IT'S STILL A THING! $15K FOR 15 YEARS OF COMPASS COMMUNITY M
arch 1 will mark 15 years since this lil’ ole newspaper was first published. It started as a brainchild of Sam Potrykus, a UMass Boston student at the time, who maniacally xeroxed hundreds of copies of a single sheet of paper advertising DIY music shows and distributed them all over Boston. This was the first edition of the Boston Compass newspaper. Over the past decade and a half, hundreds of Boston creatives have come together and supported us. There were many late nights and early mornings hitting print deadlines, countless illustrations and articles drawn up to fill our pages, and who-knows-how-many connections made from Bostonians following our leads to underground events from our Happenings listings. Now, at Issue #178, we’ve grown to include a Patreon subscription, an option for home delivery, a brand new website (bostoncompassnewspaper.com), and the eight pages you see here today! Everything is contributed, designed, and compiled by local creatives. We are proud to pay our contributors around $9,000 a year for this important work, in addition to paying monthly stipends to our staff of artists. But, as we come upon this milestone, our future is uncertain. Without community support, it is likely that we will not be able to continue publishing through the spring. The current political climate and administration seek to divide and silo us, with aims to silence community advocacy for marginalized individuals. We realize that our work providing the Boston Compass as a resource is more important than ever, especially as cultural institutions face increasing threats.
ing and marginalized artists and writers. To support this branded merch. Most importantly, you will be able to supwork, we are launching a crowdfunding campaign to port the future of your local, free, and artist-run newspaper. raise $15,000 to support our annual operating expenses! We need your support! Thank you from the bottom of our Our $15K for 15 Years Campaign will run until the end of hearts to everyone who has had a hand in producing this March, and we invite you to support us and spread the thing: our patrons, our sponsors, our friends, and our famword! There are opportunities to win gift certificates from ily. As the last sentence of Issue #1 from March 2010 reads, In a world where such opportunities are few and far be- our amazing sponsor organizations, 1369 Coffeehouse and “HAVE FUN IN YOUR CITY!” tween, we want to continue providing paid work for emerg- Capitol Theatre; art pieces from local artists; and BCN-
EMMA LEAVITT
BCN OPS NERD & BRAIN ARTS ORG BOARD MEMBER
Scan our QR code and Donate to the Crowdfundr! crowdfundr.com/62WCB8 PAGE LAYOUTS BY Adrian Alvarez Phoebe Delmonte Akbota Saudabayeva