Cory is a zinemaker and printing press operator from Omaha, NE who helped make a Trump piñata filled with zines for an afterparty Omaha Zine Fest in March of 2016. They told us how they did it over email. You can follow them on Twitter @circled_a.
During the primary election, when Trump was addressing his most inflammatory rhetoric and when many people were still considering him merely a scarecrow, I had seen Vines of kids beating on Trump piñatas at birthday parties and thought it was a great way to bring some fun into political dissent.
It took about 16 hours total to make the piñata. I didn’t make it, but I worked with the brother of the artist and she used heavy duty cardboard we salvaged from our warehouse job along with colorful tissue paper and paint. She is truly talented and deserves all the credit for the art, but she requested I not use her name because of her undocumented immigration status.
The zines inside the piñata were all themed on resistance and were provided by Any Means Necessary collective from Kansas City, Missouri, an anarchist front involved with many projects in that area. They provided zines on the Ferguson Rebellion; the woman-led Kurdish Rojava fighters and the ideological leader of Kurdish resistance, Abdullah Öcalan’s book Democratic Confederalism; there was a copy of Queer Ultraviolence: A Bash Back! anthology; an issue of Black Seed, which is an ecological journal from an anarchist perspective; Accomplices Not Allies and indigenous peoples call for “accomplices” who attack colonial structures and ideals and who are realized through mutual consent and trust.
The piñata smashing was at the afterparty for the 2016 Omaha Zine Fest. It was a dance party in a DIY space in Omaha managed by women and at the time, there was a pirate radio station in residency called Bomb Shelter Radio. The piñata was so well made that I didn’t want to see it smashed but it felt good to see a group of artists, queers, musicians and zinesters cheer on the public beating of a Trump effigy.
This year, we’re going to build a bigger Trump piñata. It will be tremendous. I mean it folks, you’ll love this piñata. It is simply yuge and I tell you what folks, we are going to give that Trump a bigly beating.