Corvallis Social Justice: Corvallis Climbers of Color Update, Weaponized Identities, Interzone Zine Library, Disrupting Dominant Geographies 

Last summer, Samantha “Sam” Kang, founder of Corvallis Climbers of Color (CCOC), an organization rooted in creating access and community within climbing and the outdoors for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color in Corvallis and the Pacific Northwest more broadly, took a near-fatal fall while climbing in Mt. Rainier National Park, suffering a broken neck, back, and arm. During the latter half of 2022, Kang’s family and the CCOC community rallied to support Kang’s recovery; Andrea Kang, their twin sister, created a GoFundMe to help cover the costs of medical bills and at-home care, while CCOC members organized “Climb for Sam Day” fundraiser events and stepped up to run the organization in Kang’s stead. 

On Dec. 28, Kang wrote an update on the GoFundMe about where they are in their recovery process, as well as reflections on how far the CCOC community has come, and how much it means to so many. 

“In a matter of seconds, the trajectory of my life changed,” they wrote. “From the exploding pain I felt in my back to the miraculous rescue, to the love and support I received from family, friends, strangers, and the community, to enduring two major surgeries, to living with disability, to navigating our crazy medical system… I sit here typing in quiet wonder at how amazing yet unremarkable this moment feels.” 

Kang expressed gratitude, including on behalf of their family, to the CCOC community for mobilizing to raise over $50,000 for their medical costs, and to everyone who supported and shared their story.  

“You might think that after experiencing a life-changing accident like this, I would quit climbing for good. Any reasonable person would,” wrote Kang. “But through starting and building Corvallis Climbers of Color, I saw first-hand that climbing, especially when centered around BIPOC identity, joy and well-being, is transformative and healing. I have been greatly privileged to climb many mountains and rocks, something my ancestors could have only dreamed about, but I found sharing that with others was what I loved most. This corner of the universe, strangely, is where I feel most authentically me and there are few spaces in my life where I exist as such.” 

In a Corvallis Climbers of Color Instagram post, Kang extended a thank you to everyone in the Corvallis community and beyond who has attended or supported BIPOC Climb Nights at the Valley Rock Gym.  

“These nights have become more than just evenings climbing with other people of color–they’ve become anchors to many of us who do not have access to BIPOC spaces in day-to-day life; they’ve become spaces to air grievances and also uplift and celebrate one another,” they wrote. “Our Smith Rock climbing clinics with Everybody Climbs continually show us that climbing in a BIPOC affinity space outdoors is comforting, inspiring, and radical, to say the least. Together we are rewriting what it means to climb outside.” 

Kang continued, “We also want to thank Valley Rock Gym for their continual support in creating these spaces with and for us. Thank you for setting the standard for climbing gyms across America. We hope other gyms and organizations take notice and learn that creating a more accessible, inclusive, and community-centric gym creates a more vibrant and thriving community and business for all.” 

For now, Kang will continue their recovery in Corvallis while pursuing their PhD in Mechanical Engineering Design at Oregon State University. They hope to eventually return to the activities they love, but will be exploring other creative outlets in the meantime.  

To stay updated on CCOC events, resources, and more, follow their Instagram page. If you are BIPOC and are interested in becoming a part of or getting involved in the CCOC community, you can join their Facebook group or send an email to corvallisclimbersofcolor@gmail.com to learn more. BIPOC Climb Nights are held every fourth Wednesday from 7 – 10 p.m. at the Valley Rock Gym, located on 401 SW Jefferson Ave.  

“Sixes & Sevens”: The latest issue of AThought Zine, a locally based zine series intended to serve as a safe, empowering platform for historically marginalized and excluded creators, has recently circulated and very quickly sold out. Titled “Full Square” (an homage to AThought Zine’s first issue, “Square One”), it encompasses themes of growing up, healing, approaching situations with newfound perspectives and experiences, and navigating relationships, society, etc., through a variety of identities that are othered.  

The series is edited and curated by two Corvallis-based queer and feminist artists: Serena Swanson, a POC femme who creates digital, print, and multimedia art, and Jayden Dukes, a photographer and activist whose work revolves around body liberation and how fatness intersects with queerness and sexuality.  

One of the works included in this zine is “Sixes & Sevens”, a poem written by Dukes about some of their experiences in LGBTQIA+ communities and spaces. 

“The poem is about loss of friendships, relationships, and connection due to trauma responses, lack of communication, and lack of accountability,” said Dukes. “Community is important, especially for queer folks. However, fatphobia, racism, prejudices, and abuse still prevail within queer communities.” 

Their poem also references the thoughts and feelings they’ve experienced regarding the loss of connections due to fatphobia. 

“It expresses the sorrow and abandonment when faced with the loss of friendships found within the queer community,” said Dukes. “Although I expect to deal with fatphobia in my life, it is particularly hard to deal with when it’s found amongst the LGBTQIA+ community.” 

Towards the end of the poem, a few lines read, “they’ve gagged me so that I’ll stop chattering, like a cat lost on the ground/ a warning, a call to action for the rest/ there’s a bird in the tree, ready for the slaughter/ like knights in armor, you wear your victimhood instead of feathers/ and weaponize your identity, did you mean to try and kill me?” 

“[It’s] about being continuously silenced, gaslit, and invalidated when expressing my rage, values, boundaries, feelings, and thoughts,” they said. “In particular, it is about the efforts that people will take to avoid accountability while using their marginalized identities as an excuse.” 

In a previous Corvallis Advocate social justice column, Dukes described creating art that focuses on people’s intersecting “social locations” – what they define as the combination of different identities, such as race, gender, ability, class, age, sexuality, etc., that determine the discrimination and/or privileges that individuals experience in our society and culture. On their social media, Dukes has commented that some of the most toxic things they’ve encountered in queer spaces is people using their queerness, traumas, or experiences to refute accountability for harmful and/or abusive behavior. Dukes added that people can’t weaponize their social locations to deny that they don’t still have privileges, whether that be whiteness, thinness, being able-bodied, etc., or that they don’t carry ingrained biases and certain kinds of social power/status over those who don’t share those privileges. 

For updates on AThought Zine’s current and future endeavors, collaborations, calls for submissions, glimpses of previous issues, etc., follow their Instagram page. 

Interzone Zine Library: Many Corvallisites are familiar with Interzone, whether as a local organic coffee shop, a funky hangout place, a venue for local DIY, punk, and experimental shows, or all of the above. Some, however, might not already know that Interzone is also the home of a small Corvallis Zine Library.  

These zines have been donated by community members over time, and can be read (and returned) by anyone. Many of these zines are intended to serve as toolkits, guides, and archival resources for folks who are involved or are interested in participating in local activist, organizing, and mutual aid work on a variety of issues. There’s an introductory Direct Action Survival Guide on staying safe and supporting others in the streets during large- and small-scale protests, a “Smash the Skatriarchy” zine about fighting and ending rape culture, misogyny, and homophobia in skate culture, and more. 

Another zine you can find at the library is “To Heal We Must Resist, To Resist We Must Heal: A Zine on Navigating Trauma” by Mutual Aid Disaster Relief, a decentralized grassroots network of social and global justice activists, street medics, Black Liberation organizers, and others from all across the U.S. who are actively organizing around supporting crisis and disaster survivors on the principles of mutual aid, solidarity, and autonomous direct action. The zine provides helpful, non-exhaustive information, tactics, and coping activities for mutual aid/solidarity-based workers to practice caring for themselves and each other, and to maintain organizational cultures of care and compassion when navigating the trauma that this kind of work can induce. 

“It is very difficult to do long periods of intense solidarity work without feeling emotionally exhausted,” reads the zine. “Since grassroots solidarity requires a genuine emotional engagement with those we’re supporting, it also exposes us to their suffering. We may always dismiss it as trivial in comparison, and while it’s true that we may not be the ones experiencing the real violence or loss, we are susceptible to the cumulative effects of exposure to story after story.” 

Visit the zine library at Interzone, located on 1563 NW Monroe Ave, to read, donate, and/or “check out” more zines.  

counter/cartographies: Natchee Blu Barnd, an assistant professor of Ethnic Studies and Native American Studies at OSU, shared a call for submissions for the 2023 issue of you are here: the journal of creative geography. The journal is an annual publication that seeks to explore critical and creative engagements with landscapes, places, environments, and other geographic themes through a wide variety of genres/mediums, including articles, creative nonfiction, fiction, poetry, visual art, digital art, maps, film, performance, sound art, etc. The theme of the 2023 issue is “counter/cartographies”, focusing on geographic projects that intend to disrupt dominant contemporary representations, imaginaries, knowledges, and practices of space and place. 

“These are geographic projects that remember, imagine, embody, and enact other worlds: possible worlds, forgotten worlds, worlds already existing but under erasure by hegemonic geographies,” reads the description on the issue’s submissions page. “In working to counter/cartographies, we reckon with the central role that maps – and their accompanying spatial imaginaries, narratives, and practices – have played in producing geographies of injustice: the Third World, colonies, ghettos, plantations, reservations, partitions, borders, and the other countless sacrifice zones of racial capitalism.” 

Accordingly, the editors invite submissions that radically challenge and/or reimagine dominant geographies, and explore what worlds and futures are made possible through these reimaginings. 

Editors are particularly interested in creative work that draws on critical knowledge traditions that exist on the margins of, or beyond, geographic thought, including Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and queer and trans geographies; geographies of disability and critical disability studies; feminist and Black sci-fi and speculative traditions; Indigenous creative and spatial traditions; Afro-futurisms; etc. 

The deadline for submissions, which can be authored by individuals, two or more collaborators or larger collectives, is Jan. 15. You can read full submission guidelines for the journal here 

By Emilie Ratcliff 

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