Day One! The first night of Zine Pavilion in the bag, and no scary shit! In fact, mostly excellent shit! What a lovely opening night— several librarians from around the US bought our zines to add to their library’s holdings and said such supportive/kind things about our work, and told us they were so excited to learn more about sex worker politics and prison abolition!!
Feeling excited and emboldened for today! Huge love and shout out to our SxHx comrades who facilitated our safety crew last night— love y’all beyond measure! Big thanks to Pat for holding down tabling with me and N
for literally watching my back the whole time. Y’all are true blue and our whole Justice for Alisha Walker crew appreciates you both so much!
Day 2! Our last day, because we’re sleepy SWers, of Zine Pavilion was also super lovely! A total whirlwind (librarians can talk!!!) of panels, discussions and really affirming conversations! Everything from how to engage teens with crafting/zine making to librarians coming out as former sex workers to queer and trans* library science students sharing stories with me—what a day!!! Bless, we even had someone share some Backpage memories with us!!
We met so many amazing zinesters, like @rosaxdahlia and her comrade Nicole who authored a zine primarily in Nahuatl! Got to see the Midwest Books To Prisoners comrades (who also offered safety support), the South Chicago ABC zine distro, hang out with the absolutely amazing @weirdosujour, talk with Avery (whose zines Red used to stock at Bluestockings)!!
We got to reconnect with a Chicago currently Texas pal, @vegantiff and meet (in-person) @manny_suena (s/o forever @rocksteadystonez for the connection)! We also met an amazing artist @keemerriweather of @homagetoblkmadonnas !!!
@jonastygram1 and Red had to send carrier pigeons to each other because our tables were so damn far apart but that was exciting. ((Also there were no scary vibes or shitty people that showed up, and the organizer/volunteers were really supportive and checked in a lot!))
Our crew is totally wiped out from the full day of tabling/talking but really really grateful to everyone for supporting our collective and our zine making! S/O to our comrade Sarah for coming through for support and love💖💖💖
