Fuck the 4th Sale! 25% Off Everything!
By AK Press | July 2, 2009
It’s that special time again! Twice a year AK Press holds a gigantic warehouse sale where we offer everything to locals at 25% off. This time around, we decided to offer the sale price to everyone! So, even if you don’t live anywhere near our warehouse, you can still get lots of great books at a great discount. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to partake of the keg of beer and inspired music selections that our in-the-flesh customers will enjoy.
So to make up for the the drawbacks of virtual shopping, we’re extending the Fuck the 4th sale for web and phone customers through Sunday. Place your order anytime Friday through Sunday and get 25% off everything (the discount won’t appear when you place you order, but we’ll deduct it before we charge your credit card).
If you’re a local, come on by the warehouse this Friday, July 3rd between 4pm - 10pm for the discount, refreshments, music, and (vegan) snacks…as well as a huge selection of sale books priced between $1 and $5.
See you soon!
AK Press
674-A 23rd St.
Oakland, Ca 94612
510.208.1700
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AK Press is on Facebook!
By AK Press | July 1, 2009
To all you Facebook users out there, we want you to know that AK Press is on Facebook too! We have a “fan” page (just search for “AK Press” on FB) and, as of this moment, we have 2,063 fans!
We love you too! We really, really do!
And if you use Facebook but haven’t yet become a “fan” of AK, please consider doing so. It’s a way to show your support for our efforts—which we really appreciate—and you can also use our FB page to keep to keep up with AK-related news and events.
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SoCal Anarchist Conference & Feria Libertaria
By AK Press | July 1, 2009
Come meet friends and comrades, celebrate traditions of resistance, and participate in exciting and challenging workshops at The SoCal Anarchist Conference & Feria Libertaria, which will occur on August 1-2, 2009 in Los Angeles. For more information, go here. (And please make sure to stop by the AK Press table and say hello! We’ll be there!)
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Anaquia en el Reino Unido: La sucursal en Escocia de AK Press
By Zach | July 1, 2009
Hace 20 años, AK Press fue fundado oficialmente como un colectivo en Escocia. El colectivo pudo sobrevivir a esos primeros años gracias a la energia de sus fundadores, en especial Ramsey Kanaan y al apoyo de todos los anarquistas a través del Reino Unido, quienes estaban muy ansiosos esperando ver florecer nuestras ideas.
En 1994, Ramsey se traslado a Bay Area (USA) para empezar una nueva sucursal de AK Press. En esos años, AK Press ya tenia oficinas en Edinburgh y Londres, esta ultima actualmente cerrada, pero aún contando con el apoyo de sus fundadores en distintas tareas. Desde entonces, las sucursales de USA y del Reino Unido han funcionado con sus propias redes de distribución (las cuales no están ligadas financieramente) y colaborando en la edicion de nuevos proyectos como un gran colectivo. Cada año nos reunimos para nuestra Reunion General Anual (RGA) para discutir sobre negocios, el estado actual del movimiento y, lo más importante, sobre los próximos proyectos editoriales. La idea original de estas reuniones era que cada año fueran en un país distinto, pero desechamos esa idea al ver que el colectivo en USA crecia y en el Reino Unido cada dia se hacia más pequeño. Ahora estas reuniones solamente las hacemos en Bay Area.
Bueno, despues de muchos años tuve la oportunidad de visitar a Lex y Mike. Junto a Lorna pasamos unos dias en AKUK para ponernos al dia sobre las actividades del colectivo, y tambien para beber cerveza escocesa y visitar sus lujosas oficinas. Lex ha sido parte de AK Press desde sus inicios y Mike lleva mas de una década trabajando con nosotros. Como pueden ver en las fotos, tienen la misma dedicación a tener un entorno de trabajo ordenado tal como sus compañeros Norteamericanos.
Los ultimos proyectos de nuestras oficinas en UK fueron los libros Rebel Alliances de Benjamin Franks y el Volumen I de An Anarchist FAQ. Actualmente se encuentran trabajando en el Volumen II de An Anarchist FAQ y estan haciendo los preparativos para una nueva edicion de Proudhon con Iain McKay.
[Traducción: Bruno Battaglia]
Read the rest of this entry »
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An Attempt to Say Goodbye: On the Life and Work of Edgar Rodrigues
By AK Press | June 27, 2009
The death of Edgar Rodrigues in May was a major blow to the anarchist movement in Brazil and also around the world. Though it would be unrealistic to try to capture the richness and complexity of his life in a single essay, an attempt must be made nonetheless.
The following article by Marcolino Jeremias makes such an attempt. It was translated by Chuck Morse. The piece is available in Spanish here and in Portuguese here.
* * *
An Attempt to Say Goodbye: On the Life and Work of Edgar Rodrigues
Antônio Francisco Correia, who used the pseudonym Edgar Rodrigues, was born to Manuel Francisco Correia and Albina da Silva Santos on March 12, 1921 in Angeias, which is north of the city of Matosinhos in the Portugual’s Portu district. His father was a militant anarcho-syndicalist and participated in the “Union of the Four Arts,” an affiliate of the Confederación General del Trabajo (CGT) and the International Association of Workers (AIT), which represented various workmen’s trades in Matosinhos. Two cousins, Armindo da Silva Sarilho and Manuel Sarilho, were also members of the Union.
Toward the end of 1933, a crackdown by Antônio Oliveira Salazar’s military dictatorship forced the closure of this union. Part of its cultural archive was hidden in the Correia family home and clandestine administrative meetings were also held there in the evening hours. The young Antônio Francisco Correia listened with great curiosity to the discussions held during the gatherings.
State police raided the home one early morning in 1936 and arrested Manuel Francisco Correia. Antônio Francisco Correia—or “Correia,” as he was known among intimates—often visited his father in the political police lockup during the ten weeks that he was imprisoned there without trial. Once freed, his father was punished anew by being deprived of his job, which caused the family to endure serious economic difficulties.
Two years later, Correia wrote his first article for Portu’s Primero de Enero newspaper, although it was not published due to censorship. At this time, he also began to compose the drafts that would make up his first book.
On May Day, 1939, Correia and some friends skipped work as a form of protest—it was illegal to commemorate May Day—and met to affirm the anarchist origins of the date. In March of the following year, he joined the Flower of Youth Drama Group (Theater Lover) of Santa Cruz Bispo in the Matosinhos municipality, where he met Ondina dos Anjos da Costa Santos, who became his life-long partner. He also worked with the Joys of Perafita Drama Group, where he met the militant anarchist historian, José Marques da Costa.
In September 1946, the anarchist Luis Joaquim Portela[1] and five political prisoners escaped from the Peniche Fortress. Two years later, Correia met Portela while he was underground and helped him acquire forged documents, although it so happens that he was imprisoned again due to a betrayal.[2]
On July 19, 1951, he was introduced to the infamous anti-clerical writer Tomás da Fonseca and, the following day, set off for Brazil in flight from political persecution unleashed by the Portuguese dictatorship.
Upon arriving in Rio de Janeiro, he met the following comrades: Roberto das Neves, Manuel Perez, Giacomo Bottino, Ida Bottino, Germinal Bottino, Pascoal Gravina, José Romero, Ondina Romero, Angelina Soares, Diamantino Augusto, José Oiticica, João Peres Bouças, Carolina Peres, Ideal Peres, and Afonso Vieira among others…
At the prompting of Perse and Vieira, he submitted an article that he had authored on the Portuguese dictatorship that was published in the anarchist periodical Acción Directa[3] and later became active in the publishing group by the same name. Immediately thereafter, with the help of comrades such as Enio Cardoso, Domingos Rojas, and Benjamim Cano Ruiz, he began publishing essays in the international libertarian press and also, as this time, adopted the pseudonym Edgar Rodrigues.[4]
He participated in the gathering of the Brazilian anarchist movement that occurred on February 9-11, 1953 in the home of José Oiticica. At this meeting, he met other anarchist militants who were active in São Paulo: Edgard Leuenroth, Adelino Tavares de Pinho, Lucca Gabriel, Osvaldo Salgueiro, to name a few. During this period, he also met the Spanish writer and journalist Victor Garcia (Tomás-Germinal Gracia Ibars), Romanian poet Eugen Relgis, and Paraguayan comrade Ceríaco Duarte.
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[español] The International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest
By AK Press | June 27, 2009
Los estudios sobre los movimientos radicales suelen ser muy detallados o muy generales. Usualmente, estamos obligados a elegir entre los árboles o el bosque.
Gracias a The International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest esto no volverá a suceder. Esta edición consta de 8 volúmenes que exploran la historia de los movimientos revolucionarios y de protesta durante los últimos 500 años. Aparte de la edición como libro, existe además una edición online de estos volúmenes. Te pedimos que consideres conseguir este libro para tu biblioteca local o universitaria, y por otro lado ver la opción de suscribirte a su edición online.
Además, estamos muy felices de anunciar que incluye una extensa cobertura al movimiento anarquista y sus pensadores, gracias al esfuerzo de Jesse Cohn. Entre los otros colaboradores, podemos encontrar a autores que han colaborado con AK PRESS de alguna manera. Entre estos autores tenemos a Chris Carlsson, Benjamin Franks, Chuck Morse, y Lucien van der Walt.
[Traducción: Bruno Battaglia]
Topics: AK Allies, AK Authors!, Events, Spanish | No Comments »
The Genius of Mud: Ecological Art
By charles | June 22, 2009
Our pals at justseeds.org recently posted an interesting piece about Chicago artists who partnered with the Tamms Year Ten coalition to protest state-sanctioned torture at the supermax prison in Southern Illinois. They launched a city-wide stenciling campaign…and the medium was mud.
As the post notes, “mud-stenciling” has two main advantages: “Mud as a medium is especially sensible for artists and activists who want to work outdoors with a non-toxic substance to reach a large public audience. Moreover, city governments and law enforcement agencies have little precedence in dealing with mud stencils so there is a gray area on whether it is legal or not.”
So, any of you radical artistes out there who are looking for a new ways to reach the masses should head over to justseeds.org. Well, aside from mud-stenciling, you should check them out often, because there are always new ideas and approaches being broadcast on their site.
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The International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest
By AK Press | June 20, 2009
Histories of radical movements tend to be either way too detailed or way too general. Typically, we’re forced to choose between the forest and trees.
That may no longer be the case thanks to the appearance of The International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest, a massive, eight-volume work that explores the history of protest and revolution over the past 500 years. In addition to the hard copy edition, there is also a searchable online edition here. Please consider getting your local public or university library to purchase the book and/or subscribe to the online database. It’s very impressive.
We are also happy to report that it contains extensive coverage of anarchist movement and thinkers, due primarily to the efforts of Jesse Cohn. Among the contributors of entries on anarchism, you will find authors who have had been associated with AK Press in one way or another, including Chris Carlsson, Benjamin Franks, Chuck Morse, and Lucien van der Walt.
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No War But Class War: a review of Louis Adamic’s Dynamite
By AK Press | June 17, 2009
We LOVE it when people review AK Press books. The following review by Abe Walker first appeared in the May 2009 issue of the CUNY Graduate Center Advocate.
* * *
“No War But Class War”
Book Review by Abe Walker
Dynamite: The Story of Class Violence in America by Louis Adamic. AK Press Edition (2008)
The contemporary US labor movement does not have a reputation for militancy. By almost any standard, American unions stack up poorly compared to their European, Asian, African and Latin American counterparts. American workers strike less often than workers almost anywhere else in the world, and the total number of days lost to work stoppage as a percentage of total days worked is embarrassingly low. The Bureau of Labor Statistics recorded only twenty-two major strikes in 2005. By comparison, in authoritarian China, where independent labor unions have no legal status and the strike weapon is outlawed, groups of workers walked off the job 19,000 times in 2005. When American workers do strike, they do it so quietly it rarely makes the news, and if the police get involved, it’s usually only to redirect traffic.
Given this, it’s easy to forget that 100 years ago, the American workplace was the site of perpetual, unmitigated violence. During the period extending roughly from 1886 to 1935, the conflict between labor and capital could be labeled a “class war” in more than a metaphorical sense. Labor rebellions were routinely put down by private company police, armed thugs-for-hire, state militias, the national guard, and in at least one instance, the United States Army itself. This story has been told and retold, in whole and in part, by numerous labor historians. But what’s striking about Louis Adamic’s Dynamite, originally written in 1934 and recently re-issued by AK Press, is that he stresses something the other historians know but refuse to admit: the violence was often two-sided.
This should be no surprise to any serious student of American history. The United States is a nation born of bloodshed, and there was a time when the Second Amendment had defenders others than right-wing extremists. But the other popular histories of American labor–such as Labor’s Untold Story, originally published by the Communist-led United Electrical Workers, and Jeremy Brecher’s Strike!–take the moral high ground by downplaying the violence of workers, while emphasizing the violence of the state. To be sure, in the frequent pitched battles that were waged during this period, labor casualties consistently outnumbered police and military casualties by a margin of at least ten-to-one (sometimes significantly higher). And wanton acts of cruelty, like the 1914 Ludlow Massacre where hundreds of striking miners and their families were gunned down in cold blood, were the exclusive domain of the state. Clearly, it would be wrong to suggest that workers were the primary instigators of violence. But it would be equally wrong to depict the workers as poor, defenseless victims, armed with nothing but their moral certitude and their historical prerogative. When attacked, workers readily fought back with fists, rocks, guns, incendiary devices, and organized bombing campaigns. To minimize or deny this reality is to distort the historical record.
The AK Press edition of Dynamite includes a foreword by Jon Bekken, an activist and organizer with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Bekken briefly situates the text in its historical context, but his main intellectual project is apparently to defend the legacy of his own organization. The IWW receives significant attention in the text, and Adamic’s assessment is mixed. Bekken quickly–though unconvincingly–refutes the suggestion that the IWW reciprocated the violence unleashed against them (well, except sometimes, but only in self-defense), and dismisses the assertion that sabotage was ever a major part of the IWW’s strategy. (The truth is probably more complicated. From 1912 to 1915, the union issued a series of pamphlets advocating sabotage, which it later disowned as the political climate grew more repressive. The contemporary organization distances itself from these pamphlets, which are displayed on its website alongside a bold disclaimer: “The following document is presented for historical purposes…workers who engage in some of the following forms of sabotage ri Read the rest of this entry »
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*VENTA DE VERANO AK PRESS!*
By AK Press | June 17, 2009
Necesitas abastecerte de libros para este verano? No esperes más! Empieza AHORA, todo el material de nuestro website esta con un 20% de descuento. Esta oferta se extendera hasta el proximo Domingo 21 de junio, y hay muchisimos titulos de los cuales no podras esperar (o tambien no olvidar).
Ya lo sabes: Esta venta excluye a los productos que ya estan con un precio de venta. Los inscritos como Amigos de AK Press y los certificados de regalos no tienen derecho a este descuento. Los descuentos no pueden ser combinados. Nuestro website no puede aplicar los descuentos automaticamente, asi que tu tarjeta de credito sera PRE-AUTORIZADA por el monto total pero nosotros le restaremos el 20% antes de cargar tu tarjeta. La preautorizacion desaparecera despues de un par de dias.
Por favor, manda tu orden antes de las 11:59PM (PST) del Domingo 21 de junio y asi aprovechar este descuento!
[Traducción: Bruno Battaglia]
Topics: AK News, Events, Spanish | No Comments »
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