Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Kickstart This!

Hello again! Here's your list of great crowd-funding projects that need some extra attention!



Latino/a Rising is the first collection of U.S. Latin@ science fiction, fantasy, and other speculative genres. Matthew David Goodwin has worked tirelessly to bring together the writings and artwork by Latin@ artists to create this fantastic anthology.
U.S. Latinos/as have a long history of using speculative fiction to confront issues of social oppression and to express the hope for a better future. We can look back, for example, to the farm worker movement and Luis Valdez’s play “Los Vendidos” where Mexican and Chicano/a figures are represented by robots.

It is in this tradition that this project is being developed through the effort of a large and diverse community. In addition to this Kickstarter Campaign, we will rely on grants and donations from Latino/a community organizations, universities, and foundations. Once the book is published we will offer to hold book readings at the various institutions that were involved.


Exiles, is a series of trans-themed comics by Christianne Benedict and Rachel K. Zall, previously published online, but finally collected into one place, and in print!
It's the expression of our experiences from our own mouths and hands and it enables us to define ourselves without the imposition of the norms of a majority that does not share those experiences. Indeed, art from our hands can educate that majority. Additionally, I believe that it is beholden upon us to create an economy of our own as a counterbalance to the economic iniquities many of us experience in late capitalism. This is, admittedly, also self-interested.


Hey! RPGers! Check it out! The Ruined Empire, an anime-inspired RPG campaign by Anna Kreider, is a system-neutral campaign setting and source book set in a land of five nations in conflict, ripe with adventure and danger.
I wrote the original setting for Andy Kitkowski back in 2012 as a backer reward for the Kickstarter of the English translation of Tenra Bansho Zero. Originally, this was done as work-for-hire, which meant that I got paid for my work and Andy was to retain the rights for future publication. The original intent had been to get this illustrated and published as an official Tenra supplement. However, for a variety of reasons, that fell through until now.

This campaign is to fund an expanded version of that original campaign setting. Ruined Empire was originally written to be used with the Tenra Bansho Zero system, but the setting itself is a pretty accessible mashup of common anime tropes and Final Fantasy-inspired themes, and would work well with a variety of game systems.


Feminist Apparel is trying to keep misogyny off the shelves with their line of pro-feminist clothing.
We hold the idea that you can be a feminist if you believe in and act on equality. Men, women, and people who say no to the gender binary are all welcome to the movement. That’s why we create clothing that ranges from XS-5XL, cover issues ranging from street harassment to gender stereotypes, and feature designs from our Feminist Creatives community that give up-and-coming feminist designers an outlet to share their work and get paid for it. There’s no reason that equality should be unpopular. Purchase a t-shirt, tell your friends about it, and in doing so, know that you’re doing a valuable service by calling out sexism in your community and creating an inclusive movement toward equality.


I absolutely love this Notable Women in Computing Card Deck by Jessica Dickinson Goodman.
Women in this card deck were selected after receiving multiple, high-level awards from more than one institution, such as being named an ACM Fellow, IEEE Fellow, and receiving the Turing Award. Our deck also seeks to portray the true diversity of women in computing both current and historical, showcasing professionals from a variety of nations, backgrounds, gender identities, orientations and abilities. There are a dozen or more different groupings of notable women we could have turned into this deck; you can make your own using the instructions at the bottom of this page.


Birthing Justice: Black Women, Pregnancy and Childbirth is a powerful book that digs beneath the surface of the statistics surrounding pregnancy- and birth-related deaths in the black community. In turns heartbreaking and inspirational, this powerful anthology will transform forever the way you think about childbirth, with over 20 black women sharing deeply moving stories about giving birth and childbirth activism.
The money pledged will be used to fund the reproduction of high quality color photographs of quilt squares dedicated to black women who died of pregnancy-related causes in the book. The pieces were created by family members and volunteers for the Safe Motherhood Quilt, to keep alive the memory of their loved ones. Our small social justice-oriented publisher cannot afford the cost of color reproduction but we want to honor the women by reproducing the images as they were meant to be seen. If enough funds are received, we will also be able to promote the book through a nationwide book-tour.

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