In late January, the Range begged you to read a new online Tucson zine that describes itself as "an online zine by radical women and queer people of color." At that point it had close to 16,000 views at only 40 days old.

Well, as of today the zine has almost 27,000 views and MalintZINE is gaining attention nationally in academic and movement circles. A group representing the zine was invited to participate in "Chicana Activism: Fierce Mujeres on the Front Lines," a conference sponsored by the UCLA MECha and the Cesar Chavez Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies.

Tonight, the zine officially celebrates its launch after it hosts a special dialogue with Andrea Smith, who is in Tucson this weekend as part of the UA LGBT Institute lecture series. Yesterday, Smith spoke in the after and in the evening. Tonight, at 6 p.m., MalintZINE hosts her at the John Valenzuela Youth Center, 1550 S. Sixth Ave. in South Tucson.

Previously, we were told the evening program, from 6 to 8 p.m. was another lecture. However, organizers told the Range that Smith will facilitate a "community consciousness raising dialogue," to work on accountability on issues facing the community. Because of Smith's work, especially as co-founder of INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, organizers hope she can share feedback with everyone who attends, especially on next steps to take. But

In January, the Range said this about the blog:

If you're new to the blog, start from the bottom up to understand why it started — in reaction to an effort by some members of TUSD's Mexican-American Studies movement discouraging discussion on domestic violence and the arrest of a former MAS leader.

MalintZINE aims to highlight sexual and gender violence issues front and center, rather than force women and others to be silent. Social movements don't grow and evolve unless they are called out on their bullshit and that's part of what this blog is doing. But it also features posts on Chicana feminism, gender identity, and poetry that reacts to what is taking place in Tucson right now.

That hasn't changed. MalintZINE is still bringing up these issues and more. After tonight's dialogue, the launch party kicks off at 9 p.m. at Fluxx Studio and Gallery, 414 E. 9th St. A $3-$5 donation is asked, but not required. Doubtful there will be any dart boards, but there could be some great surprises.

If you still want to hear more about what MalintZINE is all about and read a print version out this weekend, head to the Tucson Festival of Books' Nuestras Raices tent tomorrow on the UA mall on Sunday, March 10 at 10 a.m.

And more? Well, just click over to MalintZINE right here.

Tickets are now on sale for the first Exile on Congress Street music festival, brought to you by the Tucson Weekly, with three venues coming together on April 20, providing an obscene amount of entertainment for one super-affordable price. $12 will get you into the Rialto for indie-rock legends Dinosaur Jr., Congress to see Coachella-booked Polica, and on the Playground roof for a Silent Disco. Plus, there will be Latin music outdoors at Congress, DJs at Playground, and local music everywhere. It really is a great deal and should be a spectacular night of music downtown.

You can get tickets at the Rialto, Hotel Congress or at HUB, as well as online through the Rialto (and possibly Congress, but I can't find a link). See you there.

It's Andrea Smith weekend, beginning today when the scholar-activist speaks from noon to 1:30 p.m., in the University of Arizona Student Union Copper Room, delivering the 2013 Miranda Joseph Annual Endowed Lecture.

In "Surviving and Thriving in Academia as a Scholar-Activist: A Conversation with Andrea Smith," she shares her experiences on integrating activism and scholarship, getting through the tenure process and creating supportive spaces. According to the LGBT Institute, the event is open to all, but especially geared toward graduate students and junior faculty.

At the Center for Creative Photography Auditorium, 1030 N. Olive Road, Smith will discuss "Against Ethnographic Entrapment: Queering the Politics of Settler Self-Reflexivity," from 5:30 to 7 p.m. There will be a reception from 7 to 8 p.m. at the west lobby/patio of the UA School of Music.

Smith's talk "will focus on how Native peoples are situated in a position of ethnographic entrapment within academia and activism. Borrowing from Rey Chow, the only rhetorical position offered to the Native is that of the 'protesting ethnic': if we complain eloquently, the system will give us something. Building on Chow's work, the talk will then explore how another posture created within this economy is that of the self-reflexive (settler) subject. These self-reflexive subjects are frequently on display at various anti-racist venues in which they explain how much they learned about their complicity in settler colonialism and/or white supremacy because of their exposure to Native peoples. The subjectivity of the self-reflexive subject is reaffirmed against the foil of the 'oppressed' people who provide the occasion for this self-reflection. The talk concludes by exploring alternatives to self-reflexivity for anti-racist/anti-colonial thought and practice that emerge from the intersections of queer and indigenous studies."

On Friday, hosted by Tucson's MalintZINE, the self-described "online 'zine by radical women, queer and people of color," Smith's lecture is "Accountability is Decolonial," at the John Valenzuela Youth Center, 1550 S. Sixth Ave. Doors open at 6 p.m., and program is from 6:30 to 8 p.m.

Smith co-founded the group INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence and founded the Boarding School Healing Project. She is author of Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide and Native Americans and the Christian Right: The Gendered Politics of Unlikely Alliance. Smith has also edited The Color of Violence and The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Nonprofit Industrial Complex. Smith currently serves as the U.S. Coordinator for the Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians.

An entire festival dedicated to celebrating the love of reading and writing in general is always something to look forward to. But this Saturday, UA will see more traffic than just those attending the book festival.

With softball and men's basketball both playing games at home that day, most parking south of Speedway will be reserved for the sports fans with parking permits, leaving areas north of Speedway, east of Mountain Avenue and, on the south end of the UA Mall, west of Highland Avenue open for those attending the festival.

The Second Street parking garage will be reserved for vendors and authors at the festival. Parking in all other garages besides the Cherry Avenue Garage and all surface lots west of Mountain Avenue will be free.

One more thing to note: There's a 20 percent chance of rain, according to The Weather Channel, and a high of only 57 degrees, as it will likely rain on Friday.

Pink Floyd fans and lovers of community radio, unite! As part of KXCI's Spring Membership Drive, they're hosting a benefit tonight to celebrate the 40th anniversary of what's arguably Pink Floyd's greatest album, Dark Side of the Moon at Plush.

The album will be covered, in its entirety, by Tucson's Atom Heart Mother, one of Arizona's pre-eminent Pink Floyd cover bands.

From a KXCI press release:

Lead vocalist and Guitarist Mike Sydloski proclaimed, “We are doing this because we love a good celebration, we get to simultaneously celebrate the greatest community radio station there ever was, and the best Album, ever. We are so excited that we are bursting from our skin!!!”

Mike, while we share your excitement for Dark Side... and KXCI, you may want to get that skin thing checked out. That can't be healthy.

The show begins at 7:30 p.m. tonight, with doors opening at 7. Tickets are $5.

• Courtesy of the Sunshine Mile Facebook Page

One of Tucson’s most historic mile-long stretches will have its day in the sun tomorrow, and with a forecast of just over 80 degrees, the timing couldn’t be better.

The Historic Sunshine Mile Festival, honoring the strip of Broadway Boulevard highly populated with local businesses between Campbell Avenue and Country Club, kicks off tomorrow at noon with an appearance from Ward 6 Council Member Steve Kozachik as he unveils a mural at 2610 E. Broadway Blvd. Demion Clinco, the president of the Tucson Historic Preservation Foundation Board, will also speak at the event, while the Tucson Barbershop Experience Men's Chorus and a trumpet soloist from Catalina Foothills Band are scheduled to perform.

The UA College of Science continues its exploration into the world of genomics with Arizona Center for the Biology of Complex Diseases Director Donata Vercelli explaining "Why DNA Is Not Our Destiny." The free talk will bring a big crowd to Centennial Hall at 7 p.m., so get there a few minutes early, especially since roadwork has closed Park Avenue around University Boulevard.

Here's the idea behind the lecture, via the College of Science:

Two twin sisters, one with and one without asthma. Two genetically identical mice, one black and lean, the other yellow and obese. Two human cells, one from the brain and the other from the skin: they look and act different, but they have the same DNA sequence. All of this is the work of epigenetics. Much emphasis has been placed on DNA and genes as repositories of the code designed to transmit information and dictate biological programs. However, developmental trajectories and responses to environmental cues are — and need to be — highly plastic. This plasticity is made possible by epigenetic mechanisms that enhance or silence gene expression at the right time in the right environmental context but do not change the DNA sequence. Thus the code inscribed in our DNA is necessary but not sufficient to recapitulate our biological identity and determine our biological destiny. This lecture will explore how understanding epigenetics will advance our understanding of human biology and disease.

More details here.

Here's your itinerary for today. Do not deviate. If you do, your Saturday will suck.

4:30 p.m. (Park Place)/5:10 p.m. (El Con) Bless Me, Ultima
This movie adaptation of Rudolfo Anaya's controversial novel opens this weekend for a limited time, so you better go today before our state Attorney General Tom Horne bans it. It's about a young boy and the arrival of Ultima, the curandera who moves in with his family at just the right time. She inspires him to question authority and see the world from a new and magical perspective. The movie is showing at Century 20 El Con Mall and Park Place Mall.

Here's the trailer:

7 to 10 p.m., Erotica 5
This annual erotica art show is at the Tucson Sculptural Resource Center, 640 N. Stone Ave. They tell you to leave the kids at home, so yeah, please, listen up. The show is cool, beautiful, interesting, freaky and includes some performances that usually mean naked people doing something interesting. The body is cool and beautiful folks, and the artists involved the past five years in this show understand how to celebrate it.

Here's an image from Erotica 4, so you understand why you may want to get a babysitter for this portion of our evening:

John Chamblee, research chair for Humane Borders, will present "A Borderlands Transformation: Reflections on Migrant Death Maps Since 2002," tonight, 6 p.m. at Grace St. Paul Episcopal Church, 2331 E. Adams St.

Chamblee, research chair for Humane Borders, heads the organization's mapping project. While not about Chamblee's work, Margaret Regan wrote this interesting piece in 2007 on Ed McCullough, a retired UA geosciences professor, regarding the mapping of migrant trails.

From the press release for tonight's event, co-sponsored by Humane Borders and the Border Action Network:

For centuries, present-day Arizona’s desert borderlands have been corridors connecting northern and southern peoples. These passages themselves have undergone transformations — cycles that included times of lesser and greater violence. In this presentation, Dr. John F. Chamblee, a long-time Humane Borders volunteer and head of their mapping project, will discuss a most recent borderlands transformation by providing a historical view of the migrant death mapping project’s data. By looking at changes in death rates and locations, he will explore connections between globalization, border policy, drug trafficking and increasing mortality rates over the last decade within Arizona’s undocumented migrant travel corridors.
...

John (Chamblee) became involved with Humane Borders in 2003 when his wife, Ruby, then a volunteer, recognized that the organization needed a geographic information system (a type of electronic mapping software) database to manage their migrant death maps and encouraged him to develop one for the organization. He has managed the migrant death mapping program ever since.

The results of these efforts have been more accurate maps of deaths, a model of the potential benefits of additional cell phone towers in the western Sonoran Desert, and warning posters that inform potential migrants of the dangers associated with undocumented border crossings.

These maps and posters have raised awareness about risks to migrants through their distribution in Latin America and by being featured in many news outlets.

Somehow, we have survived the #TucsonBlizzard, so now we have to rebuild, trying to figure out what to do with our lives without the threat of a snow-based demise hanging over our heads. The good news is that there's still soccer to be watched and enjoyed tonight, as the Desert Diamond Cup rolls on with Real Salt Lake playing New England at 5 pm and Seattle taking on New York at 7.

The amusing press release from the FC Tucson folk on the subject is below the cut: