Thanks if you purchased a 2016 Slingshot Organizer – they are how we pay to print and distribute this newspaper for free. We still have copies if you want to order some. Also we have some seconds so if you can distribute a few free copies to low-income people, prisoners, immigrants or teens, let us know (please no requests for just one copy, though).
Despite our skepticism about computers, it looks like a Slingshot organizer app will be released for Android phones this summer. An iphone app will follow. We hope having an app will help bring radical stuff to otherwise sterile and soulless tech devices and we’re also responding to requests to have an app. If you have a smart phone, we hope you’ll try it. If not, we’re still committed to publishing the paper organizer as long as we can find ink and paper.
The app will automatically import data from a computerized calendar you are already using and let you see your events with Slingshot-style hand-drawn art. At the bottom of each day the calendar will add a radical historical date similar to the paper organizer. Unlike the paper organizer, if you click on the radical historical date, you will see a list of up to 20 radical historical events that happened that day. The app will have a menstrual calendar and allow you to add and edit calendar items just like your existing smart phone calendar app. There will also be links to Slingshot’s on-line radical contact list and the little essays Slingshot publishes in the paper organizer. The app will be free with a donate button should you want to help support Slingshot collective.
To finish the app, we’re looking for a few volunteers to help cut up digital files of hand-drawn art — no computer experience is necessary to help out. We also need to draw and select a screen icon that users will click to get to the app. Three possibilities that are red and black on screen are here:
Please email us to let us know which you like best or better yet, draw us your own colorful icon and send it to us. We’ll pick one soon. We think the app will be called ‘Slingshot Organizer’ and it will be at the Google play store. The first release will be in English but if someone wants to hand-draw some elements in Spanish and other languages, we can offer other languages in a later release.
If you want to plug into work on the 2017 Organizer, here is a rough schedule:
• May/June: We’ll edit the historical dates. Send us suggestions for dates.
• June 26 – July 29: Artists will draw the calendar section for 2017. If you want to draw a 4 week section, let us know. We’ll also call and email all the radical contacts to update the list – send us your corrections in July and let us know if you want to help.
• July 29-30 / August 5-6 We’ll have art and editing parties to put the Organizer together. If you’re in the Bay Area those weekends and want to help out, it is a fun participatory project – no experience necessary.
No matter where you are, you can send us art to paste here and there, cover submissions, feature essays for the back, the letters A-Z, the numbers 1-31, the names of each month, and the days of the week — we’ll paste it in for you.
Finally, there is a big error on page 3 of the 2016 spiral Organizer (only). On the 2016/2017 calendar showing both years, the headline for 2017 is over the 2016 calendar and the headline for 2016 is over a 2017 calendar. Please fix it and let your friends know.