BRUSHFIRE!: Florida Anarchist Networking & News 'Zine
We are members of Orlando Food Not Bombs and we want to tell you about an
exciting new project that has originated with our collective. We have
decided to start a monthly newsletter for the Florida anarchist movement.
It will be called BRUSHFIRE!, and we would like your community to be part
of it. Our hope is that this newsletter will promote information sharing
between anarchists across the state of Florida, helping our movement grow
and create the connections that will make it possible for us to work
collectively on other regional and statewide projects. Hopefully,
BRUSHFIRE! will fill the void left by the demise of the newsletter
published by FRAN (the Florida Radical Activist Network) in the late '90s. It
would be the responsibility not of one city, but of comrades around the
state, with production of each issue shifting to a different city. This is
a project that would require cooperation between all the
anti-authoritarian communities in Florida, which would help us get to know
each other better and gain experience working with other groups.
Here is how it would work:
We here in Orlando hope to put out the first issue on November 1.
After that, we would shift responsibility for publishing the next issue to
another community in the state. The idea is to have each issue published
by a different community in Florida. We are trying to get a publishing
schedule set up for the next year or so. Would you all like to sign up
for a month or two?
Every month communities and individuals from around the state would submit
material to be published in BRUSHFIRE! Submissions will be sent to the e-mail address brushfiresumbissions@gmail.com. Control of this e-mail will
be transferred to the publishing community each month and the password
changed. We have also set up a website brushfire.biz for BRUSHFIRE! that currently we are working on so that people have a main site to go to to get information about the newsletter. This website will have a link to a
messageboard we have set up as well. This messageboard will be used for
general discussion and organization among the people organizing the
newsletter, and also as a forum to field general questions. For example,
if Tallahassee signed up to put out the January issue, but they aren't going
to be able to do it, they would post to the messageboard to work out the
problem. Also, if someone wants to ask a question, it also can be posted
to the messageboard.
For distribution we are hoping to find a person in each community to whom
the publishing community can send a master copy through the mail. This
person would then be responsible for scamming or "acquiring" copies and
distributing them to the other members of the community.
The submission deadline for material to be published would be the 15th of
the previous month. This means that items submitted on Dec. 8th would be
published in the January issue of BRUSHFIRE!, which would have a deadline of being in
the mail by the 1st of January. What to publish and what to turn down
would be up to the discretion of the publishing community for that month.
We are thinking that things to be submitted could include announcements
for events (like the South Florida Radical Activist Conference), community
reports (very awesome), poetry, stories, interesting news articles, action
reports, etc., etc...
The first of each month the publishing community would transfer
responsibility to the next community that is publishing and pass on the
contacts for the distributors in each community, the password to the email
address and whatever else needs to be transfered to allow the next
community to put out the next issue.
Therefore, if you can, would you all like to sign up for one of the empty spots on the following schedule? (If you could at least sign up for one
for the upcoming months that would be the best) Also please provide us
with a phone number and email for your community. We do plan to publish
the e-mail of the contact for each community in each issue and also on the
main Brushfire! website.
Which community is going to publish which month:
November '07: Orlando
December: ?
January '08: ?
February: ?
March: ?
April: Miami
May: ?
June: ?
July: ?
August: ?
September: ?
October: ?
November: ?
December: ?
Also, if you are interested in being a part of this project, could you
please give us the name, e-mail and physical address of
someone in your community who will be responsible for receiving the master
copy in the mail and distributing copies. This information will of course
be kept confidential and only used by those sending the master copies.
The deadline to submit materials for the November issue BRUSHFIRE! is October 15th.
You can start submitting things to brushfiresumbissions@gmail.com right
away!
Thanks so much and we really look forward to getting this project going.
Any questions, comments, or suggestions on our ideas please e-mail us at
OrlandoFNB@orlandofoodnotbombs.org
The radical community in Orlando
P.S.: BRUSHFIRE! currently is seeking correspondents in the following communities:
Fort Myers
Gainesville
Jacksonville
Pensacola
Sarasota
St. Augustine
Tallahassee
Tampa/St. Petersburg