MZF ZINE TEAM & ADVISORY BOARD
Milwaukee Zine Fest is planned and produced by a team of volunteers who are passionate about zines, community-centric publishing, and creating safe activated space for expression through printed media.
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Sound like you? Join us for the 2023 season and beyond. Sign up for next steps, and read below for further details.
Milwaukee Zine Fest is proud to bring together people of all ages from different ethnic, gender, socio-economic, educational, religious, language, and cultural backgrounds—as well as a wide range of states of physical and mental health.
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Welcoming a diverse community is one of our core values.
Proactively creating space for Black, Brown, Indigenous, and People of Color
is woven into our vision.
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In order to provide a comfortable and safe environment for tablers and visitors alike, Milwaukee Zine Fest places the following responsibilities on all in attendance.
MZF participants must focus on respect:
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Respect others’ beliefs, opinions, and points-of-view even when they differ from your own.
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Respect others’ physical and emotional boundaries. (This means explicitly asking for consent before touching anyone.)
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Respect others' health safety by properly following COVID-related policies and procedures.
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Respect yourself by taking full responsibility for your own actions, inactions, speech, and products—knowing that what you do, say, or present at MZF may impact others in ways you did not originally intend, nor expect.
MZF will not tolerate the following:
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Hate nor harm in any form. Racism, sexism, classism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, and other types of discrimination, are inexcusable.*
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Theft of money, physical property, or intellectual property.
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Sexual harassment in any form, verbal or physical.
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Violence or threats of violence.
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Disrespectful and/or disruptive behaviors.
*Note: MZF recognizes that zines are an expressive art form that often deal with issues and language surrounding hate and oppression. For this reason MZF starts from a place of assuming positive intent and does not censor materials. Instead, we encourage all MZF participants to take active responsibility in challenging oppressive situations, aggressive behavior, or use of language/imagery that intentionally serves to demean, marginalize, ridicule or harm anyone in attendance at MZF events.
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We encourage all vendors to take full ownership of the creations they place in the hands of other humans, and ask that they provide content warning labels for zines that they feel may include subject matter and/or language that could inadvertently cause harm.
MZF organizers alone cannot fully enforce the above, and thus ask that participants engage in addressing questionable behaviors if/when they feel safe to do so.
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Festival organizers are also available to assist in mediation of any situation brought to their attention: a solution focused on the best interests of the community and festival will be arranged.
Ultimately MZF and The Public Library staff reserve the right to ask any attendees who are violating our safer space policy to address and change their unsafe behavior/language, or—as a last resort— be required to leave the event. We thank everyone for helping us make MZF a safer space for all.
The Milwaukee Public Library has its own Code of Conduct for visitors (which MZF follows as well). It can be accessed here.
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