Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next)
Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next)
Publisher Verso Books
Author Dean Spade
Around the world, people are faced with crisis after crisis, from the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change-induced fires, floods, and storms to the ongoing horrors of mass incarceration, brutal immigration enforcement, endemic gender violence, and severe wealth inequality. As governments fail to respond to—or actively engineer—each crisis, ordinary people are finding bold and innovative ways to share resources and support vulnerable members of their communities. This survival work, when done alongside social movement demands for transformative change, is called mutual aid. This book is about mutual aid: why it is so important, what it looks like, and how to do it. It provides a grassroots theory of mutual aid, describes how mutual aid has been a part of all larger, powerful social movements, and offers concrete tools for organizing, such as how to work in groups, decision-making process, how to prevent and address conflict, and how to deal with burnout. Mutual aid isn’t charity: it’s a form of organizing where people get to create new systems of care and generosity so we can survive.
Filed Under
Author Dean Spade
Around the world, people are faced with crisis after crisis, from the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change-induced fires, floods, and storms to the ongoing horrors of mass incarceration, brutal immigration enforcement, endemic gender violence, and severe wealth inequality. As governments fail to respond to—or actively engineer—each crisis, ordinary people are finding bold and innovative ways to share resources and support vulnerable members of their communities. This survival work, when done alongside social movement demands for transformative change, is called mutual aid. This book is about mutual aid: why it is so important, what it looks like, and how to do it. It provides a grassroots theory of mutual aid, describes how mutual aid has been a part of all larger, powerful social movements, and offers concrete tools for organizing, such as how to work in groups, decision-making process, how to prevent and address conflict, and how to deal with burnout. Mutual aid isn’t charity: it’s a form of organizing where people get to create new systems of care and generosity so we can survive.
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Pandemic Solidarity: Mutual Aid during the Covid-19 Crisis
Pandemic Solidarity: Mutual Aid during the Covid-19 Crisis
Publisher Pluto Press
Author Marina Sitrin, Colectiva Sembrar
In times of crisis, when institutions of power are laid bare, people turn to one another. Pandemic Solidarity collects firsthand experiences from around the world of people creating their own narratives of solidarity and mutual aid in the time of the global crisis of COVID-19. The world's media was quick to weave a narrative of selfish individualism, full of empty supermarket shelves and con-men. However, if you scratch the surface, you find a different story of community and self-sacrifice. Looking at eighteen countries and regions, including India, Rojava, Taiwan, South Africa, Iraq and North America, the personal accounts in the book weave together to create a larger picture, revealing a universality of experience. Moving beyond the present, these stories reveal what an alternative society could look like, and reflect the skills and relationships we already have to create that society, challenging institutions of power that have already shown their fragility.
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Author Marina Sitrin, Colectiva Sembrar
In times of crisis, when institutions of power are laid bare, people turn to one another. Pandemic Solidarity collects firsthand experiences from around the world of people creating their own narratives of solidarity and mutual aid in the time of the global crisis of COVID-19. The world's media was quick to weave a narrative of selfish individualism, full of empty supermarket shelves and con-men. However, if you scratch the surface, you find a different story of community and self-sacrifice. Looking at eighteen countries and regions, including India, Rojava, Taiwan, South Africa, Iraq and North America, the personal accounts in the book weave together to create a larger picture, revealing a universality of experience. Moving beyond the present, these stories reveal what an alternative society could look like, and reflect the skills and relationships we already have to create that society, challenging institutions of power that have already shown their fragility.
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Inimitable Flowers
Inimitable Flowers
Publisher Auriane Benabou
Author Auriane Benabou
I created this coloring book the summer of 2020 partially as a way to heal and take time to process the events unfolding before us all. My idea was to create images of BIPOC joy occupying space in nature, a place where we are not usually imagined. The project is meant to eventually be sold to fund local activist/black led organizations in Providence and I am still searching for collaborators to make this a realization. Redistribution of wealth is just one small way to get people involved and gain interest in the movements toward abolition of the police, ICE, and prison and to garner support for organizations dedicated to protecting and uplifting the lives of BIPOC folx.
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Author Auriane Benabou
I created this coloring book the summer of 2020 partially as a way to heal and take time to process the events unfolding before us all. My idea was to create images of BIPOC joy occupying space in nature, a place where we are not usually imagined. The project is meant to eventually be sold to fund local activist/black led organizations in Providence and I am still searching for collaborators to make this a realization. Redistribution of wealth is just one small way to get people involved and gain interest in the movements toward abolition of the police, ICE, and prison and to garner support for organizations dedicated to protecting and uplifting the lives of BIPOC folx.
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Abolition: How We Keep Us Safe
Abolition: How We Keep Us Safe
Publisher Abolition Action
Author Abolition Action
In the spring of 2020, prison and policing abolitionist organizing collective, Abolition Action, worked with various contributors to collect, create and contextualize tools for strengthening relationships with our neighbors and local friends, meeting each others needs, and responding to crises without cops. This work culminated in a zine, available in its first edition online and in print.
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Author Abolition Action
In the spring of 2020, prison and policing abolitionist organizing collective, Abolition Action, worked with various contributors to collect, create and contextualize tools for strengthening relationships with our neighbors and local friends, meeting each others needs, and responding to crises without cops. This work culminated in a zine, available in its first edition online and in print.
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My Smutty Valentine: A Virtual Yearbook 2018-2020
My Smutty Valentine: A Virtual Yearbook 2018-2020
Publisher The Anchoress Syndicate
Author Editors: Gia Gonzales, John Istona, Becca Teich ; Designer: Grace Caiazza
For the past three years, The Anchoress Syndicate has hosted My Smutty Valentine, a night of queer poetry, performance, and art installations that foreground smut, the transgressive, and the grotesque, while honoring underground queer histories. Our events are experimental and playful while at the same time dedicated to materially supporting our communities via mutual aid. In March, we hosted our third annual MY SMUTTY VALENTINE, a night of queer smutty poetry & performance that doubled as a fundraiser for G.L.I.T.S. (Gays and Lesbians Living in a Transgender Society). Amidst the ongoing pandemic and uprising, and inspired by the revolutionary work of GLITS, we decided to gather our community to create a digital 'My Smutty Valentine Virtual Yearbook' with contributions by MSV artists and performers from the past three years. The yearbook was and continues to be sent out to all those who send in donations of $20 or more to support Black trans survival and liberation. The yearbook is also available to any Black person who would like it, or to anyone financially unable to donate $20 at this time. The My Smutty Valentine Yearbook was and continues to be grounded in a distribution practice that prioritizes mutual aid. With your download of this PDF, we strongly urge you to donate to organizations and initiatives that directly benefit Black queer and trans people, some of which can be found here: http://bit.ly/BLACKQT
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Author Editors: Gia Gonzales, John Istona, Becca Teich ; Designer: Grace Caiazza
For the past three years, The Anchoress Syndicate has hosted My Smutty Valentine, a night of queer poetry, performance, and art installations that foreground smut, the transgressive, and the grotesque, while honoring underground queer histories. Our events are experimental and playful while at the same time dedicated to materially supporting our communities via mutual aid. In March, we hosted our third annual MY SMUTTY VALENTINE, a night of queer smutty poetry & performance that doubled as a fundraiser for G.L.I.T.S. (Gays and Lesbians Living in a Transgender Society). Amidst the ongoing pandemic and uprising, and inspired by the revolutionary work of GLITS, we decided to gather our community to create a digital 'My Smutty Valentine Virtual Yearbook' with contributions by MSV artists and performers from the past three years. The yearbook was and continues to be sent out to all those who send in donations of $20 or more to support Black trans survival and liberation. The yearbook is also available to any Black person who would like it, or to anyone financially unable to donate $20 at this time. The My Smutty Valentine Yearbook was and continues to be grounded in a distribution practice that prioritizes mutual aid. With your download of this PDF, we strongly urge you to donate to organizations and initiatives that directly benefit Black queer and trans people, some of which can be found here: http://bit.ly/BLACKQT
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invisibilities zine
invisibilities zine
Publisher invisibilities zine
Author Contributor-based submissions; introductions by Melina Mehr
invisibilities is a contributor-based zine centred around the experiences of various marginalized groups and the process of decoding our environment through translation, mythology, and memory. This DIY project aims to create community through the visibility of those often omitted and erased from popular and subculture narratives. Issue No. 1 collects the stories and visualizations of womxn living with hidden chronic illnesses, and Issue No. 2 focuses on the family histories of womxn pertaining to diaspora and immigration. Issue No. 3 is currently being developed and intends to consider the intersections of spirituality, anti-oppressive frameworks within the art world, and community care. invisibilities is self-published by Toronto-based writer Melina Mehr; the zines are printed at a local family-run print shop and assembled and packed in Melina’s living room. Submissions are currently volunteer based, and all sales stream directly back into printing and assembling costs. invisibilities serves as a digital and physical platform for individuals to expand creative networks, experiences, and values, and hopes to resonate with folks who are interested in alternative spaces, but fail to see themselves represented.
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Author Contributor-based submissions; introductions by Melina Mehr
invisibilities is a contributor-based zine centred around the experiences of various marginalized groups and the process of decoding our environment through translation, mythology, and memory. This DIY project aims to create community through the visibility of those often omitted and erased from popular and subculture narratives. Issue No. 1 collects the stories and visualizations of womxn living with hidden chronic illnesses, and Issue No. 2 focuses on the family histories of womxn pertaining to diaspora and immigration. Issue No. 3 is currently being developed and intends to consider the intersections of spirituality, anti-oppressive frameworks within the art world, and community care. invisibilities is self-published by Toronto-based writer Melina Mehr; the zines are printed at a local family-run print shop and assembled and packed in Melina’s living room. Submissions are currently volunteer based, and all sales stream directly back into printing and assembling costs. invisibilities serves as a digital and physical platform for individuals to expand creative networks, experiences, and values, and hopes to resonate with folks who are interested in alternative spaces, but fail to see themselves represented.
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The Legend of Mr. Pants: Korean Lesbian Taxi Driver Union
The Legend of Mr. Pants: Korean Lesbian Taxi Driver Union
Publisher Hyperlink Press
Author Taehee Whang
Most of legacy and presence of queer women before the internet era have been passed down orally if not erased. Based on surviving studies and interview from Troublers (2015), the zine trace back and imagine the life of butch (Mr. Pants) cab drivers and their queer femme mutual aid network and working class unionization in the heavily policed 1970s & 80s in South Korea.
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Author Taehee Whang
Most of legacy and presence of queer women before the internet era have been passed down orally if not erased. Based on surviving studies and interview from Troublers (2015), the zine trace back and imagine the life of butch (Mr. Pants) cab drivers and their queer femme mutual aid network and working class unionization in the heavily policed 1970s & 80s in South Korea.
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COVID-19 Action & Informative Design Series
COVID-19 Action & Informative Design Series
Publisher Instagram/Raina Wellman/Lauren Sarkissian
Author Raina Wellman (and certain collabs with Lauren Sarkissian)
This document is made up of informational posts I created to inform people about COVID-19 and other health/social issues. I took inspiration from my ongoing research project on infectious disease & visual communication, which has primarily focused on HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, syphilis, and smallpox. The projects “Shame is a Bad Public Health Tool”, “Pandemiquette,” “Assessing Symptoms and Risks,” “COVID-19 Updates,” and “Practical Guide to Protesting & Pandemic Prevention” were created in collaboration with Lauren Sarkissian, a MPH candidate at University of Washington. Both in collaborations with Lauren and independently, the goal of this work is to make urgent and often complicated information accessible, clear, and based in ongoing research.
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Author Raina Wellman (and certain collabs with Lauren Sarkissian)
This document is made up of informational posts I created to inform people about COVID-19 and other health/social issues. I took inspiration from my ongoing research project on infectious disease & visual communication, which has primarily focused on HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, syphilis, and smallpox. The projects “Shame is a Bad Public Health Tool”, “Pandemiquette,” “Assessing Symptoms and Risks,” “COVID-19 Updates,” and “Practical Guide to Protesting & Pandemic Prevention” were created in collaboration with Lauren Sarkissian, a MPH candidate at University of Washington. Both in collaborations with Lauren and independently, the goal of this work is to make urgent and often complicated information accessible, clear, and based in ongoing research.
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A Trying Time: An ILSSA Quaranzine for Working Together, Alone
A Trying Time: An ILSSA Quaranzine for Working Together, Alone
Publisher Impractical Labor (ILSSA)
Author Emily Larned & Bridget Elmer
Impractical Labor (ILSSA) is a union for reflective creative practice. As a union for artists and makers of all kinds, ILSSA focuses on improving the immaterial working conditions of our members. ILSSA publishes contemplative tools and resources and organizes participatory projects, exhibitions, and events. ILSSA publications typically take the form of a call-and-response. The "ILSSA News Bulletin," a letter and leaflet/poster, was mailed to current members on March 21, 2020, requesting submissions to this book “A Trying Time: An ILSSA Quaranzine for Working Together, Alone.” The book seeks “to document your activities, questions, challenges, suggestions, strategies, remote collaborations, invitations, reading lists, priorities, boundaries, and social distance projects. How has the Coronavirus / social distancing / shelter-in-place / remote everything affected your practice? What are you reading, and/or what do you hope to start soon? What new resources have you found? What are you trying?” ILSSA members' submissions from across the USA (and a handful around the world) are organized chronologically, color coded by weekday. Risograph printed, forthcoming fall 2020.
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Author Emily Larned & Bridget Elmer
Impractical Labor (ILSSA) is a union for reflective creative practice. As a union for artists and makers of all kinds, ILSSA focuses on improving the immaterial working conditions of our members. ILSSA publishes contemplative tools and resources and organizes participatory projects, exhibitions, and events. ILSSA publications typically take the form of a call-and-response. The "ILSSA News Bulletin," a letter and leaflet/poster, was mailed to current members on March 21, 2020, requesting submissions to this book “A Trying Time: An ILSSA Quaranzine for Working Together, Alone.” The book seeks “to document your activities, questions, challenges, suggestions, strategies, remote collaborations, invitations, reading lists, priorities, boundaries, and social distance projects. How has the Coronavirus / social distancing / shelter-in-place / remote everything affected your practice? What are you reading, and/or what do you hope to start soon? What new resources have you found? What are you trying?” ILSSA members' submissions from across the USA (and a handful around the world) are organized chronologically, color coded by weekday. Risograph printed, forthcoming fall 2020.
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Care Not Cops
Care Not Cops
Publisher Lucky Risograph
Author Julia Schaefer and Mark Anthony Hernandez Motaghy
Crown Heights Mutual Aid (CHMA) was formed in March 2020 during the onset of the COVID-19 crisis. We are a network of neighbors supporting one another and the most vulnerable in our community, mobilizing against the COVID-19 health crisis and the ongoing crises of state violence, food injustice, and housing inequality. CHMA is also a tool for building connections and reciprocal relationships: we all have something to offer, and we all have something we need as we struggle towards justice. This poster is intended to both spread awareness of how to get involved with Crown Heights Mutual Aid and fundraise for our neighbors’ groceries. “Care Not Cops” makes explicit that CHMA is a long-term project, and we are committed to building processes and finding sustainable solutions. Operating in the spirit of collective care and responsibility, we refuse to collaborate with law enforcement in our aid work; much of what we do is necessitated by the violence and oppression carried out by the police and America’s carceral apparatus. Lucky Risograph, who continues to offer free printing services for activists and movement organizers, printed all of our posters. All money raised went toward getting groceries to our neighbors.
Filed Under
Author Julia Schaefer and Mark Anthony Hernandez Motaghy
Crown Heights Mutual Aid (CHMA) was formed in March 2020 during the onset of the COVID-19 crisis. We are a network of neighbors supporting one another and the most vulnerable in our community, mobilizing against the COVID-19 health crisis and the ongoing crises of state violence, food injustice, and housing inequality. CHMA is also a tool for building connections and reciprocal relationships: we all have something to offer, and we all have something we need as we struggle towards justice. This poster is intended to both spread awareness of how to get involved with Crown Heights Mutual Aid and fundraise for our neighbors’ groceries. “Care Not Cops” makes explicit that CHMA is a long-term project, and we are committed to building processes and finding sustainable solutions. Operating in the spirit of collective care and responsibility, we refuse to collaborate with law enforcement in our aid work; much of what we do is necessitated by the violence and oppression carried out by the police and America’s carceral apparatus. Lucky Risograph, who continues to offer free printing services for activists and movement organizers, printed all of our posters. All money raised went toward getting groceries to our neighbors.
Filed Under
ILSSA News Bulletin
ILSSA News Bulletin
Publisher Impractical Labor (ILSSA)
Author Emily Larned & Bridget Elmer
Impractical Labor (ILSSA) is a union for reflective creative practice. As a union for artists and makers of all kinds, ILSSA focuses on improving the immaterial working conditions of our members. ILSSA publishes contemplative resources and organizes participatory projects, exhibitions, and events. ILSSA publications typically take the form of a call-and-response.The "ILSSA News Bulletin," a letter and leaflet/poster, was mailed to current members on March 21, 2020: "Regardless of our personal situations, we find ourselves disconnected from our usual patterns, habits, interactions, assumptions, routines, and faced with new ways of being, doing, and making. Some of us find ourselves aboslutely exhausted. Some of us wonder about other modes, possibilities, potentials. What have we been doing, that has gotten us here to now? How can we choose differently and contribute to something otherwise?" The publication seeks submissions for two forthcoming projects: "A Trying Time: An ILSSA Quaranzine for Working Together, Alone" seeks to document the experiences of impractical laborers during the early days of COVID-19 quarantine, and "Surveying the State of the 2nd ILSSA Union" requests impractical laborers to self-assess their working conditions as artists using a rubric borrowed from sociology. Printed risograph & letterpress, hand folded, stamped, & signed.
Filed Under
Author Emily Larned & Bridget Elmer
Impractical Labor (ILSSA) is a union for reflective creative practice. As a union for artists and makers of all kinds, ILSSA focuses on improving the immaterial working conditions of our members. ILSSA publishes contemplative resources and organizes participatory projects, exhibitions, and events. ILSSA publications typically take the form of a call-and-response.The "ILSSA News Bulletin," a letter and leaflet/poster, was mailed to current members on March 21, 2020: "Regardless of our personal situations, we find ourselves disconnected from our usual patterns, habits, interactions, assumptions, routines, and faced with new ways of being, doing, and making. Some of us find ourselves aboslutely exhausted. Some of us wonder about other modes, possibilities, potentials. What have we been doing, that has gotten us here to now? How can we choose differently and contribute to something otherwise?" The publication seeks submissions for two forthcoming projects: "A Trying Time: An ILSSA Quaranzine for Working Together, Alone" seeks to document the experiences of impractical laborers during the early days of COVID-19 quarantine, and "Surveying the State of the 2nd ILSSA Union" requests impractical laborers to self-assess their working conditions as artists using a rubric borrowed from sociology. Printed risograph & letterpress, hand folded, stamped, & signed.
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Asian American Feminist Antibodies: Care in the Time of Coronavirus
Asian American Feminist Antibodies: Care in the Time of Coronavirus
Publisher Asian American Feminist Collective
Author Rachel Kuo, Matilda Sabal, Salonee Bhaman, Tiffany Tso, and Vivian Shaw
With the COVID-19 pandemic neither behind us or solely ahead of us, this zine offers a way to make meaning of the coronavirus crisis through long-standing practices of care that come out of Asian American histories and politics. We bring together first-hand accounts and analyses from our communities, including health and service workers and caregivers on the frontlines, students, people living with chronic illness, journalists, and organizers. Together, this collection of stories, essays, and artwork shows how we experience, resist, and grapple with a viral outbreak that has been racialized as Asian, is spoken of in the language of contagion and invasion, and reveals the places where our collective social safety net is particularly threadbare.
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Author Rachel Kuo, Matilda Sabal, Salonee Bhaman, Tiffany Tso, and Vivian Shaw
With the COVID-19 pandemic neither behind us or solely ahead of us, this zine offers a way to make meaning of the coronavirus crisis through long-standing practices of care that come out of Asian American histories and politics. We bring together first-hand accounts and analyses from our communities, including health and service workers and caregivers on the frontlines, students, people living with chronic illness, journalists, and organizers. Together, this collection of stories, essays, and artwork shows how we experience, resist, and grapple with a viral outbreak that has been racialized as Asian, is spoken of in the language of contagion and invasion, and reveals the places where our collective social safety net is particularly threadbare.
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Urgency Reader 2: Mutual Aid Publishing During Crisis
Urgency Reader 2: Mutual Aid Publishing During Crisis
Publisher Queer.Archive.Work
Author Paul Soulellis, editor
Urgency Reader 2: Mutual Aid Publishing During Crisis began with a 10-day open call that was announced on March 18, 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The call for work was motivated by two desires: 1—to collectively document some of the extraordinary conditions, dynamics, and emotions being experienced while in quarantine, and 2—to provide some relief to artists and writers impacted by the crisis, in both creative and monetary forms. How might publishing as artistic practice embody communal care? More than 100 artists and writers submitted work, mostly generated during quarantine. Contributors were compensated a total of $2,295, using funds from a 2020 Rhode Island State Council on the Arts grant, plus an anonymous donation. 65 of the 110 contributors donated their share of the compensation back to the pool, resulting in 45 contributors each receiving a stipend of $51. An edition of 25 copies of Urgency Reader 2 was printed and assembled at Queer.Archive.Work during the first week of April 2020. A high-quality scan of the printed edition is available for free download (see below). Physical copies of the reader have been permanently placed in our library for future visitors
Filed Under
Author Paul Soulellis, editor
Urgency Reader 2: Mutual Aid Publishing During Crisis began with a 10-day open call that was announced on March 18, 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The call for work was motivated by two desires: 1—to collectively document some of the extraordinary conditions, dynamics, and emotions being experienced while in quarantine, and 2—to provide some relief to artists and writers impacted by the crisis, in both creative and monetary forms. How might publishing as artistic practice embody communal care? More than 100 artists and writers submitted work, mostly generated during quarantine. Contributors were compensated a total of $2,295, using funds from a 2020 Rhode Island State Council on the Arts grant, plus an anonymous donation. 65 of the 110 contributors donated their share of the compensation back to the pool, resulting in 45 contributors each receiving a stipend of $51. An edition of 25 copies of Urgency Reader 2 was printed and assembled at Queer.Archive.Work during the first week of April 2020. A high-quality scan of the printed edition is available for free download (see below). Physical copies of the reader have been permanently placed in our library for future visitors
Filed Under
¿Conoce Sus Derechos Como Inquilino? Know Your Tenant Rights?
¿Conoce Sus Derechos Como Inquilino? Know Your Tenant Rights?
Publisher Solidarity Jersey City
"¿CONOCE SUS DERECHOS COMO INQUILINO? KNOW YOUR TENANT RIGHTS? With renters making up almost 70% of Hudson County, New Jersey residents this zine provided essential information on how renters can protect themselves from the negative effects of renting during a pandemic. Knowing that a city of renters cannot get by during a pandemic without being guaranteed their housing as a human right we created this zine in conjunction with a campaign to cancel rent. As Solidarity Jersey City’s first publication we also included information about the organization to give background on who we are. Knowing that essential information often gets lost in translation we made an effort to provide the zine in both Spanish and English with hopes to release subsequent zines in other languages to represent the diverse communities that make up Jersey City."
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"¿CONOCE SUS DERECHOS COMO INQUILINO? KNOW YOUR TENANT RIGHTS? With renters making up almost 70% of Hudson County, New Jersey residents this zine provided essential information on how renters can protect themselves from the negative effects of renting during a pandemic. Knowing that a city of renters cannot get by during a pandemic without being guaranteed their housing as a human right we created this zine in conjunction with a campaign to cancel rent. As Solidarity Jersey City’s first publication we also included information about the organization to give background on who we are. Knowing that essential information often gets lost in translation we made an effort to provide the zine in both Spanish and English with hopes to release subsequent zines in other languages to represent the diverse communities that make up Jersey City."
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