strange loop

The following collection of zines has been circulating throughout the anarchist space since the overturning of Roe vs. Wade in the United States. We're reposting the collection here and re-uploaded them to Archive.org in order to maintain access for the future. We encourage folks to circulate these zines as you see fit.

Abortion Positive Coloring Book for Hard Times

Abortion is a Form of Birth Control! And Why Having One isn't that Big of a Deal

Abortion Aid in Texas

Abortion Pills by Mail

A Totally Undramatic Story about Abortion

Blood Moon: A Guide on How to Bleed

DIY Doula Self-Care for Before, During, and After Your Abortion

Free to Choose: A Women's Guide to Reproductive Freedom

Hot Pantz: DIY Gynecology / Herbal Remedies

How to Give Yourself an Abortion

Jane: Documents from Chicago's Clandestine Abortion Service

The Battle for Abortion and Reproductive Autonomy with Bay Ostrach

What is this Thing Called M.E.?

Who is Fit for Motherhood? Why Abortion is Not the Only Reproductive Right

Why is the Government Like This? A zine about fighting for abortion access and reproductive justice in the age of COVID-19 (Spanish Version)

Additionally, the collection circulating features a non-zine pamphlet:

Medical Abortion and Self- Managed Abortion: Frequently Asked Questions on Health and Human Rights (Spanish Version)

Source details and larger version.

I want to be in her car again. That 1994 silver Grand Am. On our way from one Mid-Atlantic town to another. Her driving, me with my feet up on the dash, windows open and the music unspooling behind us down the road. Both of us singing along to The Clash, The Pogues, or something grown closer to home. Bruce Springsteen. Mischief Brew. Tramps like us, how did we get out alive?

*

I want to be with her again, in or out of the car. Once, mid-winter, we stopped for gas and coffee at a Sheetz in some nowhere Pennsylvania town. We were on the road to Philadelphia. Clad in leather and denim, bedecked with chains. The white-haired man behind the counter asked: “Y’all dressed up to go to a rock’n’roll show?” We weren’t but we told him yes, we were. It didn’t feel right to disappoint him, somehow.

*

I want to go back. To that other moment, summer this time. Same silver car, same tunes, different back road. Maryland, en route to Baltimore. Yes, to go to a rock’n’roll show. Dressed in denim, band shirts, all black. Sunglasses. We’d been up all night the night before. There was this slow shape, small, working its way across the hot tar of the road. A turtle; a red-eared slider, to be exact.

*

She slammed the brakes and put her hazards on. Flung open the driver’s side door. We both crawled out of that silver Grand Am, us in our black clothes and sunglasses, recoiled from the sunlight like vampires. The sky was impossible, blue; green leaves of tobacco waving in the hot breeze. I stood in the middle of the road, a gothpunk scarecrow, to stop any traffic that might be coming. She grabbed the turtle, carried it fast in the direction it had been going, slow.

*

The poor thing was bewildered, mad. Tried to thrash out of her hands but was too small and slow to do so. We saved that turtle and that’s what I want again. That moment of feeling like eldritch gods, like we’d done something right for once. Didn’t disappoint for once. But more so, just to be tramping with someone who will stop a car dangerously in the middle of the road, just to keep one small thing alive.

from Reckless Chants #20: A Field Guide to Vanished Things (May 2014)

Maybe soon I’ll go back and wander the hidden places of Walker’s Point and Bayview. I’ll go back to the train yard and watch the freights roll by, I’ll go sit by the Kinnickinnic River (not all progress is bad: there has been a huge effort toward cleaning up that river in recent years) and dream of ghosts. Or perhaps I’ll get lost somewhere in my own town. I’ll get muddy down by the Root River. I’ll take photos of the old Schlitz ad on the side of that bar down the street, and the beautiful old brick train station (it’s now used as a waiting area for bus-riders, but it still says C&NW RY on the side). I’ll explore the faraway nearby. I’ll get lost in my own town. I’ll lose people and places and things, but I’ll gain stories. And then I’ll tell them to you.

Now Make a Zine // Jessie Lynn McMains, August 2023

Reckless Chants #27: to resist despair

I entered this issue of my zine into this year's Broken Pencil Zine Awards, in the perzine category, and I recently found out it didn't even get nominated, let alone win. I was venting about it on Facebook and said: "I should make a promo image for it that says something like this zine didn't win any awards, but previous issues got good reviews in "Maximum Rocknroll," and it's been compared to "Cometbus" several times." One of my friends said: "You should make something like that, it's a clever way of handling your disappointment with humor and style." So I did! I also made some other promo images, featuring collages and excerpts from the issue.

Lurking late

Chicago and December

Trying to find my roost    one lidded, late afternoon,    the consolation of color    worked up like neediness,    like craving chocolate,    I’m at Art Institute favorites:    Velasquez’s “Servant,”    her bashful attention fixed    to place things just right,    Beckmann’s “Self-Portrait,”    whose fishy fingers seem    never to do a day’s work,    the great stone lions outside    monumentally pissed    by jumbo wreaths and ribbons    municipal good cheer    yoked around their heads.    Mealy mist. Furred air.    I walk north across    the river, Christmas lights    crushed on skyscraper glass,    bling stringing Michigan Ave.,    sunlight’s last-gasp sighing    through the artless fog.    Vague fatigued promise hangs    in the low darkened sky    when bunched scrawny starlings rattle up from trees,    switchback and snag like tossed rags dressing    the bare wintering branches,    black-on-black shining,    and I’m in a moment    more like a fore-moment:    from the sidewalk, watching them    poised without purpose,    I feel lifted inside the common    hazards and orders of things    when from their stillness,    the formal, aimless, not-waiting birds    erupt again, clap, elated weather- making wing-clouds changing,    smithereened back and forth,    now already gone to follow    the river’s running course.