Naughty North

Anthem Suing Maine for Guaranteed Profits - Rally and Protest March 18/19

2010-03-07T22:42:00.005-05:00

Even though mainstream gays are hell bent on trying to make marriage a prerequisite for access to health care, for-profit health insurance companies are doing their best to profit off illness and death. Below is the call out to protest the only pre-existing condition that health insurance companies can cope with: greed!

Queers, we've got to show up in force at this rally and help knock Anthem off their high horse!

Stop HIV/AIDS State Budget Cuts!

2010-01-08T11:22:00.001-05:00

Please join the HIV community to tell Maine lawmakers that cutting HIV care services will hurt people living with HIV/AIDS!

State Supplemental Budget Hearings
Monday, January 11 at 2:00pm
Maine State House, Appropriations Committee Room
Wear RED to Support HIV/AIDS

Proposed budget cuts in MaineCare services could reduce HIV case management services by $80,000 statewide! This cut could result in a loss of services, waiting lists for people living with HIV/AIDS, and/or reductions in client assistance funds! There are more people living with HIV/AIDS in Maine than ever before and, make no mistake about it, proposed budget cuts will hurt real Maine people. We MUST show our state officials that we cannot neglect those affected by HIV/AIDS and urge them to restore these vital funds!

We need YOU to join us so people can continue live healthy and productive lives regardless of status!

For more information about this event, or if you are interested in presenting testimony, please contact Andrew Bossie at 207-899-9983.

Mainer's Against Equality, in video and print

2009-12-16T19:32:00.005-05:00

Two media pieces about the gay marriage campaign in maine are hot off the presses. Check out the video below which premiered on the Maine Video Activist Network this month as well as the article from Conrad which appears on the blog bilerico and in print via UltraViolet!

Article Link: Against Equality, In Maine and Everywhere

Solidarity Supper - December 19th in Turner

2009-12-14T23:58:00.005-05:00

The JED Collective, bang@rang, Faire-Op invite you to the 7th Annual Solidarity Supper to benefit: Outright L/A (Lewiston) & Treatment Action Campaign (South Africa)

Please join us this Saturday December 19th @ Turner Center Grange (directions at www.jedcollective.org)

5:30 Harvest Supper
6:30 Music, Performances and Auction

Music by Ethan Miller & Seth Yentes (riotfolk.org/?m=katebovermanethanmiller)
Wiffletree -Seth & Tyler Yentes- (myspace.com/whiffletreemusic)
Evan Greer (riotfolk.org/?m=evangreer)

Every year the Solidarity Supper raises money for important organizations in our community and in the global south. This year we are raising money for Outright L/A (based in Lewiston) and Treatment Action Campaign (based in South Africa).

In a climate in which open discrimination against queer and trans members of our community is still welcomed and accepted we feel it is necessary to show support for the one organization working with queer, trans, questioning, and allied youth in Lewiston/Auburn.

Outright L/A supports queer, questioning, and allied youth through working with local GSAs to offer support in schools and by offering weekly "drop-in" hours on Friday nights - where youth have a safe space to watch movies, do arts projects, or just hang out with one another.

Treatment Action Campaign, based in South Africa, has the vision of A unified quality health care system which provides equal access to HIV prevention and treatment services for all people. Their mission is to ensure that every person living with HIV has access to quality comprehensive prevention and treatment services to live a healthy life.

Please help support these incredible and important organizations!

Also if you would like to help out with food, please contact Daphne: 266-5895 daphneloring@gmail.com

General questions: 782-3604
More info: www.jedcollective.org
Need a place to stay? Need a carpool?
Give us a call and we'll try to accommodate: 782-3604 or 266-5895

World AIDS Day 2009 - Put the Pressure On!

2009-11-14T16:54:00.003-05:00

Maine AIDS Alliance Call to Action:

December 1, 2009 10:30am to Noon
Maine State House, Hall of Flags, Augusta

Please join the HIV/AIDS community for an event with lawmakers, community leaders, and those affected by HIV in a call to action at the Maine State House. Looming state funding cuts are threatening our prevention, education, housing and care programs here in Maine. We must show lawmakers that HIV/AIDS continues to affect thousands in Maine and cutting these programs will have very serious effects on the health and well being of Mainers.

Join us to show lawmakers and the Maine public that we MUST maintain vital HIV/AIDS services.

On display will be panels of the AIDS Quilt and 1,300 individualized postcards from Mainers across the state; each postcard will represent one person living with HIV/AIDS in the state of Maine.

FMI contact Andrew Bossie at 207-899-9983 or andrew.bossiegmailcom

Facebook Event Page Event

MaineTransNet Announces Transgender Day of Remembrance Event in Portland

2009-11-12T22:04:00.002-05:00

The Transgender Day of Remembrance is an international annual event to remember the individuals who were murdered in the past year due to anti-transgender bias. Please join MaineTransNet on Saturday, November 21 at 5:30 in Portland's Monument Square to remember and honor those who lost their lives this year simply for being who they are.

Following the vigil, there will be a potluck dinner at 6:30 at Williston West (32 Thomas St., Portland) to celebrate our community and give thanks for the lives and opportunities that we enjoy. Please bring some food to share if you are able.

We hope you can join us on the 21st.

Questions? Contact MaineTransNet at mtn@mainetransnet.org or 408-1685.

(facebook event link)

One Naughty Norther Responds to Gay Marriage Defeat in Maine on KBOO Radio!

2009-11-09T22:16:00.003-05:00

On Monday, November 9th Conrad was interviewed on the Old Mole Variety Show, a program of KBOO 90.7fm in Portland Oregon. KBOO is an all volunteer run community radio station and the Old Mole Show is socialist feminist social justice radio program. The segment is available below and linked back to KBOO's site! Enjoy!

Old Mole Variety Show on KBOO

Queer Theory, Stonewalled - Nov 17th in Waterville!

2009-10-24T22:31:00.003-04:00

Tuesday November 17th, 4-6pm in Lovejoy 103, Colby College, Waterville, Maine.

Light refreshments, All are welcome!

In 1990, Eve Sedgwick boldly announced what for many gays and lesbians by then seemed obvious: “The closet is the defining structure for gay oppression in this century.” Periodizing The Closet, Sedgwick specifies that “the phrase ‘the closet’ as a publicly intelligible signifier for gay-related epistemological issues is made available, obviously, only by the difference made by the post-Stonewall gay politics oriented around coming out of the closet.” Characterizing these politics in an early prefiguration of the political organizing and theorizing that has of late come to be known as intersectionality, bar-goer Philip Eagles affirmed of Stonewall, “It was the heart and soul of the Village because it had every kind of person there.” But in the decades since Stonewall, “every kind of person” has not received equal play time in Queer Theory-- certainly not the kind of person who happens to be a sex worker. In contrast with their gay and lesbian comrades at the altar, the ghosts of sex workers still sit on their barstools at the Stonewall Inn, “waiting for their turn at justice” (as Erotic Services Providers Union founder Maxine Doogan puts it). Given this profound disconnect between Queer Theory and the Sex Worker Rights Movement-- movements that would to many seem highly compatible and/or mutually implicated movements, predicated as they both are on a resistance to sexual stigmatization and marginalization--my intent with this talk is three fold: 1) to signal the curious silences that have from the inception of Queer Theory enshrouded the subject of prostitution/sex work, 2) to read into these silences —to consider them, per Sedgwick’s articulation of the silences enshrouding The Closet, as “speech acts” in and of themselves; and 3) to sketch the losses Queer Theory has suffered in the wake of its failure to make common cause with the Sex Worker Rights Movement.

Gay Marriage is not Universal Health Care

2009-10-19T22:39:00.008-04:00

As the gay marriage and health care reform debates rage on in our ground zero state, we can't help but wonder how we got so off track. Since when did a corporate friendly "public option" replace our demands for trans inclusive universal health care? How did shared health care plans through our soon-to-be spouses replace our demand for health care for all people of every class, including working class queers who still won't have health care once they're happily coupled because neither of them have it from their employer in the first place. How did so many of us get sucked in to these distractions? And a further burning question... Why should only married people be allowed to live?

To remind ourselves, and our larger communities, that neither gay marriage nor health care reform anything short of universal single payer is going to bring us any closer to the kind of health care access we've been dreaming, we postered both Portland in Lewiston with our newest broadside. Queers must demand universal health care for all the fags, dykes, trannies and queers, even those of us who are marginalized, poor, disabled, elderly and/or poz.

and yes, there's even a historical precedent of queers fighting for universal health care in maine, like this ACT UP/Portland rally in 1994 documented by Annette Dragon for the old gay paper, Apex.

Panel Discussion From Future of the Past: Reviving the Queer Archives Posted!6

2009-07-06T16:09:00.006-04:00

for higher quality player click here!

On June 18th, 2009 over sixty people participated in the panel discussion accompanying the exhibition, Future of the Past: Reviving the Queer Archives. The panelist, Susie R. Bock, Erica Rand, Ryan Conrad and Jen Hodsdon, opened the dialog by sharing their personal experiences with queer archiving and activism in Maine. A lively dynamic discussion followed exploring a wide range of issues. For more information about the exhibition, go to exhibition website.

This exhibition and panel event were made possible by the generous support of the Maine Community Foundation’s Equity Fund, Naughty North!, Resources for Organizing and Social Change, Jean Byers Sampson Center for Diversity in Maine at the University of Southern Maine, Moth Press, and the Maine College of Art Graduate Studies Program.

Future of the Past: Reviving the Queer Archives Panel Discussion - June 18

2009-06-09T11:51:00.004-04:00

There will be a panel discussion accompanying the Future of the Past exhibition during Southern Maine Pride week. The panel will focus on Inter-generational queer/trans activism and how we will continue to document and tell our stories. Light refreshments will be served.

Panelist Include:

Susie R. Bock was hired as Head of USM’s Special Collections in May 1999. In 2002 she was appointed Director of the Jean Byers Sampson Center for Diversity in Maine. Both positions make her responsible for developing and caring for the LGBT Collection which contains the papers of individuals and the records of organizations active Maine’s LGBT communities.

Erica Rand is a writer, critic, activist, and Professor of Art and Visual Culture and of Women and Gender Studies at Bates College. Her writings include Barbie’s Queer Accessories and the Ellis Island Snow Globe, and she serves on the board of the journal Radical Teacher. In the 1990s, she participated in many of the political actions chronicled in Annette Dragon’s photographs and wrote a sex/politics advice column called Ask Thighmaster: Advice with Holes for Apex, the publication that Dragon co-founded.

Ryan Conrad is an MFA candidate in the Studio Arts Program at the Maine College of Art and a radical queer activist living in Lewiston, Maine. Both his academic work and activism center around the theory and practice of radical queer activism, queer historiographies and queer cultural resistance. He is a member of the Maine based radical queer direct action collective, the Naughty North!, and an ardent archivist.

Jen Hodsdon is a lesbian mom and a graduate of the Stonecoast MFA program in creative writing at the University of Southern Maine. She has varied experience in local activism, including co-hosting a radio show on WMPG, planning the Transgender Day of Remembrance, coordinating the Maine SpeakOut Project, co-editing a zine of working class literature, and directing the Vagina Monologues. She has lived her whole life in the state of Maine.

http://www.futureofthepast.wordpress.com for more information!

Future of the Past: Reviving the Queer Archives Opens in One Week @ MECA

2009-05-30T08:08:00.002-04:00

Grand Opening: June 5th, 5 - 8pm
June 5th – July 3rd
First Floor, Front and Back Lobby
@ the Maine College of Art
522 Congress Street
Portland ME 04101

The exhibition features nearly one hundred photographs by Annette Dragon documenting the brilliant and varied queer activism that flourished in Maine over the last two decades of the 20th century. This exhibition seeks to revive and reexamine the histories depicted in her photographs in order to better understand the present and re-imagine our most fantastic queer futures.

Susie R. Bock, Director of the Jean Byers Sampson Center for Diversity in Maine at USM explains, “These photographs can reach across the decades to tell the story to generations not yet born. They are an invaluable resource for LGBT history in Maine.”

In addition to the exhibition, an intergenerational panel discussion on queer/trans activism in Maine will take place during Southern Maine Pride week in lecture hall 305 at MECA on Thursday the 18th of June at 6pm. Exhibition catalogs featuring all of the exhibition photographs as well as new writing by Susie Bock, Erica Rand and Ryan Conrad will be available at MECA and online.

More information about the panel discussion and exhibition catalog is available elsewhere on this website.

This exhibition has been made possible by the generous support of the Maine Community Foundation’s Equity Fund, Naughty North!, Resources for Organizing and Social Change, Jean Byers Sampson Center for Diversity in Maine at the University of Southern Maine, Moth Press, and the Maine College of Art Graduate Studies Program.

2009-05-25T10:59:00.006-04:00

check out this year's dyke march in portland! info on their website!

* * *

The mission of the Portland, Maine Dyke March is to create an empowering movement that fosters community and celebration for dykes and the people who love them. The Portland Dyke March seeks to be positive, feminist, diverse and community-driven in all of its endeavors. We welcome anyone with a past or present connection to the dyke community.

Montreal Workshop a Huge Success!

2009-05-24T22:42:00.003-04:00

Over 125 people packed into our workshop for a dialog about language barriers, inter-generational organizing, rural/urban divides, and the US/Canada border. We had great conversations that tended to focus most on inter-generational organizing and rural/urban divides, but all four topics were covered by presenters and participants. Once a few folks from the workshops have some time to collect the notes and put together a report back we will send it out! We also had the workshop recorded, so these notes will be detailed!

Till then, hold tight!

Strategizing Queer Insurgency! @ the Montreal Anarchist Bookfair

2009-05-15T11:02:00.003-04:00

Montreal Anarchist Bookfair

details about the workshop some NN! folks are helping present:

Sunday, MAY 17, 2009
3pm – Room 119 @ CEDA
Strategizing queer insurgency!: Re-centering marginalized queer issues from an anarchist perspective (eng.)

40 years after the Stonewall riots, who has been left on the margins of the radical queer movement? Join us for a strategy session around how we as anarchist queer organizers deal with obstacles such as language barriers, intergenerationality, rural/urban divides, and the US/Canada border. In the face of growing assimilationist capitalist gay and lesbian mainstream representation, how do we maintain queer as a subversive terrain upon which to resist? Everyone welcome!

This workshop is a co-presentation by members of Q-Team (Montreal), the Prisoner Correspondence Project (Montreal), and Naughty North (Maine).

Sassy Kings and Queens to Support Queer Youth in Lewiston/Auburn

2009-04-28T16:41:00.008-04:00

The First Annual Lewistunning Dragapalooza, a variety show of professional and amateur drag performers will be held on Saturday, May 9th at Schaeffer Theater, Bates College. Co-sponsored by the Bates College student group OutFront, the show is a fundraiser for Outright/Lewiston-Auburn.

The Lewistunning Dragapalooza will feature professional performers from as close as Lewiston and as far away as New York City. The line-up for the event includes such well-known performers as Bunny Wonderland and Kings of the Hill from Portland, Mimi Imfurst from New York City, Shaunna Rai and E’On from Lewiston and Ms. Olivia Bouyea from Sanford. The evening will also include an opportunity for amateurs who want to experience the thrill of performing drag on stage. Amateurs can sign up to perform by calling the Outright/LA office and completing a registration form.

The professional portion of the show will be judged by “celebrity” judges Heidi Conn, Guidance Counselor at Edward Little High School in Auburn; Charles Nero, Associate Professor of Rhetoric, African American Studies and American Cultural Studies at Bates College; and Sarah Holmes, Coordinator of the Center for Sexualities and Gender Diversity at the University of Southern Maine.

The event will also include fab door prizes, refreshments, local emcees and an after party at Guthrie's, 155 Middle Street in downtown Lewiston. Featuring The Scrapes (myspace.com/singwiththescrapes). No cover after party, all ages venue! Yes they serve beer, wine and tasty treats!

Tickets available in Lewiston at WMCA Health Services, The Bangarang, Outright L/A, and Guthrie's!

Strategizing Queer Insurgency Workshop - Call Out for Feedback!

2009-04-20T21:06:00.002-04:00

______________________________________________________

Stragizing Queer Isurgency!: Re-centering marginalized queer issues

Workshop & Discussion to be presented as a part of the 10th Annual
Montreal Anarchist Bookfair - Sunday May 16th 2009
______________________________________________________

*** Hello! This post is to solicit your feedback, contributions, and collaboration for the planning and development of this workshop. We are hoping to gather as much ideas and input from members of our communities as possible over the course of the next month, in the interest of making this workshop/discussion and strategizing session relevant to our struggles as folks doing queer activism, organizing, or community work; or as queers doing organizing work in other struggles.

This email is to briefly outline the rough framework of the workshop as it was initially envisioned, as well as to outline some questions to consider in responding to this call out.

*** THE WORKSHOP
We proposed this workshop as members of different queer organizations with the intention of taking advantage of the opportunity offered to us by the Bookfair to hold a discussion and strategizing session among other groups and queers from across Quebec, the US and Canada.

We identified four key obstacles or barriers we face in our struggles which we hope to foreground in these conversations:
(1) French/English divides
(2) Generational divides between older and younger queers
(3) The US/Canada border
(4) Rural/urban divides.

We especially wanted to focus on these barriers as one's we continue to face despite attempts by gay assimilation to push these off the agenda, and to collaboratively develop concrete solutions and strategies to work against these obstacles.

*** QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

1. In what ways have you encountered these obstacles (french/english divides, generational divides, the US/Canada border, and rural/urban divides) in your organizing or community work?
2. How have you seen these obstacles play our in other kinds of organizing or work you do?
3. What kinds of strategies, if any, have you put in place or seen put in place to counter these obstacles?
4. What kind of workshop structure do you think makes the most sense given the topic and themes? (a) branch into smaller discussion groups and report back, (b) large facilitated group discussion, or (c) another format altogether
5. Is there any specific feedback you would like to give us about the way we've laid out this framework? Is there anything you would like to foreground, or specific ways you hope to see the workshop unfold?

*** PLEASE FORWARD THIS TO YOUR CONTACTS, FOLKS THAT MIGHT BE COMING TO THE BOOKFAIR, AND IN PARTICULAR FOLKS WHO WOULD HAVE IDEAS TO CONTRIBUTE ON THE THEMES OUTLINED ABOVE.

*** PLEASE SEND ALL CONTRIBUTIONS AND FEEDBACK TO:
queer.insurgency@gmail.com

Thanks for your feedback and ideas. Hope to see you in May!

- Anonymous queers / workshop organizing committee

____________________________________
The workshop is co-presented by members of: Naughty North (Maine), the Prisoner Correspondence Project (Montreal), and Q-Team (Montreal).

Qteam is a radical queer collective whose work focuses on creating anti-racist, anti-capitalist, and anti-assimilationist queer spaces and events in Montreal.

The Prisoner Correspondence Project is a Montreal-based collective that supports gay and trans folks and queers inside prisons across the US and Canada through a penpal program, programming, and a resource library on writing about queer survival behind bars.

Naughty North is a radical queer direct-action collective based in Maine committed to resisting the devastating violence inherent in the consumer driven assimilationist gaystream!

Future of the Past: Reviving the Queer Archives - June 5th Save the Date!

2009-04-20T17:10:00.003-04:00

Future of the Past: Reviving the Queer Archives - a photo-retrospective of Annette Dragon's work from the late 80's and 90's of queer activism. Opening June 5th, 7pm at Maine College of Art. Intergenerational panel on queer & trans activism and archiving on June 18th during Southern Maine Pride, also to be hosted at MECA. Check out the exhibition website for more information:Future of the Past

Tranny Roadshow Comes to Maine!

2009-03-26T11:04:00.004-04:00

* * *
The Tranny Roadshow is a multimedia performance art extravaganza. It is composed of an eclectic group of artists, each one self-identified as transgender, and includes poets, rappers, filmmakers, storytellers, breakdancers, rock bands, comedians, actors, folk singers, photographers, zinesters, and more. Stationary art (i.e. photography and sculpture) is displayed, but most of the presentation is the live show, a unique variety show where the expression of gender and the expression of self are inseparable. The show is a fluid entity, changing to suit the artists and the crowd, but always it is full of intelligence, fun and humor.

Although the Tranny Roadshow is done entirely by transpeople, it is not exclusively for transpeople. It is a raucous evening of entertainment, open and accessible to people of all backgrounds. Most of us are experienced performers, and while our goals do include challenging people and making them think, our most important goals are to entertain them, make them laugh, and make them dance.

Some pieces of each show focus specifically on gender, but many others do not. All people have multiple identities, which overlap, intertwine and impact each other in different ways. We recognize that our trans identities are singular facets of who we are, and one of the aims of the Tranny Roadshow is to present transpeople as we are - as whole, multi-faceted people. We are not only trannies, we are singers, filmmakers, dancers, writers, jugglers, etc. And our art expresses many things, of which gender is only one. In the show, we present a wide spectrum of gender identities, a brilliant array of living art, and the ties that bind these identities to our artwork and to the world.

Check out the show on April 26th at the UU Church in Auburn Maine @ 7pm ($10 admission) or on April 27th at the University of Maine Farmington's Lincoln Auditorium @ 6pm (free!).

Tranny Roadshow Website!

Red Cross: Naughty North are Real Heros!!!

2009-03-19T11:09:00.004-04:00

This winter a savvy friend (code name Maxine Wolfe) nominated Naughty North! for the American Red Cross Good Samaritan Real Heroes Award for our work in the Summer of 2008, pointing out that even the most benevolent organizations like the American Red Cross are entrenched in homophobic and AIDS panic politics.

The attached letter is a rather sad ironic attempt by the the Red Cross to de-claw our fierce satirical attack on their shabby institutional policies and we won't settle for it. We will not be gently folded into the non-profit and medical industrial complexes when queer youth are still being told that their sex lives are a death sentence and that homophobic profiling is a matter of public health when the American Red Cross descends on our public schools to extract blood like parasites...

Using the FDA as an excuse to continue following outrageous policies that are part of a complex system of homophobic violence that kills queer teens is unacceptable. Grow a back bone, American Red Cross! Otherwise, acknowledge that every queer/trans teen suicide is murder and their is blood all over your hands!!!

Maine Prisoner Advocacy Coalition Gathering

2009-03-16T00:30:00.002-04:00

Second gathering of the Maine Prisoner Advocacy Coalition (MPAC) is happening on March 21st 2009 at noon at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Belfast Maine.

Last January, organizers, family members, friends, prisoner abolitionists and ex-prisoners from throughout the state of Maine gathered to discuss how we can share ideas, resources and strategies in working for a more human and just treatment for Maine's prisoners.

A few of us from Naughty North will be there to give an update about the NJ4 campaign we have been working on as well as discussing how we can better support queer and trans prisoners in Maine.

*********************************
Maine Prisoner Advocacy Coalition
Saturday March 21st 12:00-4:00 PM
Belfast UU Church 37 Miller Stre
*********************************

Burlesque, Burlesque!

2009-03-02T10:57:00.003-05:00

Thursday, March 12, 2009 9PM
@ One Longfellow Square, Portland, ME

The University of Southern Maine’s Women’s Resource Center & the Gender Studies Student Organization are teaming up to present Burlesque, Burlesque! an old school burlesque show w/ a decidedly postmodern twist. Each show will feature performances from the outrageous to the sublime.

The star studded cast includes local drag king legends the Kings of the Hill, Portland’s punk rock princess Bunny Wonderland, the explosive Atomic Trash, and vintage burlesque by Whistlebait.

The evening is a FUNdraiser for the Women’s Resource Center (WRC) & the Gender Studies Student Organization (GSSO).

Burlesque, Burlesque! is comedy, song, and performance art that showcases burlesque from its original 20th century form - of women in drag acting out satires - to the neo-burlesque of today as a feminist art form.

Today’s burlesque allows all genders and subject positions to express not only a range of sexualities but political ideas and personal experiences. The show offers a safe & fun environment and showcases a style of performance art that is underrepresented in Portland.

Cost: $8.00

Bash Back! Announces Spring Convergence May 28th-31st in Chicago!

2009-03-01T20:48:00.003-05:00

Anarcha-Queers! Trannies! Fairies! Perverts! Sex-Workers! Sex-Radicals!
Allies!

Bash Back! is ecstatic to announce a national radical queer convergence to take place in Chicago, May 28th through May 31st of 2009! We’re pleased to invite all radical queers to join us for a weekend of debauchery and mischief. The last weekend of May will prove to be four solid days of workshops, discussions, performances, games, dancing and street action!

We’ll handle the food and the housing. Ya’ll bring the orgy, riot, and decadence!

We’re looking for folks to facilitate discussions, put on workshops, organize caucuses, share games, tell stories, get heavy in some theory, or bottom-line a dance party. More specifically we’re looking for workshops themed around queer and trans liberation, anti-racism, confronting patriarchy, sex work, ableism, self defense, DIY mental and sexual health, radical history, pornography, or queer theory. We are also looking for copious amounts of glitter, safer sex products, zines, home-made sex toys, balaclavas, pink and black flags, sequins, bondage gear, rad porn, flowers, strap-ons, and assorted dumpstered goodies. You down?

To RSVP, volunteer for a workshop, get more information, or send us dirty pictures:

email:
radicalqueer2009@gmail.com

For more info: Bash Back! News

Femme Show Premiere March 6 in Portland

2009-02-28T17:05:00.003-05:00

March 6 * 7 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. shows
@ the St. Lawrence Arts Center * Portland, ME

The Femme Show is a revue of smart, sexy, interactive performance about queer femme identity that features film, dance, literary readings, burlesque, drag, and performance art from award winning artists.

Femme Show Website

2009-02-13T15:02:00.001-05:00

An all-new show exploring femme identity and queer femininity.

Fresh from their smash hit Boston performances, the Femme Show returns to the St. Lawrence with an all new show. From Barbie dolls to garter belts, from 1950’s dyke bars to suburban back yards and late night taco joints, from hula hooping to clowning, this show takes audiences on a wild ride. The Femme Show offers a variety of diverse perspectives on femme identity with subject matter that is at times thoughtful, sad, sexy, funny, and fun. Local guest artists will be joining the touring cast to bring you another evening of film, dance, storytelling, burlesque, drag, and performance art that is sure to delight.

The Femme Show plays Friday, March 6 at 7 and 9:30 PM at the St. Lawrence, 76 Congress St. in Portland. Tickets are available at all Bull Moose Music stores or at http://www.stlawrencearts.org

Prisoner Correspondence Project Launches Their New Website

2009-01-23T18:08:00.001-05:00

Our Canadian northern neighbors in Montreal just contacted us to let us know about the launch of the Prisoner Correspondence Project website! Check it out and sign up to be a pen pal!

The Prisoner Correspondence Project is a collectively-run initiative based out of Montreal, Quebec. It coordinates a direct-correspondence program for gay, lesbian, transsexual, transgender, gendervariant, two-spirit, intersex, bisexual and queer inmates in Canada and the United States, linking these inmates with people a part of these same communities outside of prison. In addition, it coordinates a resource library of information regarding harm reduction practice (safer sex, safer drug-use, clean needle care), HIV and HEPC prevention, homophobia, transphobia, coming out, etc. The project also aims to reinstate prisoner justice and prisoner solidarity as a priority within queer movements on the outside through events like film screenings, workshops, and panel discussions which touch on the broader issues relating to criminalisation and incarceration of queers and transfolk.

Prisoner Correspondence Project Website

queertrans.prisonersolidarity@gmail.com

The Femme Show: Call for Proposals!

2008-12-01T14:26:00.000-05:00

Calling all performers! Check out the above call for submissions for the Femme Show coming to Maine this Spring!

Audio Recording from NJ4 Benefit

2008-11-29T17:07:00.000-05:00

Snapdragon's NJ4 Bash Back!!! Bash Back!!! poem for your audio pleasure. Share, rebroadcast and redistribute at will!

download mp3 file here!

World AIDS Day Film Screening Dec. 1st!

2008-11-24T20:28:00.000-05:00

In the increasingly depoliticized world of AIDS activism (or should we just say service provision?) we cannot sit back and watch as yet another year goes by marked only by somber vigils. World AIDS Day must not simply be a day of mourning, but a day of action! To mark World AIDS Day Naughty North has assembled a collection of inspiring historical films to situate the present and incite action! All are welcome!

Cocktails are not cures! Silence still = death!

NJ4 Cabaret Benefit Bash Raises Over $300!

2008-11-18T20:39:00.000-05:00

Sunday night's all ages event at the dooryard in Portland raised over $300 for the NJ4! The performances were fantastic, the crowd of nearly 75 was energetic and the night went off without a hitch! We were able to get over 50 letters to the NYC D.A. signed and in the mail demanding the courts to drop the charges against Renata Hill who goes to retrial on the 20th of November.

Thanks to all who came out to support self-defense and the NJ4!!! We are looking forward to more queer cabarets in the future! Pictures of performances below:

snapdragon
x x x

kings of the hill
x x x

goldie peacock
x x x

bangarang collective
x x x

athens boys choir

Naughty North Newsletter #3

2008-11-11T11:07:00.001-05:00

Our third issue is finally available as a downloadable .pdf!!!

click here to download!

NJ4 Cabaret Benefit Bash - November 16th in Portland

2008-10-23T17:15:00.000-04:00

Naughty North and The Dooryard have teamed up to throw the queerest cabaret benefit bash to support the NJ4! There will be slamming poetry, scuzzy electro gender-deviant hip hop, drag muppets teaching self-defense and much more! So come on down and check out the NJ4 t-shirts, patches, info, and support self-defense! @ the dooryard, 108 high street, portland me, sunday 16 november, 7pm, $1-$10!

for more about the NJ4: http://freenj4.wordpress.com/

for more about the dooryard: http://www.myspace.com/dooryard108

Red Cross: "No Faggots Allowed"

2008-09-25T11:17:00.000-04:00

This summer, a few mischievous Naughty North affiliated folks targeted the Red Cross for their compliance with homophobic AIDS hysteria policies handed down by the FDA. This video gives an over view of what happened and the pathetic mainstream media response.

More media on the action can be found at:
MTV News
NewEngland Blade
Portland Press Herald

Naughty North and MiMi Collective Confront Crazy Christians!

2008-09-23T16:32:00.000-04:00

Saturday morning, around twenty fabulously decorated queers and allies booty-danced toward the entrance of the Common Ground country fair in Unity, Maine. For the last twenty some years, fair-goers have been exposed to offensive images of bloody fetuses, as well as messaging that wrongfully appropriates social justice language like "domestic violence starts in the womb," by members of the Christian Civic League.

This year Naughty North and the MiMi Collective, a radical feminist reproductive health collective, decided it was time to take them on with some queer flair and a rad dance party!

At around 10:30am, after suiting up in our dance attire, we marched to the fair holding banners that read "WARNING: Crazy Christians Ahead," "Queers for Reproductive Rights," and "You Can't Control my Cooch," sashaying down the shoulder to our portable dance beats. Folks driving by were honking and sharing their approval before we even arrived at the scene. Once we descended upon the five Christian's and their anti-choice posters, their dismal scene turned into a raging party!

For the next hour, we shook it strategically in front of their signs, alerted fair-goers to their presence, and got most people who were stuck in the traffic at the gate into a much better mood.

The CCL folks were not quite so pleased. One booty shaker managed to herd a CC leaguer back to his car; others enjoyed making out in front of those who weren't so quick to take down their offensive propaganda. Some condoms unexplicably ended up in a CCL car. Some CCLers attempted to insult and argue with the dance partiers, but we were having way too much fun to engage in such fruitless debate.

Toward the end of the hour, the cops arrived after a complaint had been made from a CCLer about falling down signs. The cops attempted to separate the CCL folks from the naughty north and mimi folks, but couldn't come up with a real reason why they could ask us to move but not those holding up huge pictures of mutilated fetuses. After a fair amount of good cop/bad cop ungrounded harassment and threats, the conflict dissolved when most of us decided to follow the original plan and leave the CCLers to their beat-less boredom while we went and enjoyed the fair. Countless folks approached us and expressed their gratitude for our action--all agreed, it was way over due. Til next year!

more photos to come!!!

Southern Maine Pride Radical Pink and Black Bloc Actions 6/21/08

2008-06-25T16:04:00.001-04:00

On Saturday June 21st a group of about 20 radical queer and trans folx jumped into the Southern Maine Pride Parade in pink and black bloc fashion armed with homemade drums and vials of glitter! We cheered our little hearts out in disorganized fashion and passed out our flyers decrying pride as corporate, exclusionary, and steeped in addiction culture.

After our successful disruption and an afternoon nap we gathered for an evening dance party at Tommy's. At around 8 pm on Saturday we started setting up the dance party sound system. We started the music around 8:30. People from the street who hadn't previously heard about the dance party joined in, as well as people who had been planning on going for weeks. There was a good flow of people, and usually around 15 dancing at a time, with lots of bystanders enjoying the music. We anticipated instant trouble from the police, but there was none. We kept the music going until 10, when a noise ordinance came into effect. The dance party was organized as a free, inclusive, better sounding alternative to the Pier Dance.

Naughty North Newsletter Issue #3

2008-06-04T10:09:00.000-04:00

Issue #3 due out this August! The theme of the issue is "beyond pride"! It will be posted online at the same time it is mailed out!

Naughty North Newsletter Issue #2

2008-03-12T17:19:00.000-04:00

Our second issue is now available as a downloadable .pdf!!!

click here to download!

Naughty North Newsletter Issue #1

2008-03-12T12:56:00.000-04:00

Our first issue is now available as a downloadable .pdf!!!

Click here to download!