Learning to Exhale

CW: Rape, SA In Learning to Exhale, Leila Raven foregrounds the barriers to accountability for gender-based violence in organizing spaces. With a focus on rape allegations within the Commune Magazine Collective, Raven utilizes personal experiences and thoughts to reflect on the roles of activists and organizers alike in building safer organizing spaces. This zine is a resource for survivors who reject carceral systems and who seek safety and healing from abuse in organizing spaces. Raven emphasizes the pervasive nature of gender-based violence in organizing spaces with a strong emphasis on centering survivor demands and transformative justice. Tweets from the #NoPlatformFor Rapists campaign, flower illustrations, and magazine cutout letters are interspersed throughout, with royal blue subheadings separating chapters and entries; the front cover title is written out in collaged magazine cutout letters as well.

Keywords: kaleidoscopic justice, AK Press, Commune Magazine collective, cancel culture, power, patterns, language, accountability, healing, survival, protection, empathy, reciprocity, binaries, praxis, transformative justice, response