Click play video player to see QWB’s video from the 9/11/2010 Muslim Solidarity March and Rally in NYC.Enjoy…

QWB brings you the third issue of queer voices, featuring original writings by QWB’s own Abbey Volcano and Jerimarie Liesegang, comics by Rio, and creative writing by Allison Wonderland and Jamie Heckert. Edited by me, m(A)tt. Thanks to y’all for making some brilliant contributions, I’m so very proud to be the one to stitch these patches together into a radical contraption that we can use for revolutionary ends.

Print it on both sides. For example, page 2 goes on the back of page 1, page 4 goes on the back of page 3, etc. Collate and fold in half the long way. Read and repeat as needed.

Click here to download now!

When the name Sylvia Rivera is mentioned, without a doubt ones first thought, comment or reflection is that “Sylvia is widely credited with throwing the first shoe (or depending upon the remembrance first or second bottle, Molotov cocktail, etc) at Stonewall.” From that point on, the remembrance and analysis of Sylvia is strongly influenced by this pivotal moment in queer history. Very little of what is remembered, spoken or written about Sylvia deviates much from that of her involvement in Stonewall and the succeeding predominately white, middle class led LGBT movement. And sadly even within the Trans community to which Sylvia dedicated her life to, she is primarily whitewashed along with her radical politics being marginalized or even totally omitted!

However, Sylvia like most great figures in history was a true social justice revolutionary, if not insurrectionist, figure whose life, beliefs, actions and words embraced an intersectional essence. Jessi Gan’s 2007 Centro Journal piece titled “Still at the back of the bus”: Sylvia Rivera’s Struggle is one of the few pieces that critique’s the remembrance of Sylvia Rivera by many writers in light of their clear omission of Sylvia’s intersectionality. Sylvia remained predominately an unknown figure ~ even though her activism, writings and influence within the New York City “gay and lesbian” movement of the late sixties and early seventies, albeit short lived, was highly influential. It was not until the publication of Martin Dubermans Stonewall that her role in the Stonewall riots became widely known. And not long after this, Sylvia re-emerged onto the NYC scene with her innate anger and passion fighting loudly for queer street youth and Trans folks of color, until her untimely death in February 2002. Even after her death however, the name Sylvia Rivera and Stonewall were so intertwined that much of her revolutionary social justice work was never recognized. Fortunately due to the extensive research and subsequent publication of The Gay Liberation Movement in New York, Stephan L. Cohen puts into context a picture of Sylvia that goes far beyond Stonewall, and allows us a glimpse into her life and her actions via an excellent treatise on S.T.A.R. (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries).

With the rise of Transgender politics during the 1990’s, Sylvia became the matriarch of this resurgent movement. However her stature in this movement was primarily due to her documented role in the Stonewall riots, and this was used by many transgender activists to demand a seat within the gay and lesbian movement and the inclusion of transgender within the existing gay and lesbian organizations and civil rights struggles.

Yet coming back to the analysis by Jessi Gan I reproduce the section below which goes to the heart that Sylvia was much more than Stonewall. In fact the underpinnings of the Stonewall rebellion actually reflected more of the class and race issues faced by queer street youth rather than the traditionally embraced view that has enabled middle class white gays and lesbians to view themselves as resistant and radical.

“… just as “gay” had excluded “transgender” in the Stonewall imaginary, the claim that “transgender people were at Stonewall too” enacted its own omissions of difference and hierarchy within the term “transgender.” Rivera was poor and Latina, while some transgender activists making political claims on the basis of her history were white and middle-class. She was being praised for becoming visible as transgender while her racial and class visibility were being simultaneously concealed. Some recovery projects lubricated by Rivera’s memory-in their simultaneous forgetting of the white supremacist and capitalist logics that had constructed her raced and classed otherness-served to unify transgender politics along a gendered axis. The elisions enabled transgender activist Leslie Feinberg, in hir book Trans Liberation, to invoke a broad coalition of people united solely by a political desire to take gender “beyond pink or blue.” This pluralistic approach celebrated Rivera’s struggle as one “face” in a sea of “trans movement” faces. The anthology GenderQueer: Voices from Beyond the Sexual Binary, similarly, called for a “gender movement” that would ensure “full equality for all Americans regardless of gender.” The inclusion of Rivera’s life story in the largely white GenderQueer lent a multicultural “diversity” and historical authenticity to the young, racially unmarked coalitional identity, “genderqueer,” that had emerged out of middle-class college settings. But the elision of intersectionality in the name of coalitional myth-making served to reinscribe other myths. The myth of equal transgender oppression left capitalism and white supremacy unchallenged, often foreclosing coalitional alignments unmoored from gender analysis, while enabling transgender people to avoid considering their complicity in the maintenance of simultaneous and interlocking systems of oppression. Rivera is, moreover, profoundly important in a Latina, transgender, and queer historiography where histories of transgender people of color are few and far between.

Sylvia: Insurrectionist, Mother, Visionary, Revolutionary
To paraphrase Jessi Gan, an analysis of Sylvia’s life should alert us to the simple fact that trans visibility is not a simple binary of male/female; though rather an intersection of the multiple kinds of visibilities, differentially situated in relation to power, intersect and overlap in people’s lives. The consequences of visibility are determined in part by one’s place in society, and by the systems of power that define gendered and racialized meanings onto the bodies discrimination.

Sylvia Rivera was born a Puerto Rican/Venezuelan effeminate boy whose birth father had disappeared and her mother’s second husband was a drug dealer who showed no interest in children. Sylvia’s mother committed suicide when Sylvia was only 3 years old and so she ended up living with her Venezuelan grandmother who despised her femininity and dark skin. Sylvia grew up poor and without love and so at age 10 left home to seek a new life hustling on 42nd Street. Sylvia’s life was very hard, though through her early life experiences and struggles, she learned to find a new definition of community and family. [Read more →]

From our comrades at Radical Women

 In commemoration of revolutionary feminist political prisoner
Marilyn Buck (1947-2010)
August 19, 2010

The world has lost another heroic freedom fighter. Marilyn Buck died on August 3, at the age of 62, just two weeks after being paroled from a prison medical center in Texas. Ms. Buck spent the last quarter-century of her life imprisoned because she was dedicated to fighting injustice.

All her life she fought against capitalism and imperialism. She was a staunch advocate of Black, Native American, Puerto Rican and women’s liberation, and social and economic justice for all the afflicted.

From a very young age Buck protested against the Vietnam War; she was a member of Students for a Democratic Society, pressing it to take women’s freedom seriously. She actively supported the Black Liberation Army, aiding in the escape of Black Panther leader Assata Shakur.

[Read more →]

[Read more →]

CALL FOR PAPERS!!!

North American Anarchist Studies Network Conference

Toronto, Canada

January 15-16, 2010

Deadline for Proposals: November 1, 2010

The North American Anarchist Studies Network is currently seeking presentations for our second annual conference to be held at the Steel Worker’s Hall in Toronto, Canada. We are seeking submissions from radical academics, independent researchers, community activists, street philosophers and students. We invite those engaged in intellectual work within existing institutions, such as universities, but also those engaged in the production of knowledge beyond institutional walls to share their ongoing work. From the library stacks to the streets, we encourage all those interested in the study of anarchism to submit a proposal.

In keeping with the open and fluid spirit of anarchism, we will not be calling for any specific topics of discussion, but rather are encouraging participants to present on a broad and diverse number of themes- from the historical to the contemporary to the utopian. For inspiration, we have included a number of suggested themes that have been of interest us; we invite you to suggest and submit your own topics, papers, themes, panels and workshops:

* Theorizing Anarchism: Perspectives on Anarchist Studies

* Greening Anarchy: Anarchism and the Environment

* Bridging the Marxist/Anarchist Divide: Is Black and Red Dead?

* Race, Class & Solidarity: Migration Politics

* Indigenous Rights and Politics in (Occupied) North America

* Expanding the Anarchist Canon: Non-Western Anarchism(s)

* The South American ‘New Left’ and Anarchism

* ‘Queering’ Anarchy: Anarchism and LGBTQ Issues

* ‘Revolution’ in the 21st Century:  The Meaning of Social Change Today

* Militant Research: Connecting Activism and Academia

* Practicing Anarchy: Organization, Insurrection and Anarchist Social Movements

* Envisioning Alternatives: Anarchist Utopias

* Anarchism and Radical (Dis)ability Politics

* The Greek ‘Crisis’ and Anarchist Responses

* Post-G20 Toronto: Learning from Toronto’s G20 Mobilizations

* Anarchist Cultural Perspectives and Practices

* The Post-Anarchist Challenge?

* Anarchists and Academia: The Perils, Pitfalls and Potentialities of the University

 It is our sincere hope that this conference will, to the greatest extent possible, accurately represent the diversity of North American anarchist politics and thought; to that end, we encourage submission(s) in English, French, Spanish and in any other language or on any other topic you feel relevant to this experience and this community.

Send your proposal, including a short abstract, a working title and three keywords that describe your project to the Toronto NAASN Crew at naasntoronto@gmail.com.

For more information on the North America Anarchist Studies Network check out our website at www.naasn.org.

We look forward to hearing from you, organizing with you and, of course, learning from you!

http://truthoutsidehart.wordpress.com/2010/08/09/a-statement-on-accusations-made-around-camp-trans-2010/

A Statement on Accusations Made Around Camp Trans 2010

In Regards to Recent False Allegations Made Against Me

August 8^th, 2010

It was brought to my attention Friday evening that false allegations that I had allegedly written a letter implicating people at Camp Trans in involvement in potentially illegal activities, and allegedly planned to deliver it to Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival (Michfest) but did not, and allegedly abandoned it when leaving Camp to somehow be found by someone who then propagated this information throughout Camp Trans, leading to allegations being made that I intended to snitch on attendees of Camp Trans. [Read more →]

http://www.gayshamesf.org/endmarriage.html

GAY SHAME OPPOSES MARRIAGE IN ANY FORM

Whatever happened to the time when being queer was an automatic challenge to the disgusting, oppressive, patriarchal institution of holy matrimony? Now, it seems that queers are so desperate to get their taste of straight privilege that they’ll camp out in the rain with the hopes that the state will finally sanction their carnal coupling.

We are now faced with the spectacle of thousands of gay men and lesbians rabid with longing for any shred of acceptance from a violent, hypocritical establishment that really wants us dead. Don’t forget-marriage is the central institution of that misogynist, racist system of domination and oppression known as heterosexuality. Don’t get us wrong-we support everyone’s right to fuck whomever they want-we’re just not in favor of supporting the imperialist, bloodthirsty status quo.

Local, national and international-conservative and liberal-corporate and grass-roots media have all swarmed around City Hall as if Gavin Newsom is the vanguard leader of gay civil rights. Gavin Newsom came to power by aggressively pandering to the privileged gay vote with a message criminalizing poor people in a city wracked by years of greedy hyper-development. Now, he’s giving back to the gays who got him elected. These are the same sellouts who have for years promoted gay marriage as the penultimate achievement on the road to “equality,” yet they are now willing to bestow full credit upon Gavin Newsom for their own misguided work.

Newsom is using gay marriage as a wedge issue in order to get national press, and further his megalomaniacal quest for national power. What is depressing is that gay people are so blinded by their desperation for “rights” that they’ll promote a cynical, closet-fascist as the messiah.

[Read more →]

It’s Still the Economy, Stupid! No, Seriously. I Mean It.

(Some Thoughts on the HIV Epidemic, Social Problems, and Capital)

Deric Shannon

I picked up a copy of the International Herald Tribune recently on a flight from Madrid to Paris. My friend and co-conspirator, Abbey, and I have been doing a lot of traveling lately and a free copy of an English-language newspaper is a hot commodity for an hour and a half plane ride, particularly this one since I left the “Marx for Beginners” book I was reading at home! I nestled into my seat, prepared for being a little unsettled—what counts for “news” is usually disturbing as all hell, after all. [Read more →]

Queers Without Borders proudly asks YOU to contribute to the third issue of queer voices, a zine which provides a snapshot of the complex lives and political realities of the broad number of folks who live and love freely, in a world that pushes us in the opposite direction.

We are looking for any number of different forms of expression, including cartoons, poetry, essays, stories, personal narratives, prose, news stories, art (black and white) and most likely whatever else you can come up with.

As far as content, our very favorite stuff has political struggle and personal experience go hand-in-hand, connecting the dots between different (but related) struggles, and particularly when yours is a voice that is generally excluded in the LGBfakeT mainstream–people of color, immigrants, women, workers, homeless, youth, sex workers, trans people, BDSM perverts, fairies, boi dykes, drag kings and queens, polyamorous folks, and any number of the people that wage the fight to live and love freely.

Deadline is August 22nd 2010. Send submissions to QueersWithoutBorders@gmail.com.

Queer is many things. It’s a critique of identity– critiquing/questioning the boxes and categories we are given to cage ourselves with. Example, we can be gay, straight, or bi. These are the choices we have. But they don’t describe reality and they do more to contain us than to liberate us. (Although, I have to note that people do find empowerment and community within these identities and I don’t mean to downplay that.) It’s a critique of the construction of sexuality– formed by the ideas we have to conceive of it. If who you fuck is what you are (i.e., “gay”) — then that’s a sexual identity. Or we can do sexuality differently– it’s not who we are but what we do– our acts. I may engage in homosexual acts, but what does it mean to say “I am gay”? And how does that identity restrain me? (Also, many argue that asserting an identity like “gay” or “bi” actually uphold the binary of “hetero/homo” and, as with all binaries, one will be privileged over the other. Therefore it can be argued–and I agree with this–that upholding a gay identity can actually work against liberation by reinforcing heternormativity and asserting, rather than destabilizing, the hetero-homo binary.) If you’re interested in that, read Jagose’s Queer Theory: An Introduction (I love this book but it’s dense and heavily theoretical and some people hate theory). Also, the notion of the “homosexual” was actually invented in the mid 1800s. Gay people didn’t exist before that. I’m not saying women didn’t fuck women and dudes didn’t fuck dudes, but they were engaging in *acts* and didn’t label themselves something because of it– they didn’t *identify* by what they did erotically. [Read more →]

Forwarded to us by our comrade Regina… From Negrilstories.ca  This is a long though very thought provoking piece if you were wondering WTF around the Dudus saga so poorly reported or analyzed by our corrupt corporate media channels.

Tivoli Gardens is a manipulation
To create the outrageous situation
For a ‘legitimate’ American invasion

Sugarcane, bauxite, tourism - all locked up tight
Deep, deep oil - now seeing the light
Poverty and oppression - things still not right
Freedom from Babylon - bubbling into sight

Politicians in power - caught in a trap
Reaching for gold - can’t give it back
Jamaica’s new wealth - Babylon wants to tap
Satellite blackmail - no stopping that

 As the Dudus saga plays itself out in Kingston, two of the questions that remain unanswered are ‘why is the United States pushing so hard?’ and ‘why now?’. The world is full of dons and drug lords, not to mention the fact that the American plate is full with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a billion Muslims who are being encouraged to attack anywhere at anytime. You would think that they had more immediate things to concentrate on.

Yet they continued to poke and push, treating every Jamaican that went through U.S. customs like a criminal, openly questioned the personal honesty of the the Prime Minister Bruce Golding and even suggested that the Jamaican Labor Party were in violation of their mandate to govern Jamaica. In fact, the Americans haven’t even got an Ambassador to Jamaica anymore. Obama has left the position open, a serious diplomatic slap in the face. All of this tension is for the Don of Tivoli Gardens? Something isn’t right. Dudus just isn’t that big of a problem.

The idea that outside interests have manipulated the situation for a long time begins to form when you question the truth of what we are being told. For two years now Dudus has had an excellent run, controlling the docks in Kingston (on Tivoli Gardens turf, and the true value of the constituency) with his buddies running the government. He has grown more powerful than ever before, with so much money that he doesn’t have to rely on politicians for anything. In the old days back in the 1970’s, when the street gangs were first created by the political parties, they had to get their weapons and cash from the JLP or the PNP, but since the cocaine business showed up, that relationship has slowly turned full circle. Now the politicians need the gangs to control the vote, but the gangs don’t need the politicians for support. They have become an independent power. [Read more →]

Below is a documentary shown on Al Jazeera’s People and Power titled: White Power USA.  It reveals the links between the NSM neo-nazi’s, anti-immigration activists and members of the Tea Party.  A must see documentary.

Here is the documentary description from Al Jazeera.

Almost a year ago the inauguration of President Barack Obama was hailed as a turning point in US race relations. The country was said to be entering a new era of post-racial politics, on the path to a future of greater diversity and tolerance.

But while crowds flocked to Washington to witness the swearing in, others were refusing to join the party. Racially motivated threats against Obama rose to new heights in the first months of his presidency, with the US seeing nine high-profile race killings in 2009.

Meanwhile white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups claim their membership is growing and that visits to their websites are increasing.

Is the racial undercurrent that has long structured US politics reasserting itself?

Filmmakers Rick Rowley and Jacquie Soohen went inside the white nationalist movement to investigate.

Some of the images seen and opinions heard in the film are disturbing.

The gears of capitalism are oiled by the blood of the workers

A great piece below titled The Greeks Get It ~ cross-posted from Truthdig.org.

Posted on Truthdig.org on May 24, 2010

By Chris Hedges

Here’s to the Greeks. They know what to do when corporations pillage and loot their country. They know what to do when Goldman Sachs and international bankers collude with their power elite to falsify economic data and then make billions betting that the Greek economy will collapse. They know what to do when they are told their pensions, benefits and jobs have to be cut to pay corporate banks, which screwed them in the first place. Call a general strike. Riot. Shut down the city centers. Toss the bastards out. Do not be afraid of the language of class warfare—the rich versus the poor, the oligarchs versus the citizens, the capitalists versus the proletariat. The Greeks, unlike most of us, get it.

The former right-wing government of Greece lied about the size of the country’s budget deficit. It was not 3.7 percent of gross domestic product but 13.6 percent. And it now looks like the economies of Spain, Ireland, Italy and Portugal are as bad as Greece’s, which is why the euro has lost 20 percent of its value in the last few months. The few hundred billion in bailouts for other faltering European states, like our own bailouts, have only forestalled disaster. This is why the U.S. stock exchange is in free fall and gold is rocketing upward. American banks do not have heavy exposure in Greece, but Greece, as most economists concede, is only the start. Wall Street is deeply invested in other European states, and when the unraveling begins the foundations of our own economy will rumble and crack as loudly as the collapse in Athens. The corporate overlords will demand that we too impose draconian controls and cuts or see credit evaporate. They have the money and the power to hurt us. There will be more unemployment, more personal and commercial bankruptcies, more foreclosures and more human misery. And the corporate state, despite this suffering, will continue to plunge us deeper into debt to make war. It will use fear to keep us passive. We are being consumed from the inside out. Our economy is as rotten as the economy in Greece. We too borrow billions a day to stay afloat. We too have staggering deficits, which can never be repaid. Heed the dire rhetoric of European leaders. [Read more →]

http://blog.iblamethepatriarchy.com/2010/05/16/and-they-moved-to-stars-hollow-and-lived-happily-ever-after/

This post would have appeared earlier, but I only just now got the gore and debris cleaned up. I allude to the obstreperal lobe tissue dripping from the bunkhouse rafters. That’s right, I blew another lobe, and no doubt you did, too, when you heard about the insane bill that just passed in Missouri.

Missouri’s state legislature, like that of many states, has invaded the personal bodies of its citizenry and enslaved their uteruses. Without compunction of any kind, this cruel and bloated governing body swaggers around the countryside, snapping its fingers, yelling “jump,” and smirking when the captive uteruses ask “how high?”.

There was already an extremely obnoxious law in Missouri forcing women seeking abortions — 24 hours in advance of the procedure — to sit through a lecture (bring a book) on the supposed mental and physical devastation that abortions supposedly cause. The idea being that, after a heartstring-tugging indoctrination with patriarchy-replicating, godsick disinformation about the certainty of a post-abortion lifetime of regret, cancer, depression, infertility, desperate yearning and insanity, women would voluntarily abdicate their personal bodily sovereignty in order to incubate fetuses for the state, which state would then abandon all parties concerned at the conclusion of gestation.

So things were bad enough in Missouri before, but with this new law they’re even worse. Instead of being forced to endure this patronizing abortion-is-bad-for-you crap via telephone, women are now required to audit in person. Providers must also describe the adorable little fingers and toes, the teensy little heartbeat, the precious little turned-up nose of the “unborn child.” Then they have to offer the woman an ultrasound and a chance to hear for herself how adorable the teensy heartbeat is. Then — no shit — they have to hand over “a state-produced brochure proclaiming: ‘The life of each human being begins at conception. Abortion will terminate the life of a separate, unique, living human being.’” If the woman is pretty young, they have to show her a couple of seasons’ worth of “Gilmore Girls,” because that’s such a realistic portrayal of the long-term results of teen pregnancy. Then they lock her in a room for an hour or two with a statue of the Blessed Virgin who weeps tears of blood. [Read more →]