Radical Zines Give A Voice to Activists
A ‘zine (pronounced “zeen”, like bean) is a self published magazine, pamphlet or booklet, which is distributed through an intricate network of people, outlets like college campuses, and collectives.
Zines give a voice to people who don’t usually have a platform in mainstream media, such as activists for social justice and revolution. They give us an outlet to express our opinions, visions, ideals, and creativity, without censorship and with total freedom. With zines, anything goes, because you are making it yourself, in collaboration with other activists. The motive is passion, not profit, and so zinesters, the people who make zines, tend to value authentic voices that rant and sing, rage and awaken.
Most zines are just simple 8 by 11 sheets of photocopied paper, stapled together, full on both sides with words and graphics. Fancier ones might be in the form of a quarter or half sheet booklet that’s laser printed, photocopied, letter-press printed, or silk screened, and bound together by stapling, sewing, gluing, or simply folding the pages together. Zines are typically distributed through the informal networks of friends, collectives, bookstores, record stores, music venues, the mail system, and hand to hand, for the purposes of our self expression, our group expression, and the documentation of our movement.
Since their beginning, at the invention of the printing press, zines have given protestors, activists and marginalized people an opportunity to have their own opinions published in leaflet and pamphlet form. And since their inception, zines have been linked with underground movements and insurrections. Zinesters, from Thomas Paine and Benjamin Franklin, to those in circulation now, have always emphasized the passion of the issues rather than any profit driven motives. True self expression and genuine communication of issues are always at the center of our creative efforts. But let’s be clear, all zines are equally good, whether they make sense or not, whether they have mainstream success or not, whether they are made of materials that last or not, because they are a means of putting people’s voices out there. For the activists of our network, our voices are chiming in for peace and justice through any means possible. We also toot our own horns about our activists and our projects in development.
The history of zines is surprisingly long and very colorful. A wide spectrum of people and groups, from anarchists and punks to communitarians and Rainbows, from people of color and radical lesbians to prison inmates and student activists, have used zines to express themselves creatively and to convey their ideas and issues passionately, with the colorful freedom that is only found in grassroots production. Zines are an empowering and interesting art form. The New World Rising has been producing and distributing a zine of its own since the eighties, and we’re preparing the 2014 edition right now.
Making zines is an enjoyable activity that anyone can do. If you do it with others, it’s an opportunity to develop friendships, build alliances, grow your network, be creative, and have a kind of fun that results in something you know will be distributed far and wide, and used to awaken and empower people. Activists like us tend to advocate for things like social justice, sexual liberation, musical enjoyment, and other things that make life good. But you can express or advocate anything you want, anything important to you, We encourage you to get involved in zine production with us, make zines of your own, and make mini zines, in addition to our big annual edition.
Zine production is part of DIY culture, (do it yourself culture), where we empower ourselves by taking the media back into our own hands. It was so cool when I was in college, because most everyone I knew would make zines by hand, by cutting out words and pictures from magazines and newspapers, gluing it to a page, adding in their own drawings and poems, then zeroxing it on both sides in black and white, stapling it together, and selling it for $1 a copy.
It was a whole subculture that was very cool, very intelligent, and very creative. We need a huge renaissance of that kind of thing!
Each zine in existence has its own unique flair, which makes zine collections quite fascinating to study. I can spend hours in anarchist coffee shops and bookstores, just getting lost in all the rants and philosophies, poems and art, quotes and ramblings. Activists, like many other people who are different from the mainstream, take it as a given that we have to use alternative forms of media to get our voices heard. We create our own newspapers, we make journals, we write books. Self publishing now takes back the power from the agents and publishing houses, and puts it squarely into our own hands, so we should take advantage of that.
It’s true that you could drown in a sea of zines out there, but so what. Your voice just adds more music to the literary symphony, and someone out there will just love what you do. It will likely be enjoyed by somebody who will then have a conscious conversation about it, which will then ripple out in ways you will never even know about. But you can know it’s true, because the history of zine production has proven that it is.
When activists engage in zine production, we are free of the constraints of censorship and publication standards. We can do it any freaking way we want to! Any style, any content, any anything! I find that liberating and empowering. There is a whole huge community of zine makers, too, if you ever wish to plug in to a great subculture. There are also graphic novels, comic books, pamphlets by groups like crimethinc (which I adore), and more. There is no shortage of inspiring and creative literature to explore. And I like to explore it randomly, not looking for any particular thing, but just being totally surprised and following wherever that goes.
We are now distributing 10,000 copies of the 2014 issue of the New World Rising magazine, from coast to coast, hand to hand and heart to heart, in college towns, coffee shops, laundromats, anywhere people want something good like this to read and be inspired by..
On this blog here, and in the upcoming online NWR e-zine, we're giving voice to our social justice activism, in the areas of community building, project promotion, socioeconomics in our income generation and funding of projects, decriminalization of cannabis, promotion of the music scenes, and more. We also plan to throw in great artwork, poetry, quotes and whatever else comes to mind.
Won’t you join with us and submit something too? Or think of a mini zine you’d like to make, and get it out there!
