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1 – Starbucks – roll the union on

By Hound

Despite the small southern town I worked in, I was lucky enough to work with a crew of young, hip, and savvy baristas at Starbucks. We served cops cold coffee, since we weren’t permitted to tell them to fuck off, took our “collective 10s” to smoke weed together in the parking lot, and we only got worse as the staffing crisis put more pressure on us. But these were the closers, and the gaggle of high schoolers we held under our wings. I was encouraged by a morning shift lead to report stores — especially independent stores — advertising anything that even smelled of Frappuccinos for copyright infringement. It happened to be one of his favorite past-times, he gleefully informed me. Good dog! 

When I was first hired at Starbucks, I was told by another employee that she was happy to be working for a company that “really aligned with her values.” I did not think that was an unfair assessment, and I certainly didn’t know enough about her job history or her life to criticize her definition of “alignment.” From the outside, if you believe the hype, and no brave soul has tagged your local Starbies recently, it seems like a pretty solid company. They’re inclusive, diverse, eco-friendly! And they want to be your Third Place (home, work, Starbucks). 

How does this measure up for the people who keep the stores running? It’s estimated that the average Starbucks worker would have to work for over 100 years to earn what the ex-CEO, Kevin Johnson, made in a single month. I recall reading company memos in October of 2021, congratulating us for the uptick in sales and promising that the company was doing everything in their power to get us to a $15/hr minimum wage within “the next couple years.” As if they were some mom-and-pop shop scraping the bottoms of their pockets to offer us pennies. Starbucks is supposed to be one of the better food service institutions to staff, but I had only recently had my wage increased to $12/hr, while the Jack in the Box down the street was advertising that impossible $15/hr starting pay. 

How well can you trust those you work with? The seeds of dissent are already planted in your workplace. Long hours with short staff, telling the 15th oblivious crustomer that, yes, we are still out of Very Berry Acai Refresher Base. Your break room is claustrophobic, brightly lit, inhospitable to human life. Cigarette breaks just aren’t long enough. You can’t remember the last time you had two days off in a row, but somehow you’re still struggling to afford your basic necessities. If day shift and night shift are fighting over scraps, when do we stop to ask, “Why are we only being given scraps? Aren’t we supposed to be partners?”

“Partners” becoming partners — real, actual participants in the management of the company we’re staffing. If Starbucks presents a set of values, it’s about damn time they live up to them. The first ever Starbucks union was founded in Buffalo, NY in early December of 2021, after months of organizing. At the time of writing, there are over 140 Starbucks stores in the United States that have petitioned for union status. These stores are organizing through the Starbucks campaign of Workers United, an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). These organizations trace a long and shared history through other, historic union groups- from the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, to UNITE HERE, a combined labor effort of textile and hospitality workers. Now, a dedicated arm of Workers United fights for fair labor practices of Starbucks partners: Starbucks Workers United (SBWU).

Green-apron unionization efforts on the ground are being met with punitive action. SBWU filed a complaint to the National Labor Relations Bureau (NLRB) about the Starbucks corporation cutting 2 to 15 hours a week from labor organizing partners’ schedules. For some, this puts them under the requirements for health and tuition benefits, for which partners must work at least 20 hours per week. On top of this, organizers are forced to find second jobs or terminate their employment at Starbucks to cover their cost of living. Workers who missed shifts during hospital stays are being punished months later, entirely unrelated to their organizing efforts (that’s sarcasm). The #SaveOurStarbucks tag on Twitter is boiling over with firsthand accounts from Starbucks partners facing intimidation and coercion from company higher-ups. 

Clearly, the union wave has Starbucks management scared shitless. Disgraced Kevin Johnson stepped down, setting his last day as April 4th, and union-buster Howard Schultz, the company’s previous overlord, is stepping back into the ring. They’ve begun to contour their union-busting with a company FAQ, encouraging employees to vote “no” on union elections. The company tells several lies in their “informative” anti-union crusade. They threaten the loss of benefits for unionized locations (despite robbing partners of benefits and employment at this very moment in retaliation), insist that union partners will be unable to swap shifts or transfer stores, and encourages employees to report “annoying” pro-union coworkers to management. This is classic union-busting, depicting unions as entities that exist solely to collect their dues and drown out your individual voice.

Starbucks is far from the only company engaging in duplicitous PR campaigns and slimy anti-union action. Monopolies dominate our neighborhoods, and small business owners are not immune from gaming the same systems to bleed profits from their workers. Workers United is running, alongside the Starbucks Workers United (SBWU) push, campaigns to protect the rights of Lush workers, and manufacturers for Canada Goose (a Canadian outerwear company). The Global Lush Union and Canada Goose Unions are similarly fighting for fair wages, benefit protections, and a voice in the directions of the companies that they carry on their backs.

The Starbucks website claimes that their first guiding principle in response to Covid-19 is “Prioritizing the health and well-being of our partners and customers,” which is funny, because back at my store in the eastern U.S., the manager willfully kept knowledge of Covid-positive workers a secret until two others on the night shift also tested positive. And then, for some reason, he sent the morning shift home, and forced anyone on night shift that was exposed to return to work as normal — even while their own Covid test results were pending. Sure, we had two paid sick leaves at the beginning of the pandemic — any following mandated isolations were to be unpaid leave — but this pandemic has been going on for over two years. Most of us, just in the course of working with the roiling public, have been exposed and required isolation leave more than twice. This is particularly true in states where you might find yourself the only person masked up in your local grocery store in the Fall of 2021 — well, you and the workers.

The process of sinking my teeth into this story has illuminated several blind spots in my prior union knowledge. My motivation sprung primarily from my piss-poor experience working for the ‘bucks during the pandemic — working hard, thankless hours during constant supply shortages, all while combating the perpetual schism between openers and closers. Even if we, exhausted, desperate, starving, had any clue about the illegality of managements’ decisions, we didn’t have a clue how to address it. And that benefited the management alone. When baristas quit, that just means the shift leads would work entire weeks without break. And we loved our store. You can’t pour that much sweat, tears, and, yes, blood, into a workplace without feeling some semblance of ownership. But the majority of my shift (since I was rarely a star of the morning shift) were young, either still in high school or nowhere near completion of a degree. Unions were a fantasy. 

It seems an odd system to me that requires a workplace to opt-in to having their rights protected by a federal agency, but is there a better way to support ourselves and our peers today? I’m not qualified to say. I’m a loudmouthed, low-wage mercenary. I’ve scarcely lived in one place long enough to unionize, let alone see how that all shakes out. When a job starts to trouble me, I jump ship. It would be simple enough to wave it all away, but I’ve got comrades still working for the Siren. People I love. They are passionate, brilliant, creative, hilarious people, and I’ve seen them sucked dry by this company. For their sake, as always, I’ve got my focus trained on the SBWU socials. If the Worker’s United track record is to be believed, we might finally be witnessing the power of service workers leveraged properly during this economic crisis.

We don’t have to sacrifice our bodies and our lives to the meat grinder. No matter which way you play it, all things boil down to one fact: there are more of us than there are of them. I don’t want to go “back to normal.” I want to look in the face of this worldwide health crisis and ask, “How many people died for this economy?” Can any of us even afford a fucking place to live? How long before the government is trying to get us to reproduce faster, raise children we can’t afford, to “correct” the labor shortage? Idaho just tried to pass a law that would sentence parents to life in prison for seeking gender-affirming treatment. In February, historically black colleges were flooded with bomb threats. It’s hard not to see these disparate tragedies as points in a gigantic net, drawing closer. The leaders of our country, the wealth-owners and the policy makers in their pockets, want us tired, desperate, and scared. We need each other now more than ever. 

I’ve got a new food service job out here in the Bay. I’m no longer working under the Siren, but the industry is the same. This new gig holds itself up as a hip and with-it sorta company, but a corp’s a corp. Let’s just say, this time, I’m thinking “unionize.”

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1 – On Free Will & the Individual

By DD

The idea of free will and the incessant wanting to fully understand, define, and explain everything can be frustrating and exhausting, especially when we inevitably realize we cannot. I think free will is both a freeing and destructive idea. With free will comes expectations and disappointment, motivation and hopelessness, solace and pressure; it can invigorate you in one moment and overwhelm you in the next. It is the contradictory mindset of our society. 

We often try to ignore the arbitrary nature of life, how the environment we are born into and our surroundings have such an overwhelming impact on and control over our lives. The way in which we view economic poverty is in relation to where we live, how the society functions there, and what commodities are seen as necessary beyond fundamental needs such as food, water, and shelter. How each of us has arrived at this present moment in this specific way is a reflection of our environment which we are arbitrarily placed into or find through random causation – the butterfly effect in action. 

The contradiction lies in that the capitalist society we live in wants us to believe we have the free will to overcome our environment through hard labor and dedication to being a cog in the machine, yet it discourages the belief in the level of free will to transcend the system itself and not play by its rules. At what cost do people attempt to overcome their environments through the current economic system? Resources are not infinite and constant economic growth is not sustainable. Our society conditions us to believe that we can continue to climb up the never-ending ladder of “success” or unsustainable “progress” (on account of our free will to work, study, seek monetary goals…), yet it also wants us to rest our entire lives on the imagined existence of this ladder and think it inconceivable to stop climbing or even step off it altogether. This, coupled with overwhelming individualism, makes the demand for change seem impossible. 

We think that since we personally cannot do anything to challenge the systems at hand, we may as well participate since there seems to be no other choice. Solidarity in numbers is forgotten. Revolt and rebellion on a powerful scale are portrayed as virtually inconceivable. How do we make change in a society so complicit and caught up in the individualistic pursuit of “freedom”? A society that has been so desensitized to the contradictions of capitalism, that it seems nothing will move them to demand change. 

The overwhelming system and the conflict between the desire for free will and its experienced absence produces a numbing effect. We know the system is wrong, but in an effort to rally a population against capitalism’s exploitations, we desensitize that population to it out of the sheer perceived impossibility. We tell ourselves that we individually cannot make much change, it’s the big corporations’ fault. Yet, the system is so complex and bureaucratic that the outside entity to blame seems faceless. It resides in the minds of our society, we are socialized into it and we must re-socialize ourselves out of it. I don’t believe in blaming the consumers of this systemic capitalist ideology, but there should be an effort to make our collective consciousness transcend its privileged hopelessness and be willing to act against the systems and institutions at hand. 

Radical thought is often supplemented with anger (at the current economic, political, and societal situation), and that anger is justified. It is an emotion that naturally arises out of frustration with the current state, but it should not be uncontrolled. Overwhelming anger is unsustainable, it is the reason why so many organizers experience burn-out, and the activist scene has such a high turnover rate. Anger at the system is most effective when collectively expressed through organized mass action rather than contained within the individual. While anger can be a powerful motivator, an even stronger and lasting one is hope.

We can better sustain contentedness if we simultaneously work towards improving our situation and not letting the current state of it mentally drain us or put us in a state of despair. Not through conformism, but rather an avoidance of individual emotional turmoil that merely wears us out. Best not to fixate or get too overwhelmed and mentally exhausted by the system. Instead we can have a calm and collected, yet headstrong attitude. Action is most effective not within the individual but through the collective.

I think we individually experience strong desires to feel a sense of free will, or at least the thrill of escaping from the monotony of daily life. It’s why spontaneity is so intoxicating. We crave that feeling of control over our lives and attempt to gain some by breaking away from the schedules and deadlines that both govern and alienate us from our time. Even the decisions we so defiantly make to deviate from the norms of our society or upbringing can be interpreted as essentially just a negation of the norm, informed by this norm, and not truly a decision we make ourselves. But perhaps this idea of free will presupposes the notion of “the self” which we tend to hold on to in our individualized society (an inherently contradictory term). We want to believe we have free will because of this learned idea that we are separate from our community. Perhaps the important question isn’t if we truly have personal free will or not, since we do not actually live individually. We know we are a reflection of our environment and that we are socialized from birth, but we can also exercise some form of self-determinism through decisions about what kinds of people we surround ourselves with and the community that we create. By becoming so preoccupied with ourselves as individuals, we miss out on the beauty of community organizing, discussion, and even some commiseration that can reinvigorate you in times of hopelessness. So go out, create your community, join radical spaces around you, and be vocal about your ideas with friends. It is only through community that we can make change in our society and environment, and forming our community is something that we can influence. 

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1 – Reflections of a West Coast Firefighter turned Firelighter

by M Valentine

I have learned so much in the three years I have worked as a wildland firefighter. It’s hard to remember what life was like before the experience of walking through freshly scorched forests and neighborhoods, before the camaraderie and hardship of crew life and dynamics. One summer I was waitressing, and the next I was hiking into the mountains in a line of 19 other people with a chainsaw on my shoulder, 12 plastic water bottles and a bag of cheap snacks and candy. Getting into fire was the best decision I have made so far, and not because I believe in the heroism of the American wildland firefighter. Quite the contrary, for being in the belly of the beast of the fire suppression world has shown me just how backwards it all is. Firefighting took me in as a broke 20 something looking for a paycheck and adventure, and spit me out as a fire lighting, drip torch loving devoted pyro. I am so inspired by the incredible people and communities I have met, the diverse perspectives, knowledge and experiences everyone brings, the learning and unlearning as we work to bring land stewardship and safe, prescribed fire back into the people’s hands. 

Writing about an element so vast, dynamic and powerful, that involves people’s livelihoods, sense of security, and culture is challenging. To orient you, the West Coast is a landscape shaped by fire. So many of the bioregions that are cherished here, and the plants and animals that exist within those environments have adapted to thrive with recurring mixed severity fires. These flames crept through the underbrush, recycling dead and downed debris, restoring nitrogen to the soil. The cones of pine trees open in reaction to the heat, releasing their seeds for germination. Low intensity fires clear out competing conifer saplings in the beautiful oak savannas, allowing for the lupine and camas to thrive below. 

I remember as a kid learning about the camas lily of the Willamette Valley in Oregon, a native plant to the area that thrives in meadows and oak savannas. The camas lily has an edible bulb (when prepared correctly) and beautiful bright purple flowers that bloom in spring, when the meadows are still marshy and full of the season’s rainfall. This was the first plant that I learned thrives with, and even depends on fire as a part of its lifecycle. This plant offered a healing perspective; that fire is more than the dangerous and demonized version we see fire ‘fighters’ going to war with on TV; that fire can do good. These reflections are just the tip of the iceberg of unpacking, criticizing and digesting the corrupted version of fire that has been created here in just the past 120 years. 

100 plus years of fire suppression and abusive resource extraction has put thousands of these fire-dependent species at risk of extinction, as well as contributed to the high-intensity mega fires that we see today. To learn about fire and the history of humans’ relationship to fire is an intrinsic part of telling the true story of how we came to be here in this moment of socio and environmental crisis. Our recent history of fire suppression is directly connected to the genocide and attempted cultural erasure performed by white American colonists against the Indigenous peoples of North “America”. Through time immemorial, Indigenous peoples have stewarded these landscapes in a relationship that fosters ecological abundance and biological diversity. The decline of native plant and animal species, watershed health, and the increase of fatal ‘mega-fires’ cannot be separated from the criminalization of native tribal groups’ burning practices. 

If you live on the West Coast, and California specifically, you will know how dry the last couple months of winter have been. January and February of 2022 were the driest ever recorded in California. Every time I have participated in a prescribed burn this year I have felt that heat. On February 17th, I arrived at a prescribed burn curated by the Good Fire Alliance, A Public Burn Association based out of Sonoma County. This burn was held on traditional Kashia Pomo Land, and is home to a mosaic of both old growth redwood and open meadows. Today the land is owned by Rip Goelet, and is now named ‘Rip’s Redwoods’. 

It’s hot. It’s dry. It’s February in Sonoma County. As a new Firefighter Type 1 Trainee, I was excited to be handed a Kestrel Weather Meter, a Brick Radio and a Fire Weather Observation Chart. These tools plus the weather charts in the IRPG (Incident Response Pocket Guide) are what you need to track and communicate weather to the crew working on the ground. To sum it up, you collect the temperature and relative humidity, and plug these numbers into a chart to find the “Probability of Ignition”. The “Probability of Ignition” is a 1-100% calculation to see how dry the fuels (plants n’ such) are and how likely it is for them to blow up and burn with the addition of just a little fire. The charts you plug these numbers into calculate how dry our dear dead and downed logs and fine fuels are, based on months; for months are associated with a relative percentage of precipitation. The sweet wet fuels of February don’t exist this year, so the weather I was reading simply didn’t match the fire behavior I was seeing, which was hot, flashy and boisterous. It wasn’t because I was doing my calculations wrong, it was simply because I was using a chart meant for February, when we were dealing with May June and July dry fuels. Realizing that the effects of climate change made the IRPG charts outdated, at least on this particularly dry day, made my stomach churn. 

While deeply concerning, the drying trend throughout the West Coast makes prescribed burns feel even more crucial. Knowing that there are more devastating wildfire seasons ahead, there is so much work to do during the burn windows throughout fall, winter and spring. While we are burning to reduce the amount of fuel that feeds severe fires, we are taking care of the land, and making people and communities more safe. Although eerily dry, burn days like those with the Good Fire Alliance at Rips Redwoods feel like a kind of solace. Seeing fire burn away the decades of built up duff and brush, clearing the way for long dormant seeds to bloom, for critters that have been waiting generations to enjoy the tender shoots and abundance that follows a low to mid severity fire is joyful. 

Working with fire means holding a lot of feelings in one basket. The existential reality that our environments are changing rapidly, shriveling under late capitalism and resource extraction. There’s so much to dismantle and *burn*, and I know that weighs heavy on our hearts and minds. We are tired and isolated, everyone deserves to thrive and be able to take care of our loved ones. That is what we are fighting for and it’s exhausting. Fire as a metaphor makes it all sound so easy, if only we could just burn it all and embrace the fresh green shoots of life after exploitative oppression; and then there’s the beauty of seeing people with a drip torch in their hand for the first time. The quick progression of someone’s fear of fire becoming curiosity becomes a conversation becoming a direct exchange between human and the drip torch and the land, seeing the lines of fire meet and embrace each other, the trust in your fellow fire lighting companions. The joy that communities are finally trusting this element that innately belongs. I heard an inspirational and respected fire practitioner say something along the lines of “People always say that it is a liability to burn, we must realize that it is more of a liability to suppress fire than it is to let it burn”, Fire will be there no matter what, it’s just a matter of if we want to intentionally invite fire or let fire come uninvited. 

While my heart and ideologies are against firefighting as we know it, I will be out in the summer heat with my fellow firefighters this coming season. This is because I have found few other avenues that provide financial security while also providing opportunities to gain experience and skill sets. I know myself and so many others that have found themselves working in the woods are looking for an alternative to firefighting as we know it. Every fire season I find myself having conversations with fellow fire ‘fighters’ that want to apply their passion, interest or experience to something they believe in. More and more people on ‘the line’ are seeing through the facade of the militarized, impersonal and resource extraction oriented framework that we are forced to work in. We are told over and over that “this is just how it is, get used to it or get out”. My fellow fire comrades and I know that something else is possible. We know that fire is a crucial aspect of the longevity and survival of plants and ecosystems of the regions we love so much; inherently intertwined with our struggle for liberation and abolition. 

So many people are reflecting, re-evaluating and changing their ideas of, and relationship to fire. I love fire because it is inherently intergenerational, there is a place for everyone to get involved, big and small. From finding a local PBA (Prescribed Burn Association) to work with, reading the Karuk Tribe Climate Change Project ‘Fire Works!’ section, learning about your local fire ecology and history — FUSEE (Firefighters United for Safety Ethics and Ecology), which you can find at fusee.org is a great resource for learning about the paradigm shift of fire, in both advocating for prescribed burning as well as the demilitarization of fire suppression. It is time to think critically, ask questions and foster community resilience by safely bringing fire back to the land where it belongs. 

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2 – Introduction issue #135

Slingshot is an independent radical newspaper published in Berkeley since 1988.

Life seems too fast to make our newspaper these days. Capitalist economies are careening from one crisis to another, yet remain dynamic and nimble in finding new things to exploit. For those of us working, it’s no surprise the bosses are having a hard time hiring. As rents endlessly rise and the bosses scramble for workers, some of us are doubly pressured to work more hours or travel further to get to the Long Haul — taking away time to work on projects like this and draining our energy. Others are making a cheaper but more precarious life on the streets or in cars. Yet, most of the problems we’re talking about are the same ones that appeared in the pages of Slingshot decades ago. Delightfully, the solutions are within reach — if only more would take up the tools (and smash the bosses’).

The only way we’re gonna do any of this is together. We need real community spaces, controlled by ordinary fucking people rather than governments, foundations, non-profit executives, or wanna-bes. We need the same kinds of media, farms, technology, and housing.

Capitalism creates fake “perfect spaces” like retail stores and social media websites, where everything is clean and every day looks the same. Social media claims to be about self-expression, but the only possibility is to put these words or those words into their endless grid. There’s no graffiti, no illicit street vendors, no riots. And behind the scenes, thousands of low-wage workers in the global South manually scrub traumatic content from the platforms.

So Slingshot is a mess. We print our article drafts on a 20-year-old printer that puts a big streak down the middle. Sometimes an article is only read by two people before making it in the paper. Our numbers dwindle as meetings drag on into the night. And then suddenly the loft fills with a flood of artists until there’s no table space to work once the boring meeting is over. 

Anyone who walks into the art party is invited to design a page or draw a graphic. Being made a participant instead of a consumer flips the script. It can take longer this way — but people want to be here. A big contrast to being a cog at a job you hate or a mindless consumer of media

We’re making the paper ourselves, in our infoshop, with stolen sharpies and landfill-bound snacks. It is a rush — seeing art come out of thin air, being together until exhaustion sets in, struggling with sentences that don’t make sense. 

Slingshot is always looking for new writers, artists, editors, photographers and distributors.  Even if you feel you are not an essayist, illustrator, whistleblower you may know someone who is.  If you send an article, please be open to editing. We’re a collective, but not all the articles reflect the opinions of all collective members. We welcome debate and constructive criticism.

We are thinking about re-designing the Slingshot logo that has been used since 1988. Contact us if you think we should keep the existing one, or if you think it should change, please draw your suggestion and send it. 

Thanks to the people who made this: Alex, Ben, Daya, eggplant, Fern, Gerald, Hannah, Hound, Jesse, Joey, Lola, Luca, Mimi, Miriam, Nana, rachelle, Robin, Ryan, Seandunn, Sylvia, & all the authors and artists! 

Slingshot New Volunteer Meeting

Volunteers interested in getting involved with Slingshot can come to the new volunteer meeting on August 21, 2022 at 7 pm at the Long Haul in Berkeley (see below.)

Article Deadline & Next Issue Date

Submit your articles for issue 136 by September 24, 2022 at 3 pm. 

Volume 1, Number 135, Circulation 22,000

Printed March 25, 2022

Slingshot Newspaper

A publication of Long Haul

Office: 3124 Shattuck Avenue Berkeley CA 94705

Mailing: PO Box 3051, Berkeley, CA 94703

510-540-0751 slingshotcollective@protonmail.com 

slingshotcollective.org • twitter @slingshotnews

instagram/ facebook @slingshotcollective

Circulation information

Subscriptions to Slingshot are free to prisoners, low income, or anyone in the USA with a Slingshot Organizer, or $1 per issue. International $3 per issue. Outside the Bay Area we’ll mail you a free stack of copies if you give them out for free. Say how many copies and how long you’ll be at your address. In the Bay Area pick up copies at Long Haul and Bound Together books, SF.

Slingshot free stuff

We’ll send you a random assortment of back issues for the cost of postage. Send $4 for 2 lbs. Free if you’re an infoshop or library. slingshotcollective.org

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1a – Fear Not

Courage is just as contagious as fear

The system wants you to be afraid, and that fear is bad for your mental, physical, spiritual, and emotional health. We need to be able to talk about fear, because it is a major force driving history in a myriad of important ways. Fear is a primal human emotion and one can’t develop an understanding of individual or group psychology without meditating deeply upon how fear influences human behavior. 

If people start thinking and talking more about fear, many people will realize that there are strategies that people can employ to disarm their fear, or to work with it in a better way. People will become freer when they are honest with themselves, and fear is one of main things that people lie to themselves about. Truth is the source of wisdom, and wisdom is the source of true strength. Strength is what we need if we’re going to be able to mount an effective resistance against the insane debacle of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. 

Courage is just as contagious as fear, and once we free ourselves from the grips of fear-consciousness, we can become the virus of revolutionary spirit spreading throughout the population and incinerating the deceitful lies of Babylon in the furnace of Eternal Love that is always present in every moment, available always to those who simply reach out, or reach in, rather, for the truth within you, for the truth that you carry inside, that you brought with you into the world, because it is the essence of who you are. 

Reality is an illusion, and our lives are the sparkling of the moonlight upon dark water at night, appearing and disappearing in an instant, to be replaced with others in a dance that has occurred since time immemorial. Many flames have been extinguished, but as surely as the sun will rise again tomorrow, the fire will be rekindled, for so long as human beings live and breathe some of us will desire to be free. No doubt this is the reason our rulers wish to replace us with machines.

But have no fear. Evil has not triumphed, nor will evil triumph. Evil is an imbalance within the cosmic organism that we are all a part of. The universe will resolve the imbalance in the same way in which your body will repair damaged cells, that is to say as a matter of course, automatically and without conscious intent. In this sense, there is no crisis. We are not as important as we think we are, in the grand scheme of things. The wheel is going to keep turning. What we are really suffering from is a spiritual crisis, and a large part of the problem is simply a lack of appreciation of the beauty of everything. If we truly understood nature as beautiful, as magnificent and as wondrous as it is, we would neither desire to control and dominate it nor be so foolish as to think that we were capable of doing such a thing. We would revere it.  We badly need to reinterpret the bad dream that our culture is currently living.

If you only remember one thing from this, remember this: no one is in control. Not the World Economic Forum, not the Pentagon, not the Chinese Communist Party or the Illuminati or whatever. The world is a chaos and the Gods will never cease rolling the dice. Right now there are major changes taking place in the world, but don’t think for a second that the future is written. They might want you to think it is, but it’s not. It’s anyone’s guess what the future holds. And we must realize that we have agency in the matter, that our actions shape reality. If you choose compliance with increasingly insane authoritarianism, that’s your bed to lie in, and you deserve what happens to you. If you choose non-compliance, you might burn some bridges with some people, but outside the walls of the prison that you call Safety, there are wild parties taking place: people are living their lives, dancing, making music, making love, sharing food, getting high and passionately pursuing their dreams and searching for the meaning hidden in the dancing of the sparkling moonlight on still water at night. 

Fear not. The world is yours, a would-be lover, ready and willing, only waiting for you to make your move. It is not important what you do, only that what you do is in accordance with the yearning of your soul for its destiny.

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a15 – Book Review –

The Right to Maim by Jasbir K. Puar (Duke University Press)

If you read just one book about Palestine, read this one. Yes, it can be exhausting to discuss or even think about what is going on there. Yet, if you live in the United States, your tax money is going towards creating this situation. A great deal of disinformation has been spread about what is happening in Palestine, at a level even worse than the disinformation campaigns about climate change. Since the creation of the Israeli state in 1948, a regime of extreme colonial violence has taken place, turning Palestine into an open-air prison. This book explores the violence that roughly 6.8 million Palestinians live with every day. This includes what the author calls “the right to maim,” in which Palestinians are intentionally harmed with devices that remove their mobility, rendering them disabled. The author also explores the way Palestinian medical services are targeted, with occupying forces intentionally murdering Palestinian doctors and paramedics, systematically removing the means of healing the debilitating harm they cause. Because she is an academic based in the United States, the author writes about these things with great risk, as there has been a systemic silencing/blacklisting of academics who attempt to discuss the conditions in Palestine. 

Perhaps the most shocking details of this book include its exploration of the way Israel enacts literal apartheid, with the state banning marriages between citizens and Palestinians, while state-sponsored youth groups in Israeli are tasked with defending “racial purity.” While it is rarely discussed on the news, the white supremacy in Israel has been known to activists for a long time—in Oakland we have older Jewish people with darker skin who fled Israel after mistakenly moving there from North Africa when the Israel state was first being created, only to learn that the promise of freedom for Jewish people was a lie: darker skinned Jewish folks weren’t (and still aren’t) welcome in Israel. It is a white supremacist ethno-state. 

This book explores many ways that white supremacy continues in Israel today, with legal practices that would make even Americans blush, such as the practice in Israel to require Chinese laborers who enter the country to sign a contract that they will not have sex with Israeli women, a practice stemming from paranoia about creating mixed-race babies. Israel’s racist regime resembles the types of things other countries wish weren’t part of their history… If we are truly ashamed of white supremacy, colonialism, and genocide in the United States, why are we funding Israel? If we care about disabled people, why are we funding a regime that intentionally renders people disabled?

This book is like reading a hundred newspaper articles—it is packed with stories that would be in the news if not for the present regime of censorship. The book’s chapters are somewhat out of order (perhaps a symptom of having to sneak this information through). Ignore the dense academic jargon in the beginning. For best results, read this book’s chapters backwards, starting with the postscript. (Review by Leaf) 

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a15 – echoes from our golden age of Radical Podcasts

By Sam Ka Blam

In these these times of general whatthefuckery, it’s a lot harder to access zines than it used to be. Many of us are trapped inside sheltering from wildfire smoke, deadly pandemics, and freaky-ass cops. It’s hard to get down to the local anarchist library or zine fest midst all this dystopian reality. 

Recently, some comrades heard I’d be been listening to NPR (out of sheer boredom), and they were like, “What the fuck are you doing listening to the corporate goo? — We’re in a golden age of radical podcasts!” 

Podcasts are totally free, and you can download apps to listen on your phone or other devices (all of which spy on us but at this point I guess we don’t care anymore?)

Here are some radical podcasts worth checking out:

Srsly Wrong – Leftist Utopia Comedy Podcast

srslywrong.com

Between lighthearted discussions of theory, they’ve got comedy sketches that will make even the most hardened doom punk giggle. Their sketch about trying to administer first aid via consensus had me LMFAOing while also processing some deep-held anarchist meeting trauma… Laughing at ourselves can be healthy, actually. And SRSLY Wrong hits the sweet spot of being funny while also caring about the community and bringing thoughtful tactical critique to the table. 

The show is also mirthfully anti-vanguardist, poking fun at anyone who would try to centralize power within our movements with recuring sketches like “Revolutionary Vanguardist Country Club.” The subtle Bookchin references are also great — they make a good case for why we need to all be talking about Bookchin’s philosophy of social ecology, as practiced in Rajova and Cooperation Jackson. This show is like having a box of anarchist cheerleaders in your pocket, saying, “Let’s have fun while organizing with our neighbors and building local community — yay!” Maybe comedy is the way anarchists needed to be doing discourse all along? 

A good starter episode is “Revolutionary Prefiguration w/Anark” (11/04/21) and also “Reading Black Anarchists w/St. Andrew” (10/01/21). 

Solidarity House Cooperative

https://solidarityhouse.podbean.com/

Imagine if anarcho-communists had their own reality show? That’s kind of what’s trying to happen here — it’s a charming attempt to invite you into the daily lives and conversation of an actual worker co-op / commune community they are building in Wyoming. 

Segments undulate between home improvement discussions and movement discourse based in anti-capitalist, anti-imperial, anti-racist, anti-authoritarian analyses. The show kinda reminds me of the Hellarity House dinner table: You never know who’s going to show up and start eating your potatoes and then blow your mind with a reportback from some corner of the empire before inviting you out back to help them fix their hippy bus.

Break Dances with Wolves – Indigenous Pirate Radio 

soundcloud.com/breakdanceswithwolves

Breakdances With Wolves is a podcast by three Indigenous folks from different tribes — Gyasi Ross (Blackfoot/Suquamish), (Lakota Sioux), and Minty LongEarth (Santee/Creek/ Choctaw) — under the byline “a few Natives with opinions and a platform.” They explore every topic you can think of, from hiphop to environmental law to pronouns. Very pirate radio vibes. 

Sometimes their politics aren’t perfect, but the hosts work to explore and expand on ideas outside of their experiences, so listeners can grow and work through stuff with them. There’s a great discourse about the tension between Indigenous sovereignty and anti-imperialism — the hosts don’t try to resolve this tension with easy answers. Sometimes the movement is a work in progress, and this show embodies that. 

BDW has been taking a break since the start of COVID (hopefully they will be back soon), but the back-episodes are really worth checking out. Two nice episodes to start with are “Ep. 123: Native Rights, Fish, Water & Lawsuits: A Roundtable Discussion” or maybe “Ep. 130: Media, Storytelling & Owning The Narrative.”

The Plague Podcast by LM Bogad

https://rss.com/podcasts/theplague/

Here’s a podcast by anarchist author and guerilla theatre performer LM Bogad — you might know him from work with the Yes Men, CIRCA, #OilyWellsFargo, and The SF Mime Troupe. When the pandemic hit, street theatre suddenly got a lot more dangerous, so LM made a podcast as a way to signal-boost important voices and ideas in the movement.

Each episode discusses a different aspect of the true plague (spoiler alert: it’s capitalism), and includes a dinner table conversation with folks who are working on creative solutions to systemic problems. The worker co-op episode is a fun place to start: “Episode 7: The Plague of Worker Expendability with Sabiha Basrai and Ricardo Nuñez.” Also the interview with a mime is pretty good in “Episode 5: The Plague of Orwellian Fear, Division, and Denial of Data and Science, with Michael Gene Sullivan.”

Next Economy Now – LIFT Economy

https://www.lifteconomy.com/podcast

Ready to yeet capitalism and create a new economy? This podcast is full of radical tactics for how to get from here to there — at scale. Each week, they interview folks enacting better worlds through a variety of tactics, from designing post-capitalist currencies to writing utopian fiction to creating networks of worker co-ops. Recent interviews have included awesome conversations with adrienne maree brown, Autumn Brown, and Resmaa Menakem. This is the kind of stuff that will get you fired up and excited to try out some of these new ideas. Also, the Kevin Bayuk episode (“Is Cryptocurrency “Good” For The Next Economy?”) should be required listening for any anarchist who still thinks Bitcoin is a good idea (spoiler alert: it’s not). 

Yeet the corporate voices from your earbuds! Check out a radical podcast today!

If there is a radical podcast you think we should review, email us at slingshotcollective@protonmail.com.

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a14 – Inside Fluke – a zine

By Carrion Baggage

In an interview in Sluice zine Matt Thompson is being given space to celebrate his own zine. Zines interviewing zines seems like a setup to a joke. But Matt is old and accomplished — he’s not taking his time here frivolously.

He describes making the first issue of Fluke with his friends as well as the second issue a year later. “1992 saw a huge influx of zines.” And for sure, the whole decade was like a wildfire cutting across the land. Thousands of people were motivated to get out their ideas, stories, personality and anything else they could onto paper. This spark reached Matt and Co. all the way to the remote flatlands & hills of Arkansas. The fact that numerous grassroots spaces like info shops self-identify as “zine libraries/making space” hints at the force at play. Given that was 30 years ago, there’s always an excuse why it’s not the same today. The internet. Deforestation. Ego Trips Are Bad for Children (and other living Beings too)

Fluke made only five issues during the ‘90s, when it seemed like everyone made a zine. It was later, when most people ran to video and web design, that he came back and intensified his efforts in publishing. Matt’s life was in disarray; a failed love relationship, struggles with addiction, becoming a parent and the general problems of life made him double down on what inspired him to act. The return to Fluke helped to signify the music he loved, the diaspora of Little Rock freaks and the uplifting of other creative projects from graffiti to underground film.

Matt recently came to the East Bay upon the release of Fluke #19 which is a beast of a new issue. It shows how sustained effort makes results. “I started this issue in December 2018. I did two issues since then as well as starting a publishing company where I published ten other zines. (Which includes works from Phoenix artist NXOEED, Hawaiian punker New Wave Chicken and fallen wild man Matt Limo Zine). “This has been something I’ve been working on in the background (the whole time).”

Matt is a tall guy with a large frame. Almost a mini giant. His speech is languid with hints of a Southern twang but not quite with the generic flourish you get with a speaker from the Mississippi or Texas. It’s a voice of a laborer who plows through tasks. His words are measured. “And then dealing with self doubt…dealing with any type of personal issues I may have had at the time. Those always come into play.”

Issue #19 has none of the dear diary personal demons of its maker often associated with ‘90s zines. The new issue is interviews with people who make Mail Art — that is art sent through the post office. A niche scene of creators not too far from the punk scene that he dedicated the previous eighteen issues. He describes the commonality being “People sharing ideas and art.” Many of those he interviewed first heard about Mail Art in the early 1970s in an article in Rolling Stone Magazine. It is an underground art movement that has slowly attracted new practitioners over time & space.

“They are strangers at first but become friends and form common bonds. They share couch space. They travel and do events across the country…and in the world.” This issue talks to people in San Francisco, Vancouver, Sweden & Japan. Some felt their work at the time was outside the mainstream definition of “Fine Art” but are also content to be where they are.

“People tell me I have no audience for Mail Art — its not really gonna work out. There have been times I wanted to throw it in the trash and not even do it.”

Zines often cover “who cares” type of things and attempts to get the rest of us to. Fluke is one of the many publications taking cue from the zine Cometbus in content as well as form. The first issues of that zine championed local Berkeley bands. It quickly led to pages magnifying the hangouts, personalities and lifestyle of punks as well as the freaks around town. Cometbus came from & covered one of America’s most offbeat grassroots communities that was transformed by the 1960’s — as it went through a slow boil into a yuppie MK Ultra soup of today. It took the Bay Area funk, style and intelligence outside the imaginary bubble. It helped popularize exploring new cities, dumpster diving and overdosing on coffee. It’s one thing to proclaim “revolution” and a whole ‘nother thing to demonstrate it. Cometbus turned forty in 2021, yet it continues to be in production. This whole time shifting focus and approach, yet keeping punk and a community freak vibe as foundation. It has inspired thousands of zine-writers to get to work. Often the zines are pale imitators, making the same things Cometbus writes about seem lifeless, dull and self indulgent. Ah ‘90s zines. Fluke started off looking like Cometbus but with issue #19 it is making a firm step up. The new issue shows how good it is to bust out of a niche scene playing with mirrors. It’s not just a zine interviewing zines or punks doing secret handshakes to other punks. 

“Gathering all the information, piecing it all together…It’s been a labor of love for me. I love to persevere and see it come to fruition. I love to prove my own self-doubt wrong. It came out way better than I imagined.”

The new issue is surprisingly handsome. Many pages are full color and on glossy paper. None of the interviews are overly long or repetitive. And the whole thing is priced in the $5 range — to counter the trend of everyone raising prices and lowering quality. A path that new zines seem to follow to only end up having their hard work be ignored.

In the tradition of the subject matter of Mail Art, each issue has a cool old stamp posted inside. But the fun of making a zine doesn’t end so easily. “This is just half-way through the process.” Meaning sending out orders, visiting stores that carry zines and other such tasks. At one point Matt endeavored to send out a piece of mail each day. Not just zines but letters, postcards — you know the things people do with their phones these days. This eventually lead to Matt’s adventure to find caches of unused stamps in the numerous estate sales on hand. An activity necessitated by the outrageous fee increases forwarded by the Trump-appointed Postmaster General Louis DeJoy (everyone hiss). It’s a lot of work that only a few people appreciate.

Matt’s visit to the Bay Area brings to mind the historic visit of first wave English punk band The Clash. In between shows they were taken to Mt. Tamalpais. It is one of the Bay Area’s most distinctive landmarks whose shape is said to be that of a woman reclining. A Native American princess. Man what a way of first meeting California. In busted-ass homage Matt was taken to Indian Rock — a place he had never seen despite his love for the area. Outside of the North Berkeley Pegasus Books (where they refused to carry his or any zine on their shelf) — with it’s small town sleepy suburb thing going on it is a short but steep climb to reach. Another world is there above the trees and roofs. Line of sight to the Golden Gate Bridge, “the City”, Oakland…Richmond, Marin and the aforementioned Mt. Tam. It’s good to get a little high after a bunch of long days laboring over these art projects. And what a spot to contemplate this “civilization” that we fight for AND against everyday. It’s daunting to think sometimes where it’s all going — but a whole ‘nother thing to think how short of a time it’s been this way. All this human development….-barely 150 years. Often we hope for change to make improvements on our condition only to be met with the joke being on those who care.

With the advent of access to the cheaper technology of the last twenty five years, we had a short run where activist organizations were in full bloom against the big corporations (Anyone remember Indy Media?). Only in these last few years to see an explosion of small time thugs doing startup media and pushing the right wing opinion forever and ever Amen. The new indy media of today is funded by the Koch Brothers, Raytheon and Bayer.

The Clash made it to Mt. Tam from the dire conditions of 1970s England. Poverty. Racism. War. Perhaps society was really gonna collapse at the time. A toxic cocktail that a small group of friends transformed into something that helped them get out of the prison of their world and to the other side of the planet. In the process they reach millions of dissatisfied people who were ready to give up. Their music and the movement of the moment gave them a way outta no way. Though Fluke zine started as a small group like a band, it says much how one person continues to do it. Much like how Slingshot as one person (because let’s be real, presently it’s not really a collective) is able to make things happen and open doors for other people struggling. The threat of collapse is very much on people’s mind today.

-“Its funny doing a magazine-a publication..it always seems to drive itself. It directs me where it wants to go and I listen to it. It’s good to build something from the ground up. And now that it’s out it is half-way through the lifespan.”

Back home where he lives now in Phoenix, Arizona— it is a life without much fanfare for the maker of a fanzine. Day job, kids, and, at best, trips to the post office downtown where he can then celebrate the day at his favorite cafe. As Matt is filling orders for zines he dreams out loud about future issues of Fluke. Is anyone else thinking positively about the future?
…Um, show not tell

Matthew Thompson 
Fluke Fanzine
PO Box 1547
Phoenix, AZ 85001

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a12 – Don’t be a zine-o-phobe

How did we end up having a page regularly dedicated to an archaic way of communicating? Well, in some ways Slingshot started off as a zine. These are a sample of the things you can read at our space Long Haul. Get us while we’re hot. Otherwise you can reach out to these publishers and get a copy sent to your squat. For best results make your own publication and send it in for trade. I’m pretty sure we would like to carry a copy at Long Haul as well.

Turning the Tide January-March 2021

$20 per year – 4 issues

PO Box 1055

Culver City, CA 90232

The articles in this 30-year old quarterly are a mixed bag of academic writings, news, and a little history. Despite the mixed quality of the reprinted material, the hard news here is rock solid, making it a worthwhile read. The cover article, written by Mumia Abu-Jamal, is a poetic reflection from December regarding the literal and metaphorical coldness of death row. It comes paired with a more dense piece by Dave Lindorff from Counterpunch.org with a synopsis of Mumia’s most recent appeals. The article on conditions at a Connecticut Women’s Prison was short but even more powerful. The piece on Assange is also reprinted from Counterpunch.org but we can forgive this, as the paper is distributed free to more than a thousand prisoners, who generally lack access to this material.

The Spring issue feature is ‘United Snakkkes in Africa’. It revisits history over 2-full newsprint pages to explain the persistent problem of making the U.S.A. adhere to treaties. It’s not an academic debate. The president of Ghana, Akufo-Addo is allowing the US to operate a military base within its borders, and simultaneously making a semantic argument that he isn’t. The abstract will be enough for some, but quoting 1960s Al Wilson lyrics warrant a deeper dive. 

‘Trump’s Big Lie’ was a genuinely strong analysis written before the attempted putsch and with great foresight. But the article ‘Was 9/11 An Inside Job?’ kind of drags down the mood in the room. I appreciate that Turning the Tide has the chutzpah to publish a rebuttal article, but a full page on this tired conspiracy is overmuch. Like Sasquatch and trickle-down economics, that mythology has had more than enough airtime. The Betteridge law applies here: Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word “No.” 

(Jose Fritz)

Razorcake February-March 2021

$23 per year – 6 issues

PO Box 42129

Los Angeles, CA 90042

It’s a beautiful thing when an utterly obscure indie rock band from Minneapolis lands on the glossy cover of a magazine. As a writer, it makes you feel like all things are possible: that art can elevate the artist, acceptance can cure broken hearts, that wars can end and that even exiled poets can, one day, return to their homelands. But it’s exactly the kind of hopefulness we’ve all come to expect from Razorcake.

The columnists this time around cover buying LPs on Discogs, writing autobiographical suicide novels, and the struggle to achieve normalcy in sex work. These writers are peeling off their skin and pointing out the holes inside. To quote Lorde Jayne “Sometimes accepting that you are worth something is fucking hard… Love hurts not because of the possibility of being rejected, but because of the mindfuck that is unconditional acceptance.” 

There is this vague idea that punk rock is about freedom of expression and personal autonomy and that the validity of art is inherent in its creation and not contingent on its acceptance by any broader consumer audience. To that I say— amen brothers and sisters. Twenty years ago they dedicated themselves to DIY Punk, and to unheard voices. Then they double down with over 20 pages of record reviews. Will the cover of Razorcake propel your band to superstardom —the land of good blow, leather pants and self-indulgence? No. But that’s never been the idea.

The writing here is often insightful, relevant, and sometimes even existential. But I gravitate more toward the visceral moments: like when Angus Wonder Of It All describes an incident on stage in ‘One Punk’s Guide to Sludge Metal’ with the Maileresque phrase “No reverberberberberberb …turnnn offff the fuckingggg reverberberberberberb…”

(Jose Fritz)

Fifth Estate Fall 2020

$15 per year – 4 issues

PO Box 201016

Ferndale, MI 48220

Published political writing always strikes me as implicitly hopeful. Hope is a complicated human phenomenon. The hopeful all believe that that the human capacity for change is real and that their cause is just and can prevail. So where cynics and misanthropes alternately see anger and disappointment, Fifth Estate beams a gritty brand of optimism by virtue of merely existing. 

By extension, Rui Preti and Stephen Cline don’t examine Minneapolis street protests for purely detached academic reasons. This is live from the trenches. They’re advocating for meaningful reforms. [Cline for his part writes like a poet, which is apropos as he also co-edits the very artful journal Peculiar Mormyrid.]

Frank Joyce explores The 1619 Project. Bruce Trigg discusses the success and failure of the U.S. public health system in its mixed Covid-19 response. Fran Shor hits the same topic in great depth, drawing strength in the metaphors from the book The Plague by Albert Camus. While they all condemn institutional failures, they praise civic solidarity in equal measure. Shor wasn’t alone in realizing the parallels there, but he had a more didactic and constructive vision than Vox and the Boston Review. Bill Weinberg’s ‘Two Faces of Fascism’ was just potent and insightful. You can lose a whole afternoon reading this way.

But by comparison, derisive anti-civ articles like Steve Kirk’s ‘Life and Rewilding in the Pandemic’ strike a dissonant chord. Hyperbole is inherently ironic and therefore cynical. However unpleasant cubicles may be, referring to them as “foam-insulated death-boxes of efficiency” are difficult to take seriously. 

The emotional value of celebrating civil disobedience, or an alternative lifestyle is very different from wallowing in being disaffected and/or marginalized. Sure, obstacles and opposition are very real, and so is the sense of loss. But the other side of the equation is far more potent in effecting change. Fifth Estate is at its very best when it plays to that strength. On a good day it’s a testament to hope, resistance, and humanity. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

(Jose Fritz)

New Wave Chicken #9 – $4

PO Box 880081 

Pukalani, HI 96788

I do remember the 80s. But now, decades later, the images now seem dim; like that single yellow bulb on the bathroom ceiling at CBGBs. Next door there used to be an art gallery, CB’s 313 Gallery. There it was, art and punk side by side at 313 and 315 Bowery. Yes, I was there, and I met Joey Ramone too, but it was a long time ago, and despite that, what I remember most are Hammer pants and Max Headroom.

Steve Hart remembers the 1980s with an insight and a gravitas that I do not. Where other zinesters recall kitschy toys, and Saturday morning cartoons, Hart drags out the punk and hardcore flyers from a milk crate in the basement. It’s a bit incongruous with his modern life as a Hawaiian chicken farmer; but so be it. It’s his own life narrative that connects all the stories. To that extent New Wave Chicken might technically be called a perzine.

We all have our strong suits. Not every painter is a writer and vice versa. But still, an artist’s perspective on their own work is usually interesting. Both Michael Banks and Michael Peoples commented on the self-expressive purpose of art in general. Peoples displayed an amazing level of self-awareness, spelling out that he felt “…artists in the social justice genre are saying more in the moment than my own work.” Travis D. Simmons waxed philosophical and talked shop about mixed media and materials. (As you might expect, he turned out to be a Skinny Puppy fan.) Still there were some duds. Hudley Flipside shared some less than notable poetry. 

The best pieces here are the interviews that dig into the connection between music and visual art. Al Garr, Ross Sewage, and Mark Ottens each spoke at length on the bands that inspire them and the art they made for those bands. Ottens stands out even among that lot; an artist, writer and musician. A man with tales of cancer, boys with rabies in Bangladesh, the bird of paradise, and the strangely universal experience of listening to punk cassettes in a car, with the windows down, in a Grand Rapids Walgreens parking lot. 

So what’s the answer? What drives these artists to create art? Is the urge to create just innate, like breathing,? Mark Otten came the closest to answering it. He said “Perhaps we end up doing what we do because of all the things we cannot do… We have to do something, and maybe then, I do just what I can.” 

(Jose Fritz)

Razorcake

Issue 123, August/September 2021

$23 per year – 6 issues

PO Box 42129

Los Angeles, CA 90042

This month Razorcake has the Mummies proudly on the cover. You probably first head of the Mummies from their Shitsville 7-Inch in 1990, or that Fuck the Mummiesbootleg in 1991. Perhaps, it’s that image on the cover of Never been Caught of 4 men wrapped head to toe in rags with the drummer and bassist atop a 1963 Bonneville Ambulance with the band name emblazoned along the side door. They never suffered from an excess of subtlety. It’s inevitable that some people will first encounter The Mummies that time they were on the cover of Razorcake way back in the Summer of 2021. Garage rock has been with us for over 50 years but the good stuff never dies. It just gets wrapped in rags to shamble across the stage with a couple cheap Fender guitars and a rented 50 watt PA. 

The pinnacle of the issue is a picture of Karoline and Robert Collins posed like Grant Wood’s American Gothic painting. Instead of symbolizing rural austerity, they both wear black face masks, and Karoline is in a “Hell is Here” T-shirt. They stand in Wonder Valley, in the Mojave desert. The mood is post-apocalyptic. You know her by her legendary photography. But her first words in the interview are “I like to shoot people.” 

The interviews in this issue were really strong. Jon Moritsugu and Amy Davis show us how to build an indie film career with a $300 camcorder. Then we have 5 pages of Q& A with Milky Wimpshake, who turn out to be collectively pretty quotable. But it’s Pete that goes straight for the cults and politics. Ironically, it was the young ingenue Emily Timm who had the more insightful comments on ageism. The piece dovetails nicely with the Sized Up interview, an exchange wholly predicated on the 40+ contingent having the enduring ability to perform and tour like they are still young and immortal. 

As you may have noticed, the ontology of the gracefully aging punk has become a running theme in Razorcake. They tread carefully on the topic, avoiding any mawkish preening or overt pandering. I find their expeditions into punk nostalgia simultaneously ironic and engaging. But I may be biased; I resemble that remark. 

(Jose Fritz)

No Touching $4

antiquatedfuture.com

I think I don’t like poetry. The Slingshot collective has a lame policy of not liking poetry. But for different reasons. I find it hard to invest in re-reading books and shit. Re-reading is the secret sauce to unraveling delight and awe from poetry. My problem is I’m this consuming machine — always going forward. But perhaps if I lived in Slab City or some place more sparse on info and stimuli I could invest the time needed to appreciate the art form. Thankfully this zine is very brief so in some ways it’s like a Zen koan or a set from a rockin’ band that is on stage just long enough to make you want more. Also the unusual shape makes it stand out. One of the three pieces here is heavy with grief. Oh man no wonder why poetry is hard to read. Proceeds of this goes to the Berkeley Free Clinic. When people go there to check for STDs they should be given a copy of No Touching. OK Bad Joke.

(eggplant)

Node Pajomo # 2.6

Attn: Box Holder

PO Box 2632

Bellingham, WA 98227-2632

Most people will pick this up and be pretty confused. 36 pages filled only with reviews of things with funny names. Well some of the pages of text are interrupted by old photos captioned with bits of dadaistic writing. Total confusion. This is a functional document for a particular segment of freakiness. It’s a directory of outsider art, underground pamphleteers, zines, tape traders, mail art. It’s where you go when you got some stamps and a desire to see something unusual come to your address.

It’s a one-man operation here. We don’t know who it is but they sign off as “PJM”. And the guy is losing steam. For good reason. It’s an exhaustive effort. Every item is given consideration. Even if the music makes his ears ring or if the zine written in French just passes through his eyes and skips his brain. Passages from this issue skipped my brain a few times and I had to reread some parts. It got better the 2nd time. 

If I could suggest to the editor two ways to entice people more: one would be to reprint the covers or some piece of notable artwork from these items. You know, the whole show not tell. I have often read a review of something in other zines then looked at the cover they reprinted and wanted to read about the thing. The other thing to do is more ambitious. Every issue he could stretch out a review or general write-up, highlighting who makes a thing and where it’s from. A short interview, a still life drawing of the author, etc. Whet our interests even more of these outsiders, and what they make.

(eggplant)

Papercore #5

c/o CIRA

50 rue Consolat

13001 Marseille France

It’s worth being excited to see a new issue. It has a punk edge. Consistent. Large format so lots of space. The cover is always silk screened, this time with 3 colors. Always seems to be international. This one has voices from Burma, Spain, France & England — probably more. All written in English. Some of it is translated so goofy words & sentences surface at times. The zine is open to contributors but not to being reprinted on the internet. The fighting spirit put on paper that’s worth upholding.

I found this issue disappointing though. It starts with a lashing of a punk scene celebrity for being abusive, then you get a report on bands playing around France with everything just listed off with no illumination of what their sounds evoke or who is moved by it. Then questions to punks in Burma of what its like being punk under military oppression, and then perspectives of a sketch artist filling up time during social distancing lockdown. Vegan recipes and zine reviews wrap up the last pages. Nothing outstanding this time but…maybe you have something for it next issue. The writing this time around made me think that its by people who came to punk from some pre-fabricated place. It didn’t come across wild. Free. It’s been awhile since zines and newsspapers were made by such people. Those people are usually out getting into trouble to bother with the hardships that come with projects like this. I’m still eager to see the next issue.

(eggplant)

Nevermore! V. 1 March 2021

nevermorezine@riseup.net

What does it mean…anarchism? It’s one of the great boogeymen of the modern era. Reviled by the Trump regime and those who wish to protect the statues of the war state. There must be something about anarchist thought or action that is really really dangerous. Well, you won’t find it in this issue. No, the purpose of the 28 pages here is in contemplating Covid 19 and how governments worldwide use similar measures to curtail our freedom in the name of the dreaded virus. There is a lot of opposition here to lockdowns, social distancing, surveillance and screen time. There’s also plenty of energy eviscerating governments but very little in the way of figuring what the world will look like without them or how to get there. An age old problem, but given the latest untenable crisis everyone is up against, pretty essential.

The eleven articles are mixed in quality. Made up of international communiques (Chile, Canada, Greece, USA) so at least two of them have the excuse of being translated into English. In many spots, the writing is generic radical jargon. Be prepared to labor through fistwaving at “technocrats,’ “corporate executives,” “bureaucrats,” the media and sold-out scientists. It’s the language of alienation. There’s one argument questioning scientists and some study. If this makes you yawn like it does me, hang in there — at times there is some good ideas. Like simple observations how fear and shame are ruling the day in everyone’s obedience to power.

Most of the writing doesn’t have a name attached to it, what is referred to with the phrase “by-line”. Maybe not a problem for some readers…but man, that one article completely written in the first person; GET OUT OF MY HEAD WILL YOU

The first person form of writing isn’t so great, especially when an article dwells on ideas that are disagreeable or badly organized. Having no one attached to a piece of writing really conveys that no one is in fact writing it. Isn’t there some AI program that ghost writes anarchist rants by now? Having a name to a piece of writing gives some sense of where it is coming from in much the same way when publications puts a date and address to their work. Perhaps by subverting this, it is an attempt to seem universal. The whole thing feels like it came from the universe. Man.

The other wasted space here is two pieces of what some people would call poems. One resembles a series of slogans and the other resembles the time that crazy person unloaded their anxiety by ranting at me nonstop. Not the poetry of symbols and decorated communication, of meaning that can reach people across time and country and  compel them into contemplation. Here is the poetry of a busted ass cafe open mic.

That’s the worst of it. Some people will eat it up. Those who hunger for Crimethinc-like grand statements into vagueness, the quasi academic flag burning and killing of inner cops, the sort of anonymous zines you see at the free table at the fringes of fringe book fairs will be at home here. And hey!! it looks good. The pages are large with ample room for big words that you don’t have to squint to read. Its tastefully balanced with lots of graphics– some of which are original and in full color. Oh yeah, it’s glossy. Full-color Glossy. So kinda like a museum catalog more than the work made from a speed-freak pirating copies from a corporation xerox machine. If they keep the presentation up and their fight-the-system thrust….and maybe work on the writing and ideas some…this may become essential reading.

The March issue arrived right when Slingshot and the rest of the Bay Area entered into the vaccination phase of the pandemic. A complete shift went across the land at this time, taking us from house arrest to curtailed freedoms. This publication was immediately hard to read for it spoke of a world people were trying quick to forget. The No Hugs Goodbye, No Bars or Sport Events World. People having to cut their own fucking hair or have their fucking kids sleep in on a Monday. That world was expected to go away with the Orange Menace. But this folly is what comes with doing print projects in the age of constant instant news. It’s old before you write it.

Another failed aspect is how it fails to peer into the paradox of the pandemic. Dare I say it….shit like how in 2019 wearing a mask at protests was edging closer to being an act of terror…then after the great world-wide lockdown…and still to this day…it’s the norm for normies to mask up at protests — or otherwise. And I think they’re starting to like it. Could it be that common people are coming closer to anarchist practices? That’s why this review opens with asking “what is anarchism?” Is it just disguising your face from cops, Proud Boys and the Whole Foods theft management? Is it graffiti? Is it free mass transit? Is it publishing something only a dozen people can understand?

 How are we just repeating what somebody else said was the way to go?

Does this anarchism that we are celebrating transgress outside the borders of its cage in Wikipedia? The subtitle of Nevermore! is it’s a “Journal of Heresy and Thoughtcrime.” This issue didn’t have much of either. But if we keep watching it, perhaps we will be outraged out of inaction by their pages to come.

(eggplant)

Shades of Glass In Your Eye #16 $3

PO Box 7831 Beverly Hills, CA. 90212

A couple decades ago, a Midwest absurdist moved to Los Angeles and started this zine, blending journal-like observations, jokes and activities. She throws everything at the wall, endeavoring to delight readers and cause a giggle. A lot of it is quite silly given its highlight here in an activist paper. But as the man says, “Warriors….Come out and play-yay!”

(eggplant)

Taco Rat #1

po box 790728

San Antonio, TX 78279

TacoRatSAtX@gmail.com

In my day when the world was going to hell and everyone in power was corrupt we would turn to weird art. Appreciate it or make it. This is in that tradition. From San Antonio Texas which apparently is a land of tacos. Friends of mine say we should boycott everything from thsi place given the rabid Republican agenda coming form there. Well Taco Rat has none of that shit instead there are pages dedicated to a public sculptor artist, music, underground movie makers and the ancient history of cable TV.

A good balance of words and art, computer graphics and hand made images all of done in classic cut & paste technique. Its hard to tell if more issues of this will come out. It’s maker Mike Scholarry is also running a record label, constantly making music and probing the wasteland. I’m surprised he has time to read the books or watch the movies he reviews here. I think the 20th Century phrase is that Mike is firing on all cylinders. The door is open for to jump on his ride…though you will likely end up on a musical collaboration with Mike and have your blood sweat and tears saluted in the next Taco Rat.

(eggplant)

Letterfounder #202 & 203

PO Box 392

Lewiston, Maine 04243

Each issue of this zine use various styles of texts to…essentially..help you play with your head. Sometimes there is alittle art. Mostly you will find rants, reprints from old books, dreams, poems. Brain farts. Apparently it comes out every month. These issues are part of a spirit zine addendum. Here is historical accounts of tracking time, fortune cookie wisdom,history, science…you know all that shit.

(eggplant)

Aysmmetrical Anti-Media #13 $1

PO Box 10894

Albany NY 12201

This one is filled with reviews — much like Node Pajomo but with not as many things to read. Less to clutter your head. Compiled by Jason Rodgers who is also a critical theorist that bends towards surrealism. He usually channels this in manifestos and collage art — though this time around the pages are just processing zines, tapes, mail art, CD’s & books. Some titles include: French Werewolves, Cryptic Stench, Wite Out, Synapse,: a zine about Mental Health, Catharsis, The Secret of the Moon’s Rotation, Communicating Vessels, Forgotten Memories.

(eggplant)

How did we end up having a page regularly dedicated to an archaic way of communicating? Well, in some ways Slingshot started off as a zine. These are a sample of the things you can read at our space Long Haul. Get us while we’re hot. Otherwise you can reach out to these publishers and get a copy sent to your squat. For best results make your own publication and send it in for trade. I’m pretty sure we would like to carry a copy at Long Haul as well.

The Clash made it to Mt. Tam from the dire conditions of 1970s England. Poverty. Racism. War. Perhaps society was really gonna collapse at the time. A toxic cocktail that a small group of friends transformed into something that helped them get out of the prison of their world and to the other side of the planet. In the process they reach millions of dissatisfied people who were ready to give up. Their music and the movement of the moment gave them a way outta no way. Though Fluke zine started as a small group like a band it says much how one person continues to do it. Much like how Slingshot as one person (because lets be real presently its not a collective) is able to make things happen and open doors for other people struggling. The threat of collapse is very much on people’s mind today.