The Hillcrest Youth Center (HYC) recently launched a new publication about youth, for youth and by youth. The Rainbowlution Now! zine, as HYC calls it, is a quarterly newsletter-type of magazine, which provides a voice for San Diego GLBT youth and their allies. It allows them the opportunity to share writing and distribute news and information that is important to queer youth in the community, HYC says.

“The Rainbowlution Now! zine has given many of the youth a platform to deal with issues in their lives through creative expression,” said Anthony Lupian, HYC coordinator.

The publication provides a space for youth to work through matters of love, coming out and being out, queer adolescence, developing community and much more.

“We have found that there is a need for them to find each other and connect to discuss and express issues pertinent to their age range, because there are very few resources for youth who are not able participate in the adult GLBT nightlife and culture,” he said.

There are currently no publications in the San Diego area that target GLBT people under 21. The HYC and The Storefront, a shelter of San Diego Youth and Community Services for homeless teens, which collaborate to fund Rainbowlution Now!, found that 40 percent of the youth receiving services at both organizations are GLBT identified and are often homeless because of their sexual orientation.

The response and participation from the youth to Rainbowlution Now! has been very positive, Lupian said, with about a dozen youth involved in the potpourri of poetry, articles, art and visual comics collage that appeared in the first issue, published just before Pride.

The youth participate in step-by-step weekly workshops, facilitated by Lupian and Niktya Palmisani, an expressive arts therapy intern for The Storefront and creator of Grrl Zine-A-Go-Go, an all-women workshop group which meets at The Center.

“Zines” originally developed from early sci-fi fan magazines that had information on books, authors and fan meetings, Lupian said. “As 70s punk culture took over the same format, they changed the name from ‘fan-zine’ to simply ‘zine’,” he said.

“The Riot Grrl [indie/punk feminist movement] scene took over to make zines more well known, and now they embody a D-I-Y [Do It Yourself] ethic meaning, where all the art, writing and publications were done yourself.”

More recently, zines became an alternative form of media and are often uncensored, without the need to please corporate advertisers because they were often distributed solely by the author, Lupian explained.

At this time, Rainbowlution Now! has no advertiser support, but coordinators are seeking advertisers that would support the youths’ vision without infringing on their creative process.

Lupian said that in the future, coordinators hope to fund a youth editor-in-chief to encourage the deepening commitment within the pre-existing peer group. He noted that funding currently covers publication costs, paper, supplies, printing, and “of course, because it’s youth, funding for pizza.”

For more information about the Rainbowlution Now! zine, e-mail Anthony Lupian at alupian@thecentersd.org.