L Agitation / Education Activism Using Zines by, Anthony Rayson | Presentation at the Children's School 200S. Oak Park Avenue, Oak Park, IL 5:30-7:30 pm ‘i ‘Wednesday, February Sth, 2020 Agitation / Education - Activism Using Zines | grew up in a very politically active household. | was right in the middle of a large family (fourth child of seven) right in the eye of the "Baby Boom” generation. | came of age in the explosive sixties and was fortunate to see for myself, what was going on i the streets, as my father would actually take us to several demonstrations while we were children. | listened to underground radio and read many underground publications, both counter cultural stuff and radical political analysis. | totally bought in to being an anti-war activist, longing for real freedom for those struggling to achieve it, home and abroad and was also an enthusiastic, pot-smoking hippie. Right on, Abbie! | was a prime candidate for home schooling, as | detested public.grade school and especially high school, but it wasn't really a thing, then. | loved to learn and especially, read, | was lucky as our house was full of serious books, magazines and political discussion. | was a paperboy and had three different routes - morning, afternoon and Sunday. So, | read the papers voraciously, too. | never wanted to “be" anything - except a writer. 1 wanted to write about what was happening in our country; and by extensiori, the dreadful things our government was-doing to other « countries. | didn't see any money in doing this and 1 had no idea how | was going to pull it off and somehow, have a real adult life - a wife, children, a house and steady income to be viable. B I'did above average in school, despite hating every minute of it: At seventeen, | graduated high school and was accepted by Grinnell College, in lowa. | hated this place, tool | got stuck taking complicated math and physics courses, which | had zero interest in. | got high and drunk a lot and blew off my classes. In the middle of the second semester, Nixon & Kissinger invadéd Caifibodia (again) and the whole countril seemed to:g6 onstrike, in protest. Our school only struck for one day. | was totally alienated and stayed on strike., They.were. cryin' about “academic pressure.” Who gives a damn when the world's on fire! Within a couple weeks, my good friend Greg came to 3 visit and we struck out hitchhiking, aiming to hook up with our friend in Salt Lake City. We had Dave's address (or thought we did.) We crashed in on a guy named Doc who we didn't know and stayed at his apartment for a week. One night we saw police lights from up in the hills as we were looking down at the city, so we rushed down to see \what was going on. We found.Dave in the middle of a . demonstration, being led by Bobby Seale, the co-founder of the Black Panther Party. What does this have to do'with zines? Nothing - yet! This was the beginning of my real education. After a couple of years of this hand-to-mouth existence, | was ready to explode with ideas. I'd seen and experienced a lot. | started pecking furiously on my lvpe'wfllen beginning ' with a lengthy index of subjects, | wished to cover. | was ! speaking in rhymes a lot and wrote down things, constantly, in notebooks. | had no idea there even was such a thing as a zine, but | came up with all this material, anyway. |was hoping to help spur those around me into being dedicated activists, but they just wanted to not have to go to Vietnam. This was in May of 1974, while Agnew & Nixon were going down, and the Vietnamese people were soon to shake off the monstrous U.S. slaughtering, going on for a decade. 1 was just a twenty year old kid, working in a factory. When | put all this material together and made copies, my friends thought it was really cool - and that | was crazy. | titled it, Peoples’ Polar Express. A great friend of mine named Jack Reedy, ran a grotto in.DeKalb, IL and had all the underground publications from all over the country. But nobody wanted to “join the revolution.” They wanted to go to the disco, instead. That was very depressing to me. I'd been through a lot during my journeys, and | came to realize that the only person | would be able to rely upon, | was myself. I'd almost been killed a couple times and had some wild adventures. | stayed in the Reno area for about | four months, and ended up, thrown In Jail, twice. | was ! facing a 6-year bid for possession of a half a nickel of PEOPLES' POLAR EXPRE&S" Noei Ignatiev ‘Noel Ngnatiev (/' natiev/; December 27,1940 — November 9, 2019) was an American author and historian. He was best known for his work on rice and social cass and for his call o sbolish “whitemess". Ignatiev was fhe co-founder ofthe New Aboliionist Society snd co-editor of the journal Race Traitor, which promoted the idea that “resson o whiteness is loyaty 10 bumanity ) He also wrote a book 00 antebellum porthern xenophobia againet Irsh immigrants, How the Irish Became White. His publisher billed him as "one of Americas leading and most controversial historians” 41 ragweed, which | couldn't give away, although I had tried. | couldn't believe it! My Dad came through and got mea &~ lawyer, who was able to get me a reduced sentence of two years of probation. If | had so much as smirked at the judge, | believe he would have given me hard time. There was a saying out there - "Reno is so close to hell, you can see the sparks!® Sparks is the town next to Reno. 1 was only in county jail for ten days, but | learned a lot. This experience stuck with me, in the back of my mind. | knew if | wasn't "white" | would be stuck in there, a long time. Like many people, | was very alienated and angst- riddled. Lots of my friends were dying of suicide, heroin overdoses and car crashes. | didn't know what to do. So, | impulsively got married. That was a mistake which only lasted three years, but | ended up with a starter house in Hazel Crest, IL. | had to pay her off for five years. |was working in a toll booth on I-80, 5o | had a steady incoms had one of my brothers and a couple of my party buddies, move in with me and we had fun, being in our twenties. 1 still wanted to write, but | put my treatise away. | got subscriptions to various radical magazines and just seethed. | did write various pieces, but didn't know what to do with them. | felt no connection to the various protests going on around the country which were really tame as all the genuine radicals, seemingly, had been killed, jalled or otherwise co-opted. | didn't know how to connect with real activists or how to find thém. There was no internet. Then | had an epiphany. | read an interview, published in Progressive magazine, with then Harvard professor, Noel Ignatiev. He was fundamental in creating an awesome Journal, entitled, Race Traitor. Soon after, he got fired. That figures. | met him in Chicago - cool! I thought to myself - "Wow! Somebody is finally telling the damn truth about things!” It got me off my ass and | started writing letters and essays and sending them around to various radical groups. | found out about the zine culture and ordered a million zines and began to look up activists in the city of Chicago and getting involved in various projects. | created a new personal zine, entitled, Thought Bombs, which | ended up making 33 different issues of. At first, | had my older son, Stanton, who was nine at the time, draw the covers and add a little bit of content. But, we're getting ahead of ourselves. | met a truly wonderful woman and we got married. This was in 1986. The Bears won, the Challenger blew up and we got hitched. 1 went back to school, too - and became the Valedictorian, in 1995. We had two small sons - Stanton aged seven and Stephen, who was only one. | thought of switching jobs and becoming a grade school teacher. Then | thought | can't do that because they wouldn't let me really teach. I'd have gotten fired the first day... | wouldn't have put the gag on. I had positioned myself to a really nice spot on the road. The boss only came once a week and it wasn't that busy. So, I had time to read, study and write - and organize. We moved to another house out in the woods in Eastern Will County. This was 1990. Unbeknownst to us, the state and their business associates were trying to build a mega airport in our area - three times the size of O'Hare, which the airlines wanted nothing to do with. | got with the group fighting this thing and went to a few meetings. It was called RURAL - Residents United to Retain Agricultural Land. A co- worker moved near this menace and said, "We got to do something about this!" | knew he was right & that I'd be up to my ears. | spent an enormous amount of time on STAND. So, | got heavily involved in this endless fight. Right around this time, the authorities were also trying to close down a couple of grade schools, including the one our older son was attending. | reached out to the organizers and we quickly put togethier a dynamite demo in front of the Matteson Holiday Inn, where a coterie of politicians were meeting to cut up the Peotone spoils. These included then alive, O'Hare area Congressman Henry Hyde, ex-Governor Jim Edgar, the smarmy Morris Congressman, Gerald Weller, ‘We have come a long way! And yes, we have a long way to go, but- Together we just might have a future. So let’s STAND together! SHUT THIS AIRPORT Secretary of Corrupt State, George Ryan and the newcomer - Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr. We barged into the hotel and chanted away. They lined maids in a corridor to stop us from directly.confronting the big shots, why they frantically called for the cops. As they finally came out, we "escorted” them to their cars. "The People, United, Will Never Be Defeated! The People, United, Will Never Be Defeated! The People, United, Will Never Be Defeated!" 9 Weller, who | sat next to during my valedictorian address in 1995 (where | went off on the college for supporting the airport) married the daughter of Rios Montt - the most genocidal monster at the time, who decimated Guatemala. Who do you think trained the death squads?2? Sickening! Now it is early in 1998. The lady spearheading RURAL got a job as a reporter for the Kankakee Daily Journal, so she had to step down from RURAL. | was working closely with George Ochsenfeld, who was the prominent activist, who lived in this threatened "airport footprint.” We decided ‘we would have to create another organization that was more activist-oriented to take this fight to higher levels. | came up with the name - STAND - Shut This Airport Nightmare Down! George would be President, Mike (my co-worker) would be Vice-President and I'd be Secretary. This was a very busy year for me. | started another group, South Chicago ARA (Anti-Racist Action) as well as my distro, South Chicago ABC (Anarchist Black Cross) Distro. | would create an educational service, with and for, prisoners. For, it dawned on me that, one, prisoners were sending the most erudite material (letters and analysis) and two, the prisons were ground zero, in the struggle here at home. . Anyway, after that demo in Matteson, | immediately started to write and collect newspaper articles about the airport and this demo and put them together into an informational zine of about twenty pages. | made fifty copies, titled, Anti-Airport Alert and took them to a meeting at a church in Peotone and passed them out to the farmers, ANARCHIST BLACK. CROSS to e o SOUTH GHIBAGO ARA AEERT ) 79 OVR GOVERNOR IS A BIGGER CROOK THAN YOUR GOVERNOR. *This was one of our bumper stickers while George Ryan was Governor. Sure enough, he went from the Governor's Mansion, to the Big House! like hotcakes. And, boy did they eat 'em up! Yum, yum! Let's go get 'em! | soon made more and bigger issues. )N 1 also employed the d.Ly. zine / punk ethic for protest sign-making and they were unique. | lined the church foyer with them. | came to realize that this type of "next level” written and visual activism could prove to be very effective. I'made all kinds of cool things, buttons, necklaces, big banners, bumper stickers, yard signs (usually 4' x 4' plywood with our No Airport symbol on it | was always making protest signs! A farmer taught me how to make big No Airport signs and gave me a wooden stencil, so | could make many more - quickly. Other farmers donated the plywood and paint. | spent a lot of my own money doing this - to make sure it got done. | got the major airlines to pop us some grant money and they even flew my family and me to lobby in Washington. We weren't a shrinking violet outfit! We spent it as we saw fit. 1 wrote editorials and analyses for the local and city papers and worked on issues of Anti-Airport Alert. Later, | even made four No Airport crop circles, which were huge and landed on the front page of the Sun-Times. One was In USA Today. My sister called me. | was born on her seventh birthday. She said: “Tony! I saw your crop circle in the European version of USA Today!" OK, cool! By now, | was making zines like crazy and working with some brilliant prisoner writers and artists. | got a couple of the artists to draw No Airport graphics. | always had a literature table at all our meetings - and it was continuously expanding. Another thing | did was repurpose those annoying yard campaign signs. After the election, the township picked up the left over signs - and gave them to me. I'd have sign-making parties. 1 was getting to know all kinds of activists in the Chicagoland area, going to endless meetings and involving myself, fully. | combed the literature tables and added zines to my distro, which | believed were worthy. Later, | put together an actual quarterly newspaper, which | named, Rural Life Standard. We made thousands of copies and mailed them out bulk rate. Our membership went from 300 (RURAL) to over 2,500! We were a force to be reckoned with and we even crashed the gatherings of the pro-airport ) 2. people. The footprint folks were starting to lose their fear. One time, a milk farmer, named Rocky Batterman, loaned us a semi. We had two graffiti artists from the city come down and spray paint both sides all night. I read poetry to them, while they worked. One side had a picture of a little kid, standing up to a gigantic bulldozer. Then, we caravanned down and parked it in front of the state capitol, in Springfield, where we held a news conference. This was before 911, when you could get away with that kinda stuff. Another time, my older son, Stanton & |, confronted then Governor Ryan, in his office. We also picketed the governor's mansion. There's nothing like a day trip, right? The funny thing was, my union, SEIU (which | was steward of for twelve years,) had an office directly across the street from the Guv's digs & | printed my ass off, while | was there. They'd come down to kiss up to his jobs plan. | was there o go off on the airport. Hey! I'm my own Man. Another time, we had a big parade through Peotone and held a big rally in the high school. | lined up a dozen speakers. We did all kinds of cool things and we didn't back down from anybody. At every event, I'd lay out a big literature table, with protest signs all over. We'd have children draw pictures of what they thought of the airport and laminated them. We'd be in parades on hay wagons with huge banners, passing out candy and bumper stickers! 1 saw a recent Chicago Tribune editorial that mentioned our group of "farmers, environmentalists and renegades.” | would have to think, she was referring to me... Now, the latest governor, Pritzker, another billionaire, has allocated $150 million for an exit ramp off of 57 to Eagle Lake Road, in the center of their idiotic scheme. It's a huge waste of taxpayer money in an area forty miles from the loop, with #= ' RURAL LIFE e STANDARD iy S TEEEC RYAN PUSHES THOUSAND LANDBANKING CITIZENS ST R PARADE & '?‘;‘;_-_-.:_._,n.;..uq_:;._ e T Y EiiEstsresr, PEOTONE! ‘Winter / Spring 2004 WORKNEWSLETTER ) no infrastructure, whatsoever. Well, we're still out here and will spring to action, when it becomes necessary. 14 Remember, Ryan, Blagoyevich and Jesse Junior - all went to prison! But yet, the authorities would line the room with cops, when we went to their bs meetings! Who are the real crooks? You're messin' with a hornets nest full of alley cats! We used these same, non-threatening, although very forthright tactics in other fights against prisons, tollways, school closings, etc. You've got to fight off predation! In 2002, 1 helped to organize the Anarchist Black Cross Network at a conference in Austin, Texas. | wrote newsletters for them and so forth. All the while, | was making zines at a blazing clip - about two a week! | now have well over 1,200 zines, which | make freely available to prisoners. | organized a Prison Abolition Conference here in Chicago in 2004 and | had 10,000 newspapers made forit- radical as hell - that | was able to get the Peotone printers to make! | was the main organizer for this 3-day event. I've been involved with many people throughout the country. Ive gone to countless conferences, meetings and demonstrations, all over the place. The great thing for me is the fact that | can do all of this from my own home. | don't need an office or a "board of directors" or anything that would put a damper on my work or attempt to censor what | have to say. | don't have to count on other people. 1 get to collaborate with some of the most brilliant thinkers and artists in the world and this project is genuinely useful for an amazing amount of prisoners. In 2006, a horrible event happened. Our son's best friend, Dylan Drapeau, who was only 17, was killed ina horrific accident caused by'an off-duty cop. It was a complete cover-up and the poor kid was cast as the guilty one. The cop turned into him at a busy (no light) intersection, going 100 miles an hour - while turning! He wasn't checked for alcohol intoxication until the next morning. He never lost a minute of pay as a cop, either. ail 5 COOK COUNTY JAIL FRIDAY the 13* (August 3to5pm 2004 Help us kick-off this weekend of Parole violators cram Brothers and Sisters warehoused this vile urban concentration car MEMORIAL RALLY For DYLAN DRAPEAU Sunday, August 20™ at 5 pm Crete-Monee High School 760 W. Exchange Ave. Crete Contact: Anthony Rayson anthonyrayson@hotmail.com (708) - 534 - 1334 We will never forget Dylan! 26th & California Events! National convergence for the PRISON ABOLITION CONFERENC] ABU GHRATB or Cook County? Show your solicarty with ol our t) | i) ol i paranis arv worderful e dedicaini > make i mappan: T w1 e clovr G my coutios 1 hio et cling tham . olling e o mch] love tham e ow e TR goE Copethar wioue Mideand overin it hort ot live i v corutant e of excitnmant andcreation, b beingg Conider il thetim - Uka Dylar - whorsomehers minagedor s i sl geris i Yo o e irw ovryorie was e for he ides oot o that what o hould b doings et "o how ha Lovads o sarychingl § ramamber ot longy o, o monihe we ok Dylan - go et Tullome night o Tolade, Ohier Worgot o1 locand, ranvoie it ha . W miasd e e o o thrvesomgs i o o i1 Al tho dayyof ylans Ty hark remmemmber ardcolack andsyap abo) Wo Canvalldo O €y the bok theropy arouedi T want thak eviryonsrfor coming hars. . Thisofor Oylany Mo mother ands N Fathor and W itar Wi brodhar. € for sveyoma - ey anidforaarmorst 1 put flyers all over these towns and a witness came to the wake, which had an overflow crowd. This kid, who was killed - murdered, actually, was an amazing piano player - snuffed out like road kill. | spoke with the witness and he agreed to testify. This young man lived in the corrupt town of Chicago Heights. The cops menaced him and his girl, who just had a new baby. He was a courageous guy. A | contacted a pro-marijuana lawyer who set me up with a big shot loop lawyer for the civil suit. The witness was almost killed himself. He was a draftsman and wrote out an explanation of what happened, as well as a nuanced drawing of the accident. The cops blew him off and told the parents there were no witnesses and that Dylan, basically got himself killed, by being reckless. They were lying! | brought the parents to the Will County Prosecutor’s Office to plead with them to press real charges. | knew it would be futile, knowing how cops, prosecutors and judges are, but | had to do it, anyway. There was a half- assed "trial" in Joliet. This disgusting cop and his pig-like lawyer were snickering up a storm at a recess. | went right in their face. The bailiff singled me out and | was banned from further entry into the courtroom. It turned out, that the bailiff was the Mother of the judge. The misdemeanors were reduced to one - speeding. It was a painful farce. Of course, | made a zine out of it. We held a memorial for him, a month after this horrific tragedy in front Crete- Monee High School. We finally got his Mother out of their mournful house. A block from my house, the cops were waiting to escort me to the event - as if we were going to cause a ruckus. He was buried in a grave meant for his Grandmother. How do you like American society, now? After a couple of years, the family received a settlement from the civil suit. A few years later, the cop, named Brian Dorian, was arrested as the *Honey Bee Killer.” It tumed out, it wasn't him, but he ended up getting a settlement for $200,000 for his four day stint in Will County Jail. The bumbling cops and prosecutors obviously felt that he was 17 Wartime Experience Remembered by el H.Rayson INTRODUCTION: 1940 - 1943 Living in Oak Park, Tinois in 1939, [ was working atthe bank to raise money for college. T had a small scholarship (1940) at Coe College lowa. Tworked as.a bus oy for meals- the food was bad, the soup was good. [1et Coe College and entered the Universiy of Rochester, NY in 1940 on a dearts scholaship. 1 volunteered in the USN Reserve V-7 program for ofcers, 1941. 1 also met my wife at Rochester University. She had a Prize Scholarship. Afte the Pearl Harbor bombings, [ became very eager to et into action after secing the Nazi Blitzkriegs invading all over Europe. In 1982 the V-7 program was abolished 50 T had new orders to contne for naval offcr training i a V-12 program. 1 graduted from this program at Rochester Universiy with three short credits needed for college graduation. In October, [ was one of seven to be appoted to Midshipmen's School in New York Gity at Columbia University. capable of murder because they rarely arrest a cop for anything, much less murder. His alibi was he was watching porn at the time. The cops never did catch the real killer. A regular Joe came across him in a tanning salon, where the killer was menacing the girl working there. The creep was trying to rob and killed her and now him. He set his gun down and our hero offed him with his own gun. Nice work, guy! He was the cat's meow at the year end tanning party, up in Shaumburg. Glad someone's willing to take on the “bads" instead of just being useless! Will Countywas | § notorious for botching cases. Remember the Kevin Fox case, where they charged a guy for killing his daughter? That was a very horrible time. My son became suicidal. It was the worst ordeal | ever went through. That boy was like a son to me and the two of them were going to make music together. He's doing OK now. He's the grade school teacher and he and his wife, just had their second son, last month. | 5o detest this evil system of mundane monstrosity, endless genocide, a putrid culture and all things despicable. | hate this world police garbage! We're not the "chosen ones" folks! We're the biggest threat. Shortly before my father died, in January of 2001, my brother, Jim, called me and told me i had to hightail it down to Florida - NOW! So, | left work and bundied my family together and flew down there - out of Gary Airport! A couple of days later, he died. We had a service for him and | recorded all the testimony and eulogies and transcribed them, along with a story of this adventure and made a zine of It. George W. hadn't finished stealing the election, yet. My Dad voted for Ralph Nader. No hanging chad, there! A couple years earlier, my Father wrote his own zine, he titled, Wartime Experience Remembered. He had alzheimer's disease, but he still had his long-term memory. Check it out! Il read a little from both zines. Luckily, my Mother is still alive. She's 95 now. She used 1o tell me | was "too sensitive.” Now, she thinks I'm a good guy. I've always been a good guy, who was hard on himself. So, every day, I'm working away at my distro, as we get many letters every week, overwhelmingly from prisoners, looking for zines. | put catalogs together listing all the / l) titles. In 2007, | believe, | approached DePaul University with a massive amount (maybe 600) of zines. They have a Special Collections Library, including a zine library. There policy is to grant twenty pages of whatever a person wants, free of charge. Many prisoners access this service and they do a terrific job. I'm extremely pleased with their efforts! | send them more zines every year. This year, | will also donate to them, hundreds of audio and video cassettes, VHS, CD's and etc. These are mainly from other activist organizations and dedicated individual film makers. I must say, for the past fifteen or sixteen years, I've had but one true comrade - Mike Ploski - who has also worked tirelessly, day after day, on this distro. Without him, the most | could have possibly done was 1/2 of what we actually do and if | couldn't find such a partner, it would be exceedingly difficult to do all this, by myself. So, thank you, Man! You have really stepped up to the plate and smoked that balll He's very involved in many other activist projects. I've been involved in other struggles, as well. In 2011, 1 think, the cat got out of the bag, and we found out that Crete was in the process of laying the red carpet out for a regional Immigration Detention Center. The Mayor was trying to keep it a secret. Crete is the sister town to Monee, where | lived. So, | felt an overwhelming disgust and was highly alarmed at these developments. We went to the house of an awesome activist / teacher named Consetta Smart and held an organizing meeting. This was a whole new animal, for these vile places were run by unscrupulous bastards running private prisons. City activists hipped us to the danger. Obama & ICE wanted five regional deportation gulags. How he became the Great Savior, I'll never know. 1 quickly started collecting all the literature | could on private prisons, contacted other activists around the country and went to work. My brother Bill was living in Pembroke Pines, right outside Miami, where they were trying to put another of these abominations, so 1 got hooked up with those activists. We went to Chicago and met the activists in Little Village who were fighting for their people. 20 One of the main Crete area organizers was a milquetoast Democrat. She didn't like me - and | didn't like her. These things happen. At an important meeting at a big church in the south side, we hashed over our options. A lady and her young daughter were there to represent the people in : Chicago, fighting deportation. Her name is Rozalinda' ’ Borcilla.”For, the great Barack Obama was deporting people lat a horrific rate - double that of even George W. Two -, hundred thousand people were deported per year, under Obama. What a fraud! He won the Nobel Peace Prize and then started six wars! He was so proud that he was the nation's dedicated assassin. It was extremely sickening. Now, Trump is trying his hand at assassinating leaders in other countries to distract from his other crimes. This is how World War | was started - by a key assassination... | remember before Obama became a senator. | was working with a bunch of progressive black preachers from the south side of Chicago and south suburbs. We'd put on candidate forums to see where these schmoes stood. Obama was too gutless to show up. He'd send a flunkey. Boo on you! | remember when he was an Emil Jones toady. | confronted him one time as a gala event held in the Conrad Hilton ballroom. He gave the keynote address and afterwards, stood while people lined up to get his autograph and fawn over him. This was right before he won the cakewalk for Senator. When it was my turn, | said, "l don't want your autograph. Just tell me how in the hell can you consider yourself an environmentalist, if you are for the Peotone Airport?” He gave me a dead fish handshake and said, "We'll talk, later.” He did come down to our area and met with the local Democratic honchos. Needless to say, | wasn't invited. Republicans &/or Democrats = Lies & Death! 21 Moo on eprsons Campon Immigrants Walk to Crete March 30" -April 1% * No Borders! No Cages! Reunion: 3:30PM i chic o it the Intront of Cook County Jalt We walk from Chicago 1o rete 1o resist 1 pekenimy immgrant Prison planaed by ICE. W watk to | 2 -85 a aftem 1hat borders and cages do not create asafe | +Back of the Yards 3nd just world. We walk n soidariy it 3l hose. ) e system seeks o exlude, scapegoat ang | T Wrightwood imaae Our familes are beg tom apan 30\ Evergreen Park ‘We walkogether as onelarge (amily. Who ls walking: Immigrants and our Jamilies, groups committed to immigront justice and YOU! Wiil you:walka mile with us? This action s organised by: Our Lady of Gusdabupe Mission, Morstorium On Deportions Campeign, No. Nama Callctive and otbar organizations. Foriflo on how to endorse, support, or walk with us visit: MoratorumOnDeportatl MoratoriumOnDeportations @gmailcom 773-632:9992/813-789.0123 Rallyin Crete (N GRE ‘\N.q {’msflN So anyway, back to my story. We posed the question - what should we do to stop this prison - at this big church meeting. The democrat lady said, "Write to Senator Durbin." Durbin was too gutless to even have an opinion onthe 5 issue. | said, "No way. We must go to direct action!” The Little Village lady, Rozalinda Borcilla, went off, as well. Shortly thereafter, the folks in Chicago decided to walk all the way from Little Village to the proposed site of the prison, in Crete. We kicked off the event with a big rousing rally at Cook County Jail, which was shouting distance from the entrance to Little Village. | spoke with honesty & passion! | helped to coordinate rallies at the various stops. They made dozens of homemade protest signs and flags. 1 got my anarchist friends involved and they were part of the march to Crete. They trained to be useful as medical support people. This was at the time when a whole bunch of people came to Chicago (2012) to protest the gathering of NATO. Mayor Emmanuel spent over $100 million for security for these international wonks for the lousy 36 hours they spent in Chicago. The march was historic and extremely powerful! Crete had never had any kind of demonstration in their town and here comes the big black flag! ICE cancelled a big meeting at the high school for fear that the anarchists would be coming down to Crete. The real reason they canceled was because there would have been an overwhelming number of townspeople. Boo! We then canvassed the whole town to educate people as to why this was a horrible idea for their town and area. | took the business district. We badgered the Mayor and the trustees, relentlessly. Before long, the Trustees voted unanimously to forget it. Too bad Mayor, you won't be a warden. Soon, the jailers reared their ugly heads, nearby. Obama got the message and pulled the plug on the proposed prison down in Pembroke Pines, Florida too! Years earlier, in rural Kankakee County, then Governor George Ryan, was looking to help a poor black farming community (Hopkins Park) economically, by building a women's prison there. Yeah, right! Having their sisters from the cities, living in cages would be the ticket. Not! %> They organized a militant group to fight it off. | teamed up with one of the organizers and we went around the towns to various libraries to explain why the prison and the airport were both very bad ideas. They were organic farmers. They wanted a community center, a grocery store, a laundromat and a gas station. Only three people wanted the prison - the Mayor, the Police Chief and a preacher. The people there put on an event each summer - Marcus Garvey Days. While we were putting the finishing touches to the death of the Crete prison, another government / business assault was happening in our area. IDOT wanted to build a privately-run, foreign-owned toliway from I-55 to I-65, south of I-80, from Channahon to past Lowell, IN. There were little pockets of resistance all along the way. So, I made it my mission to-collect all these groups into an umbrella group, we titled NO ILLIANA 4 US. At a meeting at the Will Township Center, a farm lady named Virginia Haaman, from Peotone, was fit to be tied. Her place was to be bulldozed for this latest boondoggle. Immediately, | knew she should head this group, which she did admirably. We held a march and rally at the Will County fairgrounds in Peotone. Some folks started at I-55 and went east and others started at I1-65 and marched west. We made a shambles of their meetings. Before | get to the nuts and bolts of zinemaking, | have another little story for you. After my fourth crop circle, | wanted to draw publicity for another event | organized, which | called Harvest Fest. This took place at a farmers place in Beecher, a nearby farm town, also menaced by the airport. Their scheme had the end of a runway about a 1/2 mile from a grade school in Beecher. That's real planning, there! It was always a big bluff of massive jobs for votes. Problem was, no real jobs were ever created for anyone actually needing them. They (Jackson) cried racism - not! They bussed people out to the footprint and threw a few shovels of dirt around, which they cordoned us off from. 1T LOOKS LIKE, WE MAY FI GET GOVERNMENT OFF OUR BACKS! PEOTONE DEFENSE FUND P.0. BOX 993 PEOTONE, IL 60468 A Shut This Airport Nightmare Down P.O. Box 433, Monee, IL 60449 ww.standnoairperst.org Anyway, our friend had a big barn and | loaded up ten full tables of literature and signs. My son and his wife came and played music for us. We had a nice time. The media came and found out we were a.peaceable bunch of people. S0, to drum up publicity, | decided to have a ceremony at the crop circle. The idea was to take the goat curse off the Cubs and stick it on the Peotone Airport. My younger son, Stephen, was dressed as a joker and | procured a goat, which | named "Gary." | put a little NO AIRPORT medallion around his neck. Earlier, | had contacted a videographer from Will County News, an online news service. She filmed our thing and put it on YouTube. | had about a dozen farmers with me and we marched around the circle up to the front of the airplane. 24 Opposite, | put a John Deere tractor with a scarecrow of Carlos Zambrano, the poster child of Cubbie failure. He was stuffed with straw, driving the tractor. | ranted and raved until we got to the tractor. Then | read my poem, officially ending the Cubs curse and stuck it right into the rotten heart of the Peotone Airport. It was hilarious! I'd also contacted the Powered Parachute operators in the area and they came out - twice - to take pictures. They spooked the goat. So, we had to let him eat clover for a while. | then wrote a piece called, Field of Schemes. Before we set out to do this, | contacted, Phil Kadner, the columnist for the Star Tribune, the south suburban paper. His column was about what I told him | was going to do. Whammo! Here was the publicity for the event. Sure enough, the Peotone Airport was pretty dead and the Cubs actually did win the World Series! After | read my poem, | looked back and saw a black man wearing a Cubs uniform. Was it Danny Woowoo? | dunno, but it sure seemed fitting. Well, enough about me. Let's get into specifics about zinemaking and how to effectively use them. Almost everybody has no idea that zines even exist or why. Most people nowadays don't even read the papers. They just stare at their stupid smart phones. OK, whatever. 27 Fietd of Schemes 25 sy, the ol really legiimate eadersip” comes fom concemed local ciizens, | ead nthe Cicago paper (Sun-Times) todey Ourielves._ s, th poca system 3 (Frday, Sep. 23% tht Compresmen Jese comstiuted tody, 4 complote - repest -3 Sackn, 3 snd ey nare iymgcrocodle COMPL-ET-E flure For, privte cizers s forthe Haparicsofthe sate, who gt ehaved i thee selliorying precatons o, we Dimped o of & Congresonsl i, harks o Would face 3 fae Uke yan-~ oty i 8 mch pasie faet iod e, prson. Bt hercrimes ae seen 2 vk Wel, o whatl The fumirs and other ks A sctualy resporble (facaly and WAL s Rarkakes oty oot want dor It nthis ediely tremtened estons are, a4 By repreerting” s, ctherl e ae Stepping up o artciate the rea Haues and For years Jee hascaimed the “Peotone ofering genuine scutions o these very seris Arport wes i s it That wes a e, Now, Problemsthes compt poliicians and their magicaly € ight the idcleof b o Contrllers - the (e it 1t ooks the he's a King on huge Uvonel workersand th poos, a 1 s al cur fauly it s alsoseeped desply o W i ane andal 10 ur Footprint Harvest i area 1o the west of Jackso’s pancramic Fest on Sunday, October 9, rom 3 a7 pm at Jim. efdom. Gae, s cryng “crocadls teas™ for B Bty Verdult threatened fa locatad ot 1851 157 Wi has the guts to g0 gainst “The Combiner” W, Church Road n Beeche. Racetty,the leghlature has slahed Qs Leam about what the rea s are, swiling bacene 11 i o alegedy “buy" nd (forciby, around this area. Discove what the Aviation t ollpied market prces - ot the tax evis - Justice Movement sl bout. Find ot how a tvoughthe viepractice of eminent domin.) "Anyothr egitimate project sahed by 213 ‘would be et withscrearns and v by thse. sayng he won {avor eminent domain on the Feotane areafarmers - nci i croked bunch gec YES FARMLAND he A-OK o run the how - these bumphins kncw what the aine ncutry needs and wold ‘chusly use and can bufld and un , somehin. "Wel, il for i and hisglassy-eyed “moral nderpirriogs.” The vilures re ccln... ek s presuring Governor Qulan 10 {0k the potciwork qult o and already trong-amed rom this area, fo iscontrived group, ALVAC, ‘which s headed by one of i aides. Gt toghe It o Jessl Wher h’s ot consortig with s “sacal Scquaingance™ ortying 1o ey he tred 10 buy Obama's cd senate seat, (fr 3 cool$1.5 ml) hes oty v ey vt 3 e oo b N, e St G oy oo v Gkl oo i s o i e et him S Yo therel ver the Pootone e, Nor do we wan 10 5ee 3 - - et of the double-dealing Debbie Habvoron, ervousy biig hr fingermalls on th sidelne. o toundts of e become il too dovious hat ol the politiciams - county, state and foderal are ‘St Tis Arport Mightare Down! Schemers, lars and crooks and deseve “thre hots i Goorge Ry anc soom, Blago, P AN oo expremed i 4 plce s sty my o That's not the target audience I'm interested in, anyway. | decided to focus on the prisons. | saw a serious need and figured I'd see what | could do.| wasn't satisfied with the tepid writing | saw and being such a humble fellow, | figured 1 could do way better! No wonder | work mostly alone, eh? But, you know? If you don't like it, "become the '"‘d'a";{,g' Prisoners don't have real access to computers or phones or even many books. Their libraries have been gutted, as has their rehab programs, exercise equipment, etc. All they have is the idiot box, which actually makes people stupider! I made hundreds of mixed tapes all the time and even used songs in demos. | started a protest at Operation Push with this song. Great Men, by Burning Spear. So, | flooded the "underground” with my contact information, paid for advertisements and wrote to every prisoner | could find in all the various publications | came across that printed their letters or their addresses, being “political” prisoners. Well, | saw the system from the inside and saw all the harmless drug war prisoners and other non- violent "offenders” who were having their lives wasted, by being warehoused in this Insane mass incarceration system. 1 was extremely lucky to run across an amazing young mentor, named Sean Lambert, a bi-sexual prison abolitionist. He put together these unbelievably stuffed prisoner zines. He lived at the time in Buffalo, NY - I think. 1 love ya, Man! He hipped me to many prisoners who | then collaborated with. | had no idea where all this was going to go. My first prisoner zine was called, Decidedly Radical, written by Frank . Atwood, a lifer in Arizona. There was a sick malaise in the country. People saw the Kremlin collapse and were looking for a "peace dividend.” Also, some folks scoffed at political agitation, for the "end of history” was upon us. | knew these naive pipedreams were not going to pan out. Before long, Cheney & Company had us all girding for more endless horrific warfare (i.e. one- way mass slaughtering of Afghanis, Iragis & many others.) YOURE NT NORMAL fi’fi ® SSLE HELP THE fmucs\l BEAT YOURSELF UP! W3HL Lv3 L.NOa STYININY 01 ONIX 39 I stuck my nose to the grindstone and worked away, night and day on new zines, getting them written, edited, formatted, copied, stapled and mailed to those who wanted them - overwhelmingly prisoners. Yeah, itwasvery 3o expensive, but | developed a mindset of resourcefulness that stood me well. | developed intense relationships with certain prolific prison writers and artists. | never paid for cable TV and we bought our stuff from thrift stores and garage sales. We lived in a little 2 bedroom, 1 bath house. Atfirst, | had no respect for graphics. | figured - hellt The writing is what must be focused on. | was never an artist or musician, just a writer / rabble rouser. | learned how powerful political artwork can be and now have well over 500 pieces of original prisoner artwork, which | have used extensively to illustrate these zines. Sometimes, a person is both a writer and an artist. Some are extremely talented in both areas. We've put on several art shows, too. I'll show you what | mean. Kevin "Rashid" Johnson is a longtime collaborator of mine. He's also what | consider the world's foremost political artist. For a while, he was sending me all of his original artwork. At one point | laid out dozens of these on my ping pong table, while a cameraman from a major art magazine, made high resolution shots of them for a feature on him. Rashid is now at an Indiana facility. He's been horrifically targeted. He started out at a Virginia high security joint, then was sent to Oregon, Texas, Florida and now Indiana. He's been brutalized often. He's also the Defense Minister-for the Prison Panthers. Another brilliant prisoner writer / artist is Sean Swain. He's in Ohio. He teamed up with a Brother named Travis Washington, and wrote the classic 3-part zine, The Last Act of the Circus Animals. They sent me a 50-paged "rough draft." | advised them to double the size and flush out the story better. Meanwhile, I sent the text to three prisoner artists, who supplied awesome graphics for it. Later, it was turned into a book, which | wrote an introduction for. He's A Pusiicimal oF Shte SwkusS Wi Chmbhin ol Onko otk 2K SeressulirtoRty one of the guys | go to when I'm looking for prisoner contributions for, say, a workshop I'm doing at a conference. He wrote a little piece for this zine! 32 Another long-time collaborator of mine is Khalfani Malik Khaldun. We must have done forty zines together! He's in Indiana, too. That state only allows you to see one prisoner ~ male or female - out of the tens of thousands they encage. Another extremely important prisoner zine writer is Coyote Acabo. He's out now, living in Olympia, Washington. He was imprisoned in Neyada. Prisoners really relate to this guy, as he focuses on the torment of incarceration, what you'can do to stay sane (very difficult) - and how it can be challenged. A lady from Amsterdam was editing a pub called, Nevada Prisoners' Newsletter, which | also distributed domestically. |did that earlier, too. A publication entitled, The Voice of Indiana's Political Prisoners was published in Europe and sent to me for domestic distribution. This told me that there was not enough real support for this enormous group of prisoners, here in America. How prisoners are treated is very telling. Along came a breath of fresh air. A prisoner in Pennsylvania, named, Lemar Hybachi (Bondi Lemar DeBooth) wrote me with a sweet zine, entitled, When All Else Feels Lost. This was great. Hear from one of the up and coming Afrikan anarchist writers, like James Scott, who was down in Georgia. Lemar finally got out, after we'd done a few excellent zines, and made his way to Chicago, where we were able to get together, personally. He started working with the IWW and they published a collection of his work into a book, which | also turned into a zine. He went out East on a book tour and ended up in prison for a few more years on a flimsy "violation" of some sort. He's now in a halfway house, working and organizing. Here's his latest project - a Let’s Organize the 'Hood chapter. He calls me and we have nice, long conversations. Women prisoners have unique ways they are forced to suffer. Very few women actually commit genuine crime. They commit poor people crimes - blown out credit cards, shoplifting - they do the bidding of unscrupulous 34 boyfriends, and often take the hit, when their partners are targeted. As well, they are often abused and convicted for defending themselves. Almost all women prisoners have young children, as well. If they become “active” the state will wrest custody from them. Very few women prisoners are willing to collaborate with me. | want to mention two. Lisa (Lee) Savage was stuck in the darkest dungeons for women in Florida, when 1 first made contact with her. They were torturing her, but she refused to stop fighting for herself and her sisters. It was painful to know she was constantly being assaulted. Eventually, she was released. ‘After a rough few years, she got a grip on things and now runs the desk at a homeless shelter in Gainesville. Anastazia Schmid is a lifer in Indiana. She defended herself against her insanely abusive "mate.” She has transformed herself into a very articulate researcher and analyst concerning the history of Indiana women's prisons, and the gruesome connection with the history of eugenics and gynecology. 1 visited with her a couple of times, but | can't see her until | visit Khalfani and go through the months long paper snafu to change my visiting "privileges.” One thing they don't tell you about the new Real ID, is that you're going to have to have one to visit prisoners. I've been doing this steady - for over twenty years. So, | have managed to send many tens of thousands of zines into prisons. I:send them to all ifty states - inside and out, mostly in. The rule for prisons is publications must come directly from the publisher. So, I simply made myself a publisher. How does one do that? You simply conjure up a hame, get a P.0. Box and buy a stamp that says the name and address of said "publisher.” You stamp the last page of the zine and the upper left hand comer of the 6 x 9 envelop and, voilal You are a publisher. 35 Only the Strong Resist R ‘What Can Be Done? By In 1.2 Seconds Lica “Lee” Savage “The Most Virtuous Vagina in the United States of America” Captive Patients: Female Slaves and Prisoners in 19th Century America “Iam the modern version of the women I'mtalking 1 like to use nice clean 6 x 9 envelopes, so that digest- sized zines fit nicely in them. 8 1/2x 11 folded in half to make 8 1/2x 5 1/2 make the most practical, easily reprinted zines around. Color is too expensive. 26 Occasionally, you can use colored paper for the cover page. Prisoner graphics are not only more on point as far 2s their predicament is concerned, but also reprint much nicer than say, computer-generated graphics. Newspapers and photographs do not translate well, either. They're muddy and obscure upon reprinting. | do things the old-fashioned way - cut & paste. | use the computer (like now) to write & edit, but | like the freedom and creativity to actually craft these things by hand. Once I've decided to make a zine, | let my mind think about it for several days, unless it needs to be made quickly. Il go about my business, working on countless projects and melting them in with familial obligations and functions. Sometimes, I'll write some ideas down to flesh out later or ‘make some sort of outline, or whatever seems most fitting. since | work with prisoners, flexibility is paramount. Our collaborations are constantly being interrupted and even sabotaged. Prisoners who have the courage to write and draw are targeted. They are moved around a lot. They have their possessions destroyed. They are denied visits from their loved ones. They are hurt in vicious assaults by guards or thugs - o both. Thelr access to even paperor stamps is highly limited. Let's face facts. Legally, by that slave document - the U.S. Constitution, prisoners are still Slaves. Legally, they are treated as if they were dead. So, it Tay take several months for a project to reach fruition. Some never do... | have to be flexible. Mike helps me to prioritize. We send zines more quickly if they intend to start study groups, are in dire straits or send stamps. So, you want to make a zine. Here's how | start. Il take some typing paper, fold it in half and number the pages. You make a guesstimate of how many pages the zine will be. These, of course, will be divisible by four. Each sheet has four pages. OK, say | want a 10 sheet, forty-paged zine. That's a pretty good sized zine! The material, say several essays, an introduction, examples, graphics, whatever it is composed of, you figure out the best way to lay it out. | usually like to use the centerfold for a 2-paged graphic and this may separate the 2 sections, if that's what is happening. 37 Mostly, like everything else, it takes resolve. You must get off the dime and attempt to do it, before you learn how and have the confidence to do it. Like learning to play the piano, you must practice to get better at it. Time, money and effort are a given. But if you really have something important to impart, whether you or somebody else wrote it, you must go through with it! And, just like life itself, the one person you are going to be able to rely upon is yourselft Don't expect anything more. If you do, you'll just waste your time and get frustrated. You can do It aill Help is always nice, but begging for it, gets you nowhere. This provides absolute freedom to write and craft publications. You're not subject to the whims of some starchy board of directors or censors or other people who want to tamp down the fire you're bringing. Doesn't mean being irresponsible. It means being totally responsible for what you put out. If you've ever written something, say for some publication, and then had it edited (homogenized) before printing, you know how miserable a feeling that is. Now! When you write and publish exactly what you intended to say, it is fun as hell to reread, later - because it hasn't been diluted! It's the real deal and people can feel it! Top it off with no ads and no price tag and these things become invaluable. As well, reprinting is encouragedi And! If you're a prisoner willing to impart your story or knowledge about a subject someone else can benefit from, Vll get it published and incur all the expenses! Plus, I'm not going anywhere. I'm truly loved for doing this! 1 see people tapping into their basic humanity and making great strides. It's very gratifying when some brilliant prisoner entrusts his or her work in my hands and says, "I trust you. | can't wait to see it!_Use it however you want!" | keep editing to a minimum, as far as what a person is writing. Ifi'san 3§ obvious error they did not intend, then I'll fix it. But 'm not going to fool with their written voice. If they spell like they talk - finel |don't always agree with what or how they say it, but if | feel they have something that someone can benefit from, I'll let them have their say. Of course, | won't print racist, sexist nor homophobic garbage. However, | have a serious affection for the well- | written rant. It was the great George Orwell who said something like, "The most dangerous thing in the world is the 50-paged tract.” He was probably referring to Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels’ work, "The Communist Manifesto.” Alot of zines are sort of dirty looking with smudges or lines or obscured graphics, slapped together. That's just laziness. | try to put them together cleanly giving each page proper space and meticulously go over the master and original copy with white out and a good pen to eliminate the mess and darken parts that need to be darkened. 1 use my copying machine at home to reduce or enlarge and make the master copy from the original. Then, Il bundile several zines to be copied and take them to OfficeMax or Office Depot. The price per sheet is cheapest if your job entalls at least 10,000 impressions. That's 5,000 sheets, double-sided. It's still not cheap! Itis 5 cents an impression, or 10 cents a sheet. That's $500 plus tax. Only two or three years ago, it was $300 and | could get an automatic 35% discount. So, the job would "only” cost about $190. Now, you're lucky to get a lousy 15% off, so this job would now cost $425, plus tax. They didn't even use to tax it, as it was considered a service and not a thing. So, you must be sure all the pages will print well and are worthy of such an expense. Each page needs to have ample margins on all sides. | like to give a 1/2 inch at least for each side because the machines are not always calibrated properly and the margins are not completely centered. As well, the machine cannot print all the way to the end of the page. I'm constantly telling prisoners not to write 39 everything using the whole sheet of paper. Often, with Ppaper so precious, they decide to write words very tiny to get their full message out. This makes transcribing more difficult, but every obstacle the prisons throw at us, we must deal with in order to complete the project. Laziness is not an option and once a pub is "in the can® (complete) then it can be reprinted as many times as you want! Earlier, when | was younger, | had more energy. I'd get up in the middle of the night and "cheat” the Sandman for a couple hours. | went all over the place, meeting people, cajoling them to help me, especially, with printing. | got my union to make 300 copies of my first Thought Bombs zine. | made zines in the police station of Peotone! This was next to the Mayor’s office. He was fighting the airport with us. But, I'd sneak in prison abolition pubs, too! I'made copies at a mental hospital, and other offices and institutions. Anywhere | found a copying machine I'd try to use it! I'had to rely on my own resourcefulness to figure out how to get things done. Once | resolved to focus on the prisons, | wrote to many prisoner support organizations, contributed articles or graphics, spread lists of activist prisoner addresses, got their prisoner contact information and wrote directly to those prisoners, usually with a catalog and maybe a zine or two, | thought might interest them. Now, the handwritten letter is the lifeblood of