After the release of each edition, the team holds a period of reflection. Under the green canopies, we reflect on what worked, what didn’t, what we need, our capacities and the most pressing issues facing our community. One of the main struggles that came up repeatedly across all areas was the difficulty of finding everyday cultural work of Queer, Trans, Black, Indigenous and people of color (QTBIPOC).
Our communities have produced enormous amounts of cultural work (essays, poetry, photos, fashion, drawings, scrapbooks, slang, songs, and dances).
Our cultural impact is a testament to that. However, our culture is rarely archived and if so, rarely in ways that are accessible outside of institutions. Unless you already know the niche individual, event or group it’s incredibly hard to locate documentation of our communities.
There has been ongoing active efforts to combat this, such as The Philadelphia Trans Oral History Project by William Way LGBT+ Center, independent archives forming such as the KyKy Archives, and a renaissance of QTBIPOC memory workers and zine makers.
But it is still not enough.
Many of us (unintentionally) are filling the gap digitally. Insta posts, Insta stories, Tweets, Saved Tiktoks. We are preserving our culture on unprecedented levels. But the digital realm is a fragile landscape. Controlled by tech giants, what will happen to our memories if the main social media sites are shut down? In our lifetimes alone, we have witnessed Twitter, Tumblr & TikTok barely crawl out of their coffins. What would happen to our memories if they were erased or censored? Look to the banned Palestinian accounts! Look to the Trump gag orders! Look to the revoking of funding! We are living through the modern “burning of the library of Alexandria”.
As an editorial team, we have been contending deeply with this. We have asked ourselves multiple times: how can Scissors, a small Dyke zine from Philly, try to combat this, at least at a local level?
The edition serves as a time capsule. To hold space for what we wish existed more prominently. To further preserve the work of our predecessors before us. And to say FUCK YOU to the society that wishes we die and disappear, both in spirit and body.
To our readers: We hope this edition compels you to act. Start documenting your own life. Save your materials outside of social media. Label your photographs. Get out that scrapbook/photo album. Invest in flash drives. Don’t know where to start? Ask your mommom for help! Your aunties. Your mom. Fascism, climate collapse, and civil war are looming on the horizon. The sun will set in our lifetimes. No matter whatever’s coming next, our memories deserve to survive.
Love you all
-Imani
Editor-in-Chief
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