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small town, you're part of that community. If you go to particular clubs, you're in those communities. There may be aspects of your identity that could align with a community as well: for example, if you read science fiction there are conventions for that (although of course, identity communities don't always work for everyone with that identity). These are places where your knowledge already makes you powerful... so keep an eye out for needs. (It's also worth considering getting involved in an intentional community. I'm kind of psycho about housing co-ops, for example, because they are awesome. I personally am a member of North American Students of Cooperation, but there are other groups, and there are also independent co-ops that aren't part of larger networks.)

We live in an unstable and fast-paced age. I don't know how people in most other countries feel, but I know that here in the USA, there is a quite pervasive and quite justified anxiety among everyone I know in the middle class. Many of our safety nets are evaporating, and it's not at all clear that they will be replaced. But no matter how much the people in power fuck us over, we'll never be totally screwed as long as we're not isolated and we talk to each other.

One of the former members of Jane, a white-haired feminist with such powerful energy that she practically glows through the screen, says in the documentary: "Don't stay with people who tell you you're crazy and useless. Don't stay where you're weak." That's what I call an activist click moment: find the other people like you, and organize with them. That applies to feminism, it applies to sexuality, it applies to public health. Go where you're strong and make your people stronger.

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This can be found on the Internet at:

http://clarissethorn.com/blog/2011/03/29/grassroots-organizing-for-feminism-sm-hiv-and-everything-else/

The film Jane: An Abortion Service is available from the distributor Women Make Movies:

http://www.wmm.com/filmcatalog/pages/c410.shtml

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ACTIVISM:

[storytime] Interview with Richard Berkowitz, Star of Sex Positive and Icon of Safer Sex Activism

Richard Berkowitz is an interesting guy. He was active in the gay community in the 1970s and 80s as an S&M sex worker, so he's got plenty of experience with all kinds of sexual history. Not only that, but he also wrote the very first safer sex pamphlet ever, when HIV began storming through the gay community. The pamphlet was called "How to Have Sex in an Epidemic"; Berkowitz literally wrote it at home on his typewriter and

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