politics – Page 7 – Sonya Ellen Mann

My boyfriend and I recently got back from a road-trip through the Pacific Northwest. My favorite place that we went on the trip was Portland Button Works, which is a zine distro as well as a button-making business. I had never seen so many zines in one room! It was thrilling! The shop is run by Alex Wrekk, author of the perzine Brainscan and the book Stolen Sharpie Revolution, an introductory guide to zine-making.

Serendipitously, the day before I visited Portland Button Works, I got an email from Alex’s publicist asking if I wanted to review the new edition of SSR on my blog. I picked up my review copy in person, which was cool! Meeting Alex had me a bit starstruck, because she’s such a renowned underground author, second only to Aaron Cometbus or Cindy Crabb in terms of longevity and recognition. She also bravely exposed Joe Biel of Microcosm Publishing as an abuser and manipulator. (You can read about that online if you’re interested in the ethics of your reading material—which you should be.)

Stolen Sharpie Revolution is the perfect gift for a weird, moody teenager, or even a kid in middle school. Beyond the practical how-to stuff about page layout and wrangling photocopiers, what’s important is the emphasis on taking control of your own story. Alex writes, “We all have stories to tell and no one is going to tell them for us.” The next step, after figuring out how to tell your story, is to publish it. Zines are an under-utilized way of sharing your words with the world.

I have to go off on a quick tangent here. As a beginning writer, it’s tempting to throw your hands up and say, “What’s the point? Everything has already been written, right?” To an extent that’s true, because the basic human conflicts and emotions haven’t changed since Homer recited the adventures of Odysseus. But every generation has to write the stories again. A young voice can make an old story accessible to new ears. Human stories deal with ancient themes, ancient archetypes and problems, but the language and the social mores are changing constantly. Don’t worry that it’s all been done before. It hasn’t been done by you, in the here and now.

Aesthetically, Stolen Sharpie Revolution is like a traditional cut-and-paste zine, done with a typewriter, scissors, and glue. It’s a great introduction to zine culture, and the only thing that I think it lacks is a section on desktop publishing using computers. However, that would also be vastly complicated to include, since not everyone has Microsoft Office or even the basic technical skills needed to format a zine using a word processor.

The review on Books and Bowel Movements kind of peeved me off, because Cassandra implied that Alex wrote her book like it was THE ONLY, MOST DEFINITIVE guide to making zines. In fact, Alex explicitly says that she’s just sharing what works for her. Stolen Sharpie Revolution should be seen as a window into what some zinesters do, and a starting point for learning more.

Speaking of learning more, I asked Alex a couple of questions, basically just because I could. Flora’s Forum did a more in-depth interview. Anyway, here’s my dialogue with Alex:

Sonya: How do you deal with “activist burnout”? I ask because this is something that I wrestle with, feeling hopeless and exhausted by the hugeness of the bad parts of life, and I would appreciate counsel from someone who’s held onto punk/anarchist/DIY ethics for a long time.

Alex: I have a couple of strategies but I’m not exactly sure they work for everyone. The main one is to let others do the heavy lifting sometimes. You can’t take on everyone and everything if you don’t have some space and time for yourself, so be good to yourself.

I also like to look at things in small chunks to avoid the hopelessness of drowning in the big picture. What can you do to make your house better? Your neighborhood? Your community? Recently I became a member of the advisory board of my credit union. I knew nothing about what I was doing there but I was putting myself in a new space and learning new things, like the actual difference between banks and credit unions. I was about to apply this new info to my personal feelings about capitalism.

Be an ambassador for your ideas in places you didn’t know you could. When I first moved to Portland I worked at an arcade. After after a few months my boss said, “You’ve made me punk friendly!” and offered to give me May Day off and the next day “just in case you get arrested”. Also, you can drop out sometimes and come back to your work later. Knowing AND expressing your boundaries in activism is really important. I don’t feel like I do as much as I used to, but that’s okay. I needed to learn to be okay with that. I’ve built relationships and communities where I am comfortable but also where there is room for growth.

Sonya: Near the beginning of Stolen Sharpie Revolution, you explain that we all have the opportunity to tell our own stories. Do you remember when you realized this, personally? Have you always been a writer?

Alex: I don’t think I ever really consciously thought about it until 2003 or 2004 when there was a camper I had taught at the Rock ‘n’ Roll Camp For Girls who was interviewed afterwards and said something like, “In the zine class we learned that we can tell our own stories because we can’t expect other people to tell it for us,” and I was like, “Wait, I said that in that class? I did say that!” To me, there wasn’t really a barrier there, it was just something I knew. I joke that I’m “DIY by Default”. I’m always looking at stuff and going, “How can I make that?” I think I got that from my mom. Getting involved in punk when I was 15 in the early ’90s was a vehicle for that. Once I found zines I thought, “I can make these too!” And it gave me something to do with all the notebooks lying around with ideas and lists in them. I don’t think I’ve always been a writer, but I do think I’ve always been a storyteller.

Update circa November, 2015: I’ve changed my mind about this. But I still think it’s a good essay and definitely encapsulates how I felt at the time.

On November 4th, 2014, I didn’t vote.

People have two main perspectives on my choice.

The first view is that it’s my duty to vote, as an adult citizen of the United States. I am responsible for researching the ballot issues and the candidates. Once I am informed, I must register my judgments via the official “democratic process”. If I refrain from voting, then I can’t complain about the state of affairs, because I willingly relinquished my chance to have a say in how things go. This is the view held by most people over forty, including my parents, and plenty of younger people as well.

The other perspective is basically, “Who cares? Voting is useless anyway.”

Personally, I suspect that voting is at least semi-useless, and that’s part of why I didn’t do it this year. I suspect that lawsuits and fair-minded juries are more important than who sits on the local school board. (Unfortunately, recent events show that fair-minded juries are rare; they value some citizens more than others.) I suspect—no, I am determined—that when an issue makes it into court or is featured on a ballot, the ultimate outcome is still determined by money.

For example, California’s Proposition 47 demoted minor drug offenses from felonies to misdemeanors—which is awesome! However, I don’t think the proposition would have passed if it weren’t projected to save the state a lot of money. (Click here to learn more.) Similarly, you’ve never heard of the would-be candidates for political office who don’t have funds at their command, because a person needs money to catch the public’s eye. People don’t vote for anonymous poor citizens, no matter how talented they may be. It’s very difficult for a marginalized person to gain a position where they can help protect other members of marginalized communities.

But how do I know that I’m right about these things? How do I determine whether I’m just being lazy? Furthermore, what amount of political engagement do I owe to my community? As I wrote previously for the Richmond Pulse, “Part of me feels guilty [about not voting], like I’ve shirked a responsibility, and part of me feels defiant. All of me feels angry that voting has been framed as mandatory—I didn’t choose to be born, or to be inserted into a political society, and yet I’m expected to participate in its organization. That’s a responsibility for which I am not prepared.”

I would prefer not to engage politically at all. I don’t mind paying taxes, but usually I don’t make enough money for the government to bother skimming a cut from my income. Except when I accidentally park at the curb on a street-sweeping day, the government and I stay out of each other’s hair.

Of course, I use systems built by the government: I mail things through the United States Postal Service, I drive on roads, and I take advantage of various other state-facilitated infrastructures. My parents’ property is theoretically protected by the county police force. America’s entire peaceful existence—relatively peaceful, that is—is theoretically safeguarded by the heinous military-industrial complex. Here’s the argument: “If we didn’t have a huge burdensome terroristic military, then some other country would invade us!” Depressingly, that argument has a point.

I was thinking about these issues on November 4th, and I misguidedly posted a Facebook status about my torn feelings. This is an excerpt from that post:

I didn’t vote. I’m not going to vote. I won’t go so far as to say that you’re kidding yourself if you think voting is effective, but I will point out that 1) money is what wins elections, and 2) America is not a democracy; it never has been.

Inevitably this post will get comments saying that I’m wrong, that I should participate, that I should have faith in the system and do my “civic duty”. I may be wrong—it happens often—but I really do feel disenfranchised.

Do you ever post something controversial on Facebook and then remember why it’s never a good idea to do that? Yeah, me too. The responses to my voting status were infuriating—but also enlightening. People were incensed by my pessimism and refusal to participate. Reading the debate would have been interesting if I could have detached myself emotionally. As it was, I felt attacked, guilt-tripped from several sides. I don’t think people meant to upset me, but I was shaken nonetheless. Eventually I calmed down enough to explain my position further:

I wrote this post from an emotional place, from a desperate and disconsolate place. I didn’t make that clear [in my original post]. What I wrote came across as a political statement, but I was looking for solace. Maybe it’s petty to make this all about my emotions—[but] this is my Facebook “status”, right?

I think [name redacted] is correct that not voting doesn’t accomplish anything. And yet I feel very mistrustful of the media/information sources regarding politics, the entire system of “democracy”, and even my own judgment. (In fact, something that occurred to me a few times yesterday was, “If y’all think I’m so wrong, why do you even want me to vote?!”)

I’m angry that I’ve been included in any of this at all, “any of this” meaning life and its tragic complexity. I didn’t ask to be born, and it’s hard enough just existing—now I’m supposed to have all this responsibility to participate in the organization of society? I can’t handle that. I don’t have the stress-dealing capacity to be involved.

It’s entirely possible that I’m wrong about the potency of an individual vote. However, even if I felt convinced that my choices would be significant, I might still abstain. Is that selfish? Hell yeah. I can’t do anything but put on my own oxygen mask first, so to speak.

As I explained in my comment, the other part of why I didn’t vote was that I don’t have enough energy to do it right. Throughout the summer, I actively avoided news about Palestine and Ferguson, because the responsibility to be informed is too taxing. Being exposed to violent news, learning what’s happening around the world and in my own country, fills me with a sort of paralytic anxiety. It triggers a kind of despair that is very difficult to circumvent. I end up crying on the floor instead of being productive in any way.

Mental illness has greatly interfered with my ability to be “normal”, to behave in the expected ways and to accomplish what I’m “supposed” to have accomplished by this point in my life. I am twenty years old, two years past my legal majority, and yet I am nowhere near being a grownup. I don’t support myself. I still live with my parents and it’ll be a while before I move out, because even with all this help I am always on the verge of falling apart. Still, people want me to vote. Maybe I’m better than I think at concealing my dysfunction.

Luckily, there are people stronger than me. In light of the recent protests against police brutality, against the unpunished murders of Black men and women, of Black children, against the farce of our “justice” system, I’m proud to see that my generation knows how to be politically active, whether or not they vote. Protesters who march through the cities and block the freeways are showing with their bodies that they care, that they will not allow life to continue normally when it has never been “normal” for Black families.

To me, this is a more powerful form of community action than voting. Maybe one can’t exist without the other. Regardless, I have to figure out the best way for me to participate in society’s improvement. That’s something we all decide for ourselves, isn’t it?

Tag: politics

Book Review: Stolen Sharpie Revolution (Plus, Short Interview With Author Alex Wrekk)

Why I Didn’t Vote