If you are able to contribute to the present uprising inspired by the murders of George Floyd by the Minneapolis Police Department, Breonna Taylor by the Louisville Police Department, and Tony McDade by the Tallahassee Police Department, here is a list of community bail funds for each state. Meanwhile, all proceeds from Kenning Editions subscriptions through the month of June will be donated to The Chicago Freedom School. You get the books, and they get the money.
Kenning began as a “newsletter” in the fanzine tradition inspired by punk and the mimeograph revolution, and its premise was to imagine experimental writing as a form of civic discourse. A test was put to the endearing analogies between aesthetic qualities and political commitments, especially where something or someone presents their expression as a form of resistance to the status quo, even iconoclastic. We still sit for this test, twenty-two years later. Noteworthy cultural and commercial institutions—like the Pilsen Community Books store here in Chicago or Printed Matter in New York, also Club Wonder, who hosted the first online reading I ever attended—have partially paused their operations to facilitate reflection and protest. Admirable acts of learning, civil disobedience, and dialogue have been going on and shall remain ongoing. Kenning Editions applauds this and wishes to participate.