By Cara Jepsen
Not long after his return, Rayson published his first zine. The Peoples’ Polar Express was a crude, “ultrarhyming stream-of-consciousness antigovernment political zine” that he xeroxed at his father’s law office. He gave 80 copies to friends, acquaintances, “anyone who was willing to take it. I was real naive and young and hopeful we could use the crest of this huge antiwar movement and all the other movements that blended into it, and get rid of the damn government.”
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Rayson started subscribing to progressive publications, and in 1997 he read an article about Noel Ignatiev, one of the editors of Race Traitor, a journal calling for the end of “white-skin privilege politics” by denying the concept of the white race. It struck a chord. “When I saw that, it was a crescendo of relief,” he says. “So I wrote a letter and told him how I saw things from my tollbooth and all the racism I see every day.” Ignatiev published it in the next issue.
“Prisoners’ outgoing mail is not censored, and they send me the most explosive, dynamite stuff,” he says. “And once my stuff gets in prison, they spread them around like crazy. They form groups to study this stuff, and ask me how they can do their own zines. Basically prisons are the new revolutionary schools of education.
