Ultimately, this zine is about ways people negotiate power, and the various wedges that the powerful can use to separate us from each other.Įverything in these pages was written before the election of 2016, sometimes well before. Class and money was the original prompt for submissions it quickly became clear that a more intersectional approach was called for. Those criteria still hold, but they’re not enough anymore. One result-I wanted to politicize this zine beyond the tacit for and by women, or at least not sexist definition of feminism I’d loosely been screening submissions with. My realization was that I’d been, and still was, missing most of what was going on in the world around me, right in front of me. It gave me a new certainty and a path forward.įive years ago, the Ferguson protests and the launching of Black Lives Matter by three queer Black women onto the streets and into the popular imagination-and explosively on the Internet-opened my eyes in a new way and I began to see the scope of what I truly didn’t know: The experiences of millions of people in the world, the number of ways blatant and subtle that people can systematically do wrong to each other, the depth of human experience. That realization changed the course of my life and the content of what I cared about writing. It was the first time I’d viscerally understood that the government did not exist solely for my benefit and protection. I had a political awakening a decade ago, riding with Critical Mass through the streets of New York City, chased by police on motorcycles, in helicopters, and in unmarked black SUVs. And one of the main areas that has expanded for me, as it has for many, is covered by this volume. But I’m forever grateful to have the medium of print available to learn and grow in. Without the Internet, I don’t know how I would connect these books and zines with their readers. Where you can make mistakes and change your mind. They’re places where you can learn to think and feel new things, trying on other people’s ideas and experiences in relative safety. It’s terrifying and I love it.īooks and zines, meanwhile, are islands of calm. It’s an exciting place of fast movement and constant stimulus. The Internet is beyond ephemeral-a sort of timeless dimension, where an offhand comment on an obscure forum can resurface a decade later to haunt you forever, where an entire body of work can disappear overnight, where crowds frenetically build up heroes one day, rip them to shreds the next, and forget all about them immediately. Conventional wisdom is that printed matter comes and goes, but the Internet is forever. We’ve been talking a lot here at the office about the difference between zines and the Internet. Recipe: A Foodie’s Confession / Adrian Lipscombe Us, Them, and the Imposter Within / Cat Caperello How Much Did That Bike Cost? / Gretchin Lair Really Awesome and Poor / Tammy Melody Gomez Happier, Ever After / Rhienna Renée Guedry Table of Contentsįoreword: An Uncomfortable Question / Sidnee Haynes More recently, Elly Blue Publishing/Taking the Lane merged with Microcosm Publishing in 2015. We are a politically moderate, centrist publisher in a world that has inched to the right for the past 80 years. What was once a distro and record label was started by Joe Biel in his bedroom and has become among the oldest independent publishing houses in Portland, OR. Microcosm emphasizes skill-building, showing hidden histories, and fostering creativity through challenging conventional publishing wisdom with books and bookettes about DIY skills, food, bicycling, gender, self-care, and social justice. Our books and zines have put your power in your hands since 1996, equipping readers to make positive changes in their lives and in the world around them. Microcosm Publishing is Portland’s most diversified publishing house and distributor with a focus on the colorful, authentic, and empowering. Como (Atlantic), Fujii (Midwest), Book Travelers West (Pacific), Turnaround in Europe, Manda/UTP in Canada, New South in Australia, and GPS in Asia, India, Africa, and South America. To join the ranks of high-class stores that feature Microcosm titles, talk to your rep: In the U.S. You could have gotten it cheaper and supported a small, independent publisher at Microcosm.Pub If you bought this on Amazon, I’m so sorry. Illustrations by Rhienna Renée Guedry (22, 23, 24, 26 ),Rebecca Fish Ewan (86), Joe Biel (100) This Edition © Microcosm Publishing, 2018 Taking the lane #14 Bikequity: Money, Class, & Bicycling
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