Our summer sale ends in 12 days, and if you order your subscription in the next few days, you will be among the first lucky folks to have our brand new fall issue delivered straight to your mailbox, hot off the press!

Until Sept. 1, 2010, subscription are only $12! After Sept. 1 we will be increasing our subscription price so that this volunteer-run, independent media organization can keep up with rising postal rates and other costs.

Order your subscription here. Already have one? How about a back-to-school present for your sister, your best friend, your school library, your neighbour….

Shameless is having a summer sale!

From now until Sept. 1, 2010, you can buy a subscription for only $12! Back issues for only $5! After Sept. 1 we will be increasing our subscription price so that this volunteer-run, independent media organization can keep up with rising postal rates and other costs.

Order soon, as our brand new fall issue will be mailed in a few weeks.

QSAzine Issue #3, My Islam, is launching tomorrow at the Art Gallery of Ontario (317 Dundas St. W., Toronto), from 6-8 p.m.

The free event will showcase videos, visual art, dance and readings by young Muslim and trans people, including: Azza Abbaro, Golie Moulaie, Samira Mohyeddin, Nooreen Rahemtullah, Wilo Mohammed, Farrah Khan, and Areen Khaled. Secret Trial Five will perform, and the event will be hosted by Idil Hyder and May El-Abdallah.

From the press release: “AQSAZINE is a grassroots zine for 16-35 year old women and trans people who identify as Muslim. It is a creative avenue to express ourselves, share our experiences, and connect with others.” The My Islam After Party (with yummy food and music!) is happening at Beaver Hall Artists’ Co-operative, 29 McCaul St., from 8 p.m.

Shameless is profiling AQSAzine in our new fall issue, which should be out in August.

This is just a reminder that you have less than one week to put your name forward to join Team Shameless. Here’s a reminder of what we’re looking for:

Shameless magazine, Canada’s independent, feminist voice for young women and trans youth, is expanding its editorial team. Are you devoted to grassroots publishing? Do you have a commitment to anti-oppression and inclusive feminist politics? Do you have some time to volunteer and a vision for Shameless? Then we need you.

We are looking for smart, sassy, shameless people to fill the following roles:

• A Managing Editor, who will oversee the magazine’s editorial production, assign and edit stories, work with writers and collaborate with editorial staff.
• A Web Editor, who will develop projects and content for the website, coordinate our community blog, and develop a link between the print and online components of the magazine.
• Associate Editors, to assign and edit stories and work with writers.

(more inside…)

Shameless magazine, Canada’s independent, feminist voice for young women and trans youth, is expanding its editorial team. Are you devoted to grassroots publishing? Do you have a commitment to anti-oppression and inclusive feminist politics? Do you have some time to volunteer and a vision for Shameless? Then we need you.

We are looking for smart, sassy, shameless people to fill the following roles:

• A Managing Editor, who will oversee the magazine’s editorial production, assign and edit stories, work with writers and collaborate with editorial staff.
• A Web Editor, who will develop projects and content for the website, coordinate our community blog, and develop a link between the print and online components of the magazine.
• Associate Editors, to assign and edit stories and work with writers.

We are looking for people who work well collaboratively, who have a good sense of Shameless’s editorial vision, who are committed to anti-racist feminist politics, who have some editorial or publishing skills, and who are excellent communicators and work well over email (Shameless has no office).

Please check out our detailed job descriptions.

Like all roles on this volunteer-run magazine, these positions are unpaid. (If you have ideas for how we can change that, then please get in touch!)

We strongly encourage applications from women of colour and First Nations women and those with experience with anti-racist feminist politics and/or anti-racist feminist organizations. Preference will be given to residents of the Greater Toronto Area to facilitate face-to-face meetings with magazine staff.

Please email a resume, a cover letter containing your ideas for the magazine/website, and three writing samples (published or unpublished) to volunteer@shamelessmag.com. The deadline for applications is Monday, March 22, 2010. We’ll contact you if we’d like to set up an interview.

There’s a lot of information circulating from organizations accepting money for relief efforts in Port-au-Prince. Rather than going through giant communications corporations, why not donate directly to groups on the ground in Haiti?

In my search for social-justice oriented organizations, I’ve come up with the women’s organization Madre and The Haiti Emergency Relief Fund. The Nation’s list of grassroots and progressive organizations is here.

Where will you be donating?

AQSAzine, a grassroots zine for 16-35 year-old women and trans people who identify as Muslim, is launching its second issue at a free event hosted in partnership with The AGO Youth Council. The event is also a launch for Making Noise! Muslim women and trans people video project, and Jasmine Magazine, the first Palestinian Magazine in Toronto.

Making Noise! is an exciting hands-on media arts training that addresses the invisibility and negative portrayals of young Muslim women and trans people in the media, supported by the Urban Alliance on Race Relations.

The event will showcase videos, visual art, and readings by Azza Abbaro, Shadi Eskandani, Sidrah Ladin, Sara Mir, Samira Mohyeddin, Shara Mohammed, Golie Moulaie, and Sahar Rizi.

Musical performances by Farheen Beg & Arun Chaudhuri and Tanya Jacobs.

Dance performance by Raja Jalebi and Sheesha YaDil.

Plus: silk screening and zine-making workshops.

This event is part of the 16 Days to THRIVE! Challenging Violence Against Racialized Women and Our Communities.

Friday Dec. 4th, 6-8 p.m.
Art Gallery of Ontario
Anne Tannenbaum Gallery School
317 Dundas Street W., Toronto

There are few jobs in North America where exploitation of gender, race, and class intersect so sharply as in domestic work, where immigrant women from around the world labour in the homes of wealthy families in what are often dismal conditions: low wages, no security, fear of violence and deportation, and overwork. The situation of live-in caregivers (as they’re officially called by the state, erasing the fact that these women work, hard) in Canada briefly made headlines when MP Ruby Dhalla was accused of mistreating Magdalene Gordo and Richelyn Tongso. There has been a lot of academic and activist attention to the struggles of domestic workers in Canada, with groups calling for the elimination of the government program that capitalizes on historically undervalued work and the desperate economic situations of women around the world.

And so it is inspiring to read Lizzy Ratner’s article “The New Domestic Order,” a piece that describes the courage domestic workers in New York City have mustered to fight back against abuses and call for a Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights, which could be the first of its kind. Women are calling for “severance and overtime pay, advance notice of termination, one day off a week, holidays, healthcare and annual cost of living increases, among other fundamental rights.” Seems pretty basic, huh? Ratner’s article looks at the history of domestic workers’ struggles for rights in the US and outlines the global political economic conditions that compel so many women around the world to migrate to work in other women’s homes. The story is heartbreaking and exhilarating; well worth a read.

Net neutrality – the idea that the internet should be universally accessible to everyone without internet service providers deciding on levels and speeds of access – is shaping up to be an important media activist battle, especially for those of us who rely on the internet to produce alternative, independent media such as this very blog you’re reading.

SaveOurNet.ca, the grassroots group working to keep the internet free from corporate interference, is holding a series of town hall meetings in Ottawa, Toronto, and Vancouver to bring folks together to discuss the issue of net neutrality and the future of the internet. The meetings will be streamed live at 7:30 p.m. on Monday, June 8, at theREALnews.com, rabble.ca, TheTyee, Beyond Robson, and SaveOurNet.ca.

If you’d like to attend in person, see the details for each meeting, below (plus, there’s a dance party in Vancouver!)

(more inside…)