This week, Minneapolis will host the Republican National Convention; this weekend has seen massive police raids on private homes and an activist meeting space. This is an ugly, ugly story involving police intimidation, repression of free speech, domestic spying.

Raids began on Friday night (Aug. 29), starting at the St. Paul Convergence Space. On saturday, at least three residences, home to activists and journalists, were raided by police in riot gear with semi-automatic weapons, with assistance from the FBI. The raids are explicitly targeting people who are suspected of planning protests during the RNC. Four were arrested; more than 50 were detained. Media reports said the police were “aided by informants planted in protest groups.” Police said they were looking for bomb-making materials; “fire code” violations were being used by the police as a threat to close the residences and the meeting space.

The strikes seemed to be specifically targeting the RNC Welcoming Committee, a protest group, and members of Food Not Bombs. During the raid on the Convergence space, all occupants were handcuffed and photographed before being released. Cops have been confiscating computers, journals, political pamphlets, digital cameras, and other electronic equipment during the raids. Those arrested were charged with “conspiracy to commit riot.”

Lots of articles, and regular updates from the Twin Cities IndyMedia
Extensive articles — with lots of links, including to videos shot during or after the raids — at Salon.com: first article, second article
Coverage by the Star Tribune, the Minnesota Independent and the New York Times
News from the Coldsnap Legal Collective

Don’t think this kind of activity is limited to the Republican convention — questionable police action also occurred in Denver prior to and during the Democratic convention:

The Other Side Arts in Denver, home to the Denver Zine Library, was targeted by Denver Police as part of an effort to “clean up the neighborhood” just before the Democratic National Convention. According to a press release released by the nonprofit art center, a number of police — some in riot gear — came to the center on Sunday afternoon (Aug. 24) and began to investigate the property, questioning the graffiti pieces that decorate the building, proceeding to paint over all the art pieces and destroying TOSA signs.
Source article, also here

On Wednesday (Aug. 27), an ABC News reporter was forcefully arrested as he and his camera crew tried to take pictures on a public sidewalk of Democratic senators and VIP donors leaving a private meeting at a hotel. He was charged with trespassing, failure to follow a lawful order, and interference with a police officer.
Read more, update

Also, read about the heavy-handed tactics used against protesters in Denver and check out this photo.

UC Berkeley campus police, FBI agents, and an Alameda County sheriff raided the Long Haul Infoshop Wednesday morning (Aug. 27) with guns drawn, seizing all computers and other gear. The computers taken included those used by the Slingshot Collective. According to Bay Area Indymedia, police broke down doors, raided cabinets, cut locks, and scattered sorted mail. Police said they were searching for equipment that may have been used to commit a felony. The warrant did not describe the alleged crimes, did not identify any specific organization housed within the building, or name any suspects. Long Haul hosts several other organizations, including the Needle Exchange, East Bay Prisoner Support, and a zine library. The seizure will interfere with the publication of the next issue of Slingshot. This is the first time the long-standing community center has been raided.
Find out more:
Long Haul website
Berkeley Daily Planet’s 1st story, updated story
Indymedia - initial report
Indymedia report (w/ photos)
Background article on Long Haul

We’re sad to say it, but there won’t be a news section in our next issue. There hasn’t been a news editor for quite a while now, nor do we have a cadre of regular, dependable reporters. Jerianne has been writing most of the news articles in recent issues, butshe simply cannot devote the time to it any longer. So, until someone steps forward to take over the task, the news section is going away. We’ll do our best to post links to articles we think are interesting or relevant.

Here’s a few stories from last fall and earlier this year (stories that would have been in the new issue, had we a news editor).

Yet again students were suspended for drawing a gun, thanks to asinine zero tolerance policies. One was a second grade student in  New Jersey, the other an eigth grader in Arizona. Read more… and more…

Airport screeners are watching what you read. Read more…

Tacoma Anarchist Bookfair Accused Of Being “Homeland Security Threat.” Read more…

High school students in Connecticut weren’t allowed to discuss the war, so they wrote a play about it. “Voices in Conflict,” was quickly banned by the school, but made it to New York where it brought the audience to tears. Read more…

Wisconsin student incorporates Biblical references into a drawing made for a class assignment and gets a zero after refusing to change it; files federal lawsuit. Read more…

Yet another student takes her school to court to fight against being punished for critical comments she posted to a website. Read more…

And here’s a few more recent things:
Two students in Massachusettes get arrested for comandeering the school’s intercom. The principal accused them of reading excerpts from a speech by Fidel Castro; other students said it was a passage from 1984 by George Orwell. Read more…

A Rhode Island school district plans to track its students using RFID chips in their schoolbags. ACLU protests the program. Read more… and more…

Postal activist Douglas Carlson filed a complaint against the USPS, alleging it had improperly stopped offering Bound Printed Matter rate to retail customers. (Individuals can still use BPM, but you have to apply the postage yourself.) USPS ordered to respond in April, but I can’t find any update…

Jerianne and mishap will be at the Portland Zine Symposium this Saturday. If you’re going, too, drop by and say hi.

We had hoped to debut the new issue of Zine World (#26) at the Symposium, but sadly we didn’t quite get it ready in time. We’re hoping to have it ready to release around Sept. 1. We will be pre-selling the new issue at the Symposium; we’ll have a preview copy of the nearly finished zine you can take a gander at. Pay for it in Portland, and we’ll mail you a copy just as soon as it’s published.

Jerianne will be presenting a workshop on Sunday called the Zinesters Guide to U.S. Mail, which will cover the options zine publishers can use for mailing zines within the U.S., along with other helpful advice about working with the postal service.

Stay tuned for more details about the new issue!

GZAGG wants your zines:

Grrrl Zines A-Go-Go is looking for zines for our upcoming (January 2009) gallery show. We need zines in these categories:

Spanish Language
Politics and Social Change
Queer
Chican@ and Border Issues
Youth
Feminism
Hurricane Katrina

Zines will be archived in our public collection after the show.

Questions should be emailed to info@gzagg.org.

Zines should be sent by November 1, 2008 to: 605 Normandy Road, Encinitas CA 92024, USA.

Thanks in advance - we will be posting more information about the show as it approaches, and of course photos when it’s done.

Margarat, Grrrl Zines A-Go-Go
http://gzagg.org

(Picked this up from zinegeeks@yahoogroups.com.)

Hi Everyone,

The next issue of Xerography Debt marks a bit of a transition where we try and straddle the fence between pixel and paper. One thing the paper version will try and do is discuss zine issues, plus columns and other matters that aren’t necessarily time sensitive like reviews can be. The reviews have been migrating to the XD blog (http://xerographydebt.blogspot.com/), and we’ve been posting there for a few months.

Since I am working on the next paper version, I’d like to post part of the last issue’s introduction (see below). If you’d like to send in a response for print, please direct it to leekinginc[at]hotmail.com.

Thanks,
Davida

*****************************************

Change, as always, is still brewing in the zine world. The paper vs. web debate rages on, as does perzines vs. blogs. In many ways these venues can and do co-exist, but at the same time I see the number of zines I receive dwindling. The general demographics of zinemakers and their overall productivity seem to be changing too. Most of the youngsters, the would-have-been next generation, have moved to the web. Many of the zines that I have loved for years have editors undergoing changes in their personal responsibilities (i.e. kids, older parents, jobs) and are publishing less frequently. I know that personally I haven’t published an issue of Leeking Ink in two years, the longest gap since I started the zine in 1995. (I do have plans to get the new issue done in the coming months.) The main people I see publishing semi-consistently are the people who have been at this for at least 15-20 years, are past the major life changes, and don’t view the web as a spot for natural migration. However, as long as postage and printing costs continue to rise, the future of paper as the dominant zine media remains uncertain. Regardless, it is the reading that matters, not how or where it is done.

To XD’s readers – how do you feel about the paper vs. digital changes? Are you online or have moved to online only? Why? Do you have more readers or more reader feedback? Back in the day, zines were only part of the obsession; letters from total strangers were the other part. Has e-mail wiped that component out? If you are a paper devotee, why?

Recent articles about zines:
Wanted: Pen, plain old paper, imagination, Christian Science Monitor

You Could Learn A Lot from a Punker

The Rozz Tox Effect on Comics, Zines, and Libraries

Collecting the Wretched Refuse: Lifting a lamp to zines, military newspapers, and Wisconsinalia, Library Trends, by Chris Dodge (zinester, librarian, and former Zine World reviewer)

Other stuff:
Check out Barnard College Library’s online zine exhibit: Elections and Protest: Zines from the Barnard Library Collection. It includes scans of selected pages and lesson plans for three different age groups on using zines in the classroom.

Here’s a few links to booklet templates and online tools that could be useful in making a zine (as seen in LiveJournal’s zinescene community) :

• MS Word booklet templates
• BookletCreator (create a small booklet from a full-size PDF)
• PagePacker (freeware for MacOS, to make a mini-booklet from 1 sheet of paper)

Also, we’ve made a big update to our upcoming events page, adding lots of cool events that will be happening this fall.

Universal Music says piss on “fair use,” the doctrine that permits limited use of copyright materials without the owner’s permission under certain circumstances. In federal court, the music company said it did not need to consider whether fair use applied in “takedown notices requiring online video-sharing sites to automatically remove content.” Read more…

The Department of Homeland Security recently disclosed its policies allow agents to seize the laptop or other electronic devices of travelers entering the United States. They can take laptops “for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing,” and the policy applies to anyone entering the country, including U.S. citizens. Read more…

This one’s a little old, but we’re a bit behind so… Four community activists in Philadelphia who had been circulating petitions about police-surveillance cameras were detained without charges after cops raided their home without a warrant; police admitted to the Philly City Paper that they were “trying to drum up charges against them.” Read more and more and more…

In other news:
After 52 years of being the most kick-ass independent bookstore in Berkeley, Ca., Cody’s Books has shut its doors. A message posted on its website by Cody’s president says: “[It] is a heartbreaking moment… In the spring of 2005 when I learned about the financial crisis facing Cody’s, I was excited to save the store from bankruptcy. Unfortunately, my current business is not strong enough or rich enough to support Cody’s. Of course, the store has been suffering from low sales and the deficit exceeds our ability to service it.”

But it’s not all bad news on the bookstore front:
Baltimore’s Atomic Books has moved to a new location, joining its Atomic POP space (just around the corner from its current location). Atomic Books is celebrating its 16th anniversary this year, and they’ve been an avid supporter of zines all along. Visit them (or send your zine for consideration): Atomic Books, 3620 Falls Rd., Baltimore, MD 21211.

Spartacus Books, a radical bookstore collective in Vancouver, BC, also has a new location: 684 E. Hastings, Ground Floor, Vancouver BC V6A 1R1, Canada.

A new online resource we’re keeping our eye on: ZineClassifieds.com debuted this month as a place for anyone to promote his/her zine and browse ads by other zine makers. Said organizers: “This project came about due to the demise of several zine distros in Australia and the subsequent need to create a place where zine makers and zine readers could connect directly with each other. It’s free to post ads and the site is open to zine makers around the world.” Also, with MagCloud, print on demand comes to magazines — if any of you folks out there try it, please let us know what you think of the results.

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