Ten Points on Love

A Valentine’s Day syllabus

[A] love that might not save us at the end of the world but that might make it possible to live through. It may be hard to believe in. It will be harder to live. I hope we choose it anyway.

— Kai Cheng Thom, I Hope We Choose Love, 2019

Life is like that / you don’t know / and then it happens / Like a red heart.

— Elaine Kahn, Romance or the End, 2020

Creo que el mundo es bello, / que la poesía es como el pan, de todos. [I believe the world is beautiful / and that poetry, like bread, is for everyone.]

— Roque Dalton, Like You, 1935-1975

Happy valentine’s day family (｡♥‿♥｡) On this day we are choosing to celebrate love as abundant and changing, love as a verb, love as an ongoing communal project, love as political necessity, love as an energy that—definitionally—must keep flowing from person to person in order to exist. To be someone’s Valentine: a mutual arrangement, the container for a relationship that exists over the space of a day, the choice to expand that container forever.

Wherever this finds you, this note includes ten pieces on love paired with ten funds in need of our love right now—inspired by and in continuation to our mutual aid syllabus published in May <3

As you make your way through, enjoy this playlist we have made for you.

xx ATM

The Children of Baldwin (Live and Direct from Paris) by DJ Lynnée Denise (see also: James Baldwin on Love and Sexuality) — Save the Hampton House 

for my first love, who unfortunately wasn’t me by Mimi Zhu (see also: Say it with Sexts) — Support Misery's QTIBPOC Mental Health Fundraiser

“Disability Justice” is Simply Another Term for Love by Mia Mingus — Support Project LETS 

BROWN UP YOUR FEED RADIO HOUR W/ MANDY HARRIS WILLIAMS (valentines day special) — TEXAS WEATHER CRISIS SUPPORT

Four Poems by Raúl Zurita (see also: Purple Rain by Prince) — Help secure safe housing for Quay Dash

We can choose to consume each other, or we can choose love by Kai Cheng Thom — Support the expenses for the funeral of a community member's grandmother and Bbuy someone a warm place to sleep tonight (Cashapp: $pdxdefensefund)

Intimacy in Isolation by Akwaeke Emezi with photographs by Texas Isaiah — Support the Queer Detainee Empowerment Project  

José Muñoz, Then and There by Tavia Nyong’o — Help a Black femme who is unemployed due to covid!

Revolutionary Letter #1 by Diane di Prima — FREE THEM ALL: sign/write/donate via noname's list to free Black revolutionaries & political prisoners

DISCWOMAN 101 x goth jafar — Donate to LA's Trans Defense Fund and Support the V-Day Movement