specifically about the artistic freedom of working outside major art institutions in LTTR, a feminist genderqueer artist collective.  Founded in 2001 and recently disbanded, the group produced an annual art journal along with various events and collaborations that highlighted “radical communities whose goals are sustainable change, queer pleasure, and critical feminist productivity.”  Though they often collaborated with MoMA and other galleries on specific workshops and presentations, the collective sought to be a radical outlet for artists to speak uncensored about relevant feminist/queer topics.

Since the dissolution of LTTR as a formal group, Roysdon has continued working as an artist and curator.  She has written about and developed projects around the concept of Ecstatic Resistance, which seeks to re-imagine both what is possible and what political protest looks like.  It is partially inspired by a statement in Kathy Acker’s essay Seeking Gender, which I think is appropriate to the ways in which feminism and dismantling patriarchy play into Roysdon’s creative practice.

“I am looking for the body, my body, which exists outside its patriarchal definitions. Of course that is not possible. But who is any longer interested in the possible?”

You can read more about her work and Ecstatic Resistance here.

It was inspiring to see that while radical feminist politics are only slowly gaining a foothold in more mainstream creative venues, groups such as LTTR can successfully function outside of them.  During one panel discussion, the question was asked if artists and curators can reclaim institutions by being anti-institutional.  Judging by Roysdon’s continued work both in and out of LTTR, challenging these institutions is certainly a step in the right direction. Through their collective work, LTTR was able to produce projects, exhibitions and journals which looked critically at feminism and the dismantling of patriarchal, binary cultural structures.

Though For the Birds seeks to foster creative spaces for feminist voices in broader ways than solely visual art, I am encouraged by LTTR as an example of using artistic resources to discuss and examine feminist and queer politics. Stay tuned for more upcoming events and please get in touch if you have possible opportunities and collaborations!

This scholarly attention is a giant step forward for Riot Grrrl as a movement, and to read about this news on The New Yorker’s blog The Book Bench was a real brain bomb. Author of the blog entry, Macy Halford, posits that archiving these papers means Riot Grrrl has passed into history, bringing sad news with the good news. I beg to differ! Something’s been aflutter in the girl punk scene, especially in our very own Brooklyn, NY, for sometime now, as collective bird Kate writes in her article Girls Germs: A Brooklyn Scene Report, printed in the October Issue of Maximum Rocknroll.

As if NYU hadn’t already won our (speed) hearts with this important archival, NYU Press also recently published Alison Piepmeier’s book, Girl Zines: Making Media, Doing Feminism. The book is the first of its kind to fully explore the connection between zines and feminism for the past two decades as well as their joint role in our future. Piepmeier is the director of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at the College of Charleston, South Carolina.

IN BIRD NEWS: We will be tabling with our distro at the Anti-Valentines Riot Grrl Cover Band Show!

No, seriously, we’re not going anywhere.