something from sleep

Into Marxism, intersectional feminism, trans women's solidarity, gay/wlw/trans culture and history, experimental writing, punk rock, and pretty noises. A queer white trans woman in her early thirties, adrift in a small college town on occupied Cayuga lands, trying to piece her life together and actually finish some of the fragmentary texts she starts.

[elanormcinerney]

Women and Film, no. 5-6, 1974

men’s happiness is a horror story

[thetidewithdrew]

#PrisonStrike — September 2016

A share portal for current links on the nationwide prisoner strike called for on September 9, 2016.

It’s a rare occasion when we know beforehand that a day will be *historical* but tomorrow, September 9th 2016, will be such a day. On the anniversary of the Attica Prison’s takeover and shutdown, prisoners across the United States will be going on strike in protest of prisons and the many atrocities inherent within them.

“Our protest against prison slavery is a protest against the school to prison pipeline, a protest against police terror, a protest against post-release controls. When we abolish slavery, they’ll lose much of their incentive to lock up our children, they’ll stop building traps to pull back those who they’ve released. When we remove the economic motive and grease of our forced labor from the US prison system, the entire structure of courts and police, of control and slave-catching must shift to accommodate us as humans, rather than slaves.” -Support Prisoner Resistance’s Announcement of Nationally Coordinated Prisoner Workstoppage for Sept 9, 2016

You can help support the strike by attending an event in a city near you, write letters to prisoners indicating your support and send them a copy of the latest newsletter for prisoners to connect with each other, and spreading the word on and offline to help build the networks we need to someday bring this brutal system of incarceration down.

Images below are from a larger series made by Sofie Louise Dam

[thetidewithdrew]

It’s today!! Help us MAKE SOME PHONE CALLS on behalf of prisoners

[loneberry]

The Global Circulation of a Black Radical Icon: George Jackson and the French Intelligentsia

Here is a monstrously long essay I wrote on the imprisoned intellectual George Jackson, which I am posting in honor of the nationwide #PrisonStrike that will launch tomorrow, Sept 9th, on the 45th anniversary of the Attica Uprising. In addition to looking at Jackson’s influence on French writers such as Jean Genet, Michel Foucault, and Gilles Deleuze I also examine Jackson’s theorization of the “prisoner class” and the role of prisoners in revolutionary struggles. Unless you really care about which French theorists authored “The Assassination of George Jackson” GIP pamphlet, I recommend skipping that section (as I didn’t have a chance to develop it). With Love, Jackie

Cover of the French edition of Blood in My Eye, translated by Louis Évrard and published on June 20, 1972 on Gallimard’s non-fiction imprint Témoins (“witnesses”).

Keep reading

[nativenews]

DONATE here to the Sacred Stone Camp. LEGAL DEFENSE FUND for Sacred Stone Spirit Camp. SUPPLIES list of necessary things for the resistance camp from HERE. The official SACRED STONE CAMP website.

[nativenews]

UPDATE  There is a need for:

Generators [renewable power systems, solar energy, wind energy, generators, much needed]

Lantern’s, batteries

Tarps

Tables, chairs

bedmats 

Women’s Long skirts (all sizes)

Canopies

Propane

Solar showers, portable showers, mobile shower units

Cots

Rope

Towels

Wood - 2x4s - Plywood

shelving

Nails, hammers, axes

Chainsaws, equipment (gloves, goggles)

Gift cards to Lowes

Food compost

Big Tent for children

4-5 person tents

hand cranked or sustainable washing machine & reusable dishware (non-plastics, non throw-aways)

school supplies/books

children chair for schools

carpeting for school

chalkboard

junglegym/playground

basketball hoop/ball

If you are someone who can build, please join the camp, they are in need of people who can help set things up. 

If you wish to mail something, the address is: [HERE]

Sacred Stone Camp

P.O. Box 1011

Fort Yates, ND 58538

We are in for the long run. Please do not stop boosting, donating, and mailing items.

[raquelwillis]

Happy birthday, Marsha P. Johnson! Let’s remember her dedication to legendary trans & queer activism! #TransHerstory

[twocfictionanthology]

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: NAMELESS WOMAN: AN ANTHOLOGY OF FICTION BY TRANS WOMEN OF COLOR

Hi, we’re looking for fiction to add to our upcoming print edition of the anthology we released last year as an ebook. We’re currently interested in short stories in any genre written by trans women of color and trans/nonbinary people who are affected by transmisogyny. In order to submit writing you must be a dmab (designated male at birth) person who also identifies as a person of color.

The total length of your short story or excerpt should be between 1,000 and 7,500 words. Each contributing writer will be paid $100 for their work. You don’t need to have any previously published writing to be published in the anthology. See full guidelines at our site: http://www.transwomenwriters.org/submission-guidelines-print-anthology

Submissions will be open from August 24th to October 12th, 2016, which is a flexible deadline so get in touch if you need more time. Please email your submissions and any questions to [email protected].  

[pl3atherdaddy]

please help

hey, as a lot of you know, i was arrested a few months ago and now my case has been closed and i need to get my record expunged so i can be employed and housed. the problem is, i need to be fingerprinted by a law enforcement agency to be able to get my record taken care of and i just moved to a new state and the fingerprinting agencies need proof of residency for me to be able to get fingerprinted. therefore, i need to get a new license and to have my car registered in the state that i now live before i can be eligible. this costs money. a lot of it. and i don’t have much.

please consider helping an impoverished, disabled (mast cell activation syndrome being the bane of my existence) butch lesbian with these costs so i can get on with my life and be safe/not houseless/not unemployed/not in jail.

cost of fingerprinting: $50 cost of new license: $30 cost of registering my car: $101 cost of expungement: $75 total: $206

my paypal is [email protected] my venmo is @scyllam my squarecash is $scyllamessana

thank you all so much 

[pl3atherdaddy]

i typed $206 instead of $256 omg!!!

[almalexias]

Louisiana is experiencing the worst flooding in the history of the state.

Over 7,000 people have been rescued and over 5,000 people are in shelters unable to return to their homes. In addition, over 1,000 drivers are stranded on Interstate 12 between Baton Rouge and Slidell, who today received supplies flown in via helicopter. AT&T service has been down throughout the Baton Rouge metro area. One of my former professors told me he’s been living in Louisiana for 44 years, and has never witnessed flooding this severe.

In Denham Springs (about 10 miles from Baton Rouge), the Amite river is currently at 46′ and rising. Flood stage for the river starts at 29′. 

This is bad, really bad. Places that only flood once every 500 years are flooding. Unfortunately, these are also places where people don’t have flood insurance because they don’t live in a flood plain.

There was no warning for this, at least with hurricanes we can see them coming and have time to prepare or evacuate.

Please, if you can, donate to the victims through the Red Cross. Or, if you are interested in helping with post-flood disaster assistance, please sign up with Volunteer Louisiana.

If you live in the effected area and are in need of a shelter, This Link has a list of shelters in Ascension, East Baton Rouge, Iberia, Lafayette, Livingston, St. Helena, Tangipahoa, Vermillion, West Feliciana, and Washington Parishes.

If you are in need of rescue please call:

Baker: [phone]

Baton Rouge: [phone]

Central: [phone]

Livingston Parish: [phone]

St. Helena Parish: 222-4413 - press 0

Patients in need of kidney dialysis: [phone]

[the-lonely-one96-deactivated202]

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE BOOST THIS! I AM NOT IN THE FLOODING BUT FAMILY IS VERY VERY CLOSE. SOME ARE STILL WAITING TO BE RESCUED SO PLEASE PLEASE SPREAD THIS AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE

[enoughtohold]

Watch: United in Anger: A History of ACT UP (Full Documentary, 2012)

For Sarah Schulman, still being alive is a responsibility. As a young journalist on a New York gay paper when AIDS began, the vast human losses of the 1980s were experienced as emotional trauma: “In the first five years of AIDS 40,000 people died and the President never said the word ‘AIDS'”, she tells me.

This raises an obvious question. If so many AIDS activists died young, who else will recount their history?

Schulman’s recent documentary United In Anger: A History of ACT UP – directed by Jim Hubbard – situates the AIDS activist movement ACT UP within its rightful past, revealing its political force again to the present. Immediately the immensity of the task is clear. Footage from a primetime news report reveals that 50 per cent of Americans at the time wanted people with AIDS (PWA) quarantined – while 15 per cent favoured tattoos.

Though doctors made the first ‘official’ AIDS diagnoses in 1981, it wasn’t until 1987 that ACT UP, or the ‘AIDS coalition to unleash power’, was formed in New York City as an organized LGBTQ resistance. Contrasting against today’s gay assimilationist turn towards institutional acceptance, United In Anger’s collage of video footage shows the vitality of queer life at a time when it was widely acceptable to describe HIV and AIDS as a “gay cancer”.

The film is frequently tough to watch. On-screen, speakers appear with their dates of birth next to their dates of death. A bitter dichotomy emerges: the fire, community and affinities of ACT UP’s packed Monday night meetings are depicted starkly against the police violence, governmental neglect and medico-capitalist profiteering that contributed so greatly to the rapid spread of HIV and AIDS. Though ACT UP still exists today, we see its rawest moments, perhaps most emotive when a giant “Money for AIDS not for war” sign is released above uproar in an occupied Grand Central Station.

Mostly, United In Anger is an archive of collective and individual bravery. Its creation is a transformative act, a refusal to allow the suppression of knowledge about radical politics. It is about how it feels when politics are literally enacted on your body and the bodies of your friends. Schulman and Hubbard refuse to conform to established narratives: AIDS activists weren’t just white gay men, they were women of colour, homeless people, drug users, lesbians. They make clear that broad coalitions enable radical change.

Today over 35 million people live with HIV or AIDS globally, and if you have access to healthcare, it is no longer a death sentence. But how many cases would there be if governments had responded with alacrity to the earliest reported cases? United In Anger shows how important it is not just to remember, but to refuse to stay silent.

Interview with Sarah Schulman on openDemocracy

Further resources:

ACT UP Oral History Project

AIDS Activism in the Epicenter online exhibit from the Greenwich Village Digital Archive

ACT UP NY historical website

ACT UP NY contemporary website and Facebook page

ACT UP NY meets Monday nights at 7 p.m. at The Center, 208 W 13 St. in NYC, and welcomes new members!

[elanormcinerney]

Carla Lonzi | Let’s Spit on Hegel | Translated by Veronica Newman

Alice Notley | Culture of One

Alice Notley | Alma, or The Dead Women

[philomena-cunk]

When Carson was a child she read a book called Lives of the Saints and loved it so much that she tried to eat the pages. It sounds like an apocryphal story, but yes, she says, “I did do that.”

A Life in Writing : Anne Carson (via honeyflows)

[blankslate]

today marks the official release of my full-length poetry collection THERE SHOULD BE FLOWERS! it is available here

i’m extremely proud of the work in this book and so excited to share it with all of you! if you’ve enjoyed my work and are in the position to purchase it, i would be incredibly grateful—i’d also be overjoyed if you could share this with others and help spread the word. thank you all so much!

[amare-habeo]

Hannah Höch (German, 1889 - 1978) 

Garden, 1948

Collage, Galerie Nierendorf, Berlin, Germany

[everattaining-deactivated201606]

From The AIDS Memorial Quilt

Remember.

[Dave is dying as he chats on the phone planning a trip to the movies while I get coals ready for a barbeque. He feeds himself through and IV in his chest and shows me the apparatus like a chemistry experiment, reminding me that boyish enthusiasm is a special nutrient as magical as religion for surviving. pockets of pus in his brain, shrinking visual field, dehydrating vomiting and diarrhea and medications that force one body system to relinquish infection and pay with new symptoms somewhere else…

he stands gaunt and weak, watching before he goes “be sure to cook the chicken well” he says. “I got salmonella from an undercooked egg.” then he asks me what I think of his rose espaliered against the fence like a Crucifixion

and I cant tell him because he doesn’t get close - that he is the rose blooming on the hill still handome although barely recognizable as the 4-H club kid who came from Nebraska and showed me pictures of his prized calf sequenced from pet to meat. I looked away like I can’t look away from dave taking it all like a man.

Dave died peacefully Jan 10 in his home in San Francisco in the care of his mother and friends.]

[pl3atherdaddy]

hey my car is having issues with the starter and i am going to need to replace it soon which is a few hundred dollars. i desperately need my car to get anywhere in the city i currently live and to get to work (i am a dog walker). i am at the same time trying to find a new place to live because my current situation is pretty harmful. if you could spare me some, i would appreciate the help.

paypal: [email protected]

venmo: @scyllam

square cash: $scyllamessana

[pl3atherdaddy]

my car officially died last night and i have no way of getting to work and have to ask for rides, please help!! i thought i could squeeze a few more days out of it but nope ):

[pl3atherdaddy]

please help, this is urgent!!!

[desdeotromar-deactivated2021110]

Introduction to my book of translated poems by Esdras Parra titled To be human once more (2016)

In an ideal world, I would not be translating the poems by Esdras Parra you are about to read. Without a doubt, there would be experts to do this work as well as it can be done; even multiple translations of the same poems which would capture all possible perspectives in the most revealing light. In an ideal world, I would not have to read the poems in Parra’s book Este suelo secreto (1995) for an audience, where my own reading, with its many errors and small triumphs, becomes a kind of public labor rather than personal pleasure and private devastation. Instead of reading the poems in Spanish and hearing only Parra’s voice, I read in English and, worst of all, am forced to hear my own voice over hers. But ours is not that ideal world.

In our world, the lives of trans women of color mean little and our work, destined to fade into obscurity, has even less value. It is our bodies that have worth, but only when our selves are separated from them – a living trans woman equals nothing, a book by a trans woman equals nothing, but a list of names of dead trans women equals a platform and careers for our allies, but an institution that trans women’s bodies are shepherded toward in the name of care, where they must suffer negligence and abuse, equals lucrative grants.

In our world, trans women of color must do the work of caring after and valuing and lifting up each other. This extends to our writing, which no one else knows the miraculous nature of (here I’m paraphrasing Parra’s use of “miraculous” in relation to her life and body). Our writing, which not only stands before readers against all odds but also has the power to save lives. Any trans woman of color who writes saves other trans women – by showing that her life is possible, that our lives collectively are possible, by claiming space for us, by giving white trans women another chance to stand with us, by fighting the deadly stereotypes and lies against us, by creating a history of us, by projecting her voice for future girls like us – and therefore saves herself. Because such a selfless, giving act allows one to transcend beyond their own mortality. Because we live on when, through another miracle, other trans women of color find the words of our sisters and give them their breath and their memory.

Keep reading

[queerprisonersolidarity]

Prisoner Correspondence Project