AK Press at the 15th annual SFBAABF!
By ashley | March 18, 2010
What, don’t recognize that acronym?
I’m talking, of course, about the San Francisco Bay Area Anarchist Bookfair. The 15th annual, actually, which the entire AK collective attended this past weekend.
Since we’ve already dedicated two blog posts telling you about the event in advance, and listing the incredible lineup of AK authors and allies who spoke, I’m going to keep this one short on text. We’ll call it a photo essay. You’re welcome.
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A couple things I can’t let just slip by, despite my promise to shut up at the beginning of this post:
First, did you see our new shirts? There’s a semi-close up of the four of them up there, all designed by our friend John Yates, and all completely effing awesome, if you ask us. Bookfair patrons got the first go at ‘em, but lucky for you, dear internets, all are now available on our website.
Also, we were delighted to debut our three (count ‘em!) new AK books: Anarchism and Its Aspirations, We Are an Image From the Future, and Anarchism and the City. All received a very warm welcome, of course.
And finally, we want to extend a thank you to all our hardworking volunteers (including Jeff, pictured above reigning over the sale table, as he has for all of eternity, as far as I’m aware.), and all the folks who show up year after year, to talk to, inspire, and support us at the SFBAABF. You guys are the best!
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AK Press at Left Forum: March 19-21
By AK Press | March 17, 2010
Those of you attending the Left Forum this year in New York should, as always, stop by the AK Press table and say hi. You’ll also have a chance to check out several AK authors who are giving talks. Here’s the lowdown:
Left Forum 2010
THE CENTER CANNOT HOLD:
Rekindling the Radical Imagination
March 19-21
Pace University
One Pace Plaza
New York, NY 10038
Session 1: SATURDAY, 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Post-Identity Politcs
W-615
Kevin Alexander Gray - Author of Waiting for Lightening to Strike: The Fundamentals of Black Politics
Lessons from Latin American Social Movements for a US in Crisis
W612
Ben Dangl - Author of The Price of Fire: Resource Wars and Social Movements in Bolivia
Marina Sitrin - Editor of Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina
Session 2: SATURDAY, 12:00 PM - 2:00 PM
Reimagining Society: The Nature of the Task
Schimmel
Chris Spannos (Chair) - Editor of Real Utopia: Participatory Society for the 21st Century
Michael Albert - Author of Moving Forward: Program for a Participatory Economy
Session 3: SATURDAY, 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
A Panel Discussion on Anarchism and Marxism
W510
Cindy Milstein - Author of Anarchism and Its Aspirations
Envisioning Real Utopias
W612
Peter Staudenmaier - Co-author of Ecofascism: Lessons from the German Experience
Envisioning Self-Governance
E328
Cindy Milstein - Author of Anarchism and Its Aspirations
Academic Repression Book Talk
W602
Theory and Action
A panel of contributors to Academic Repression: Reflections from the Academic Industrial Complex
Anthony J. Nocella, II (Chair)
Liat Ben-Moshe and Dr. Caroline Kaltefleiter
Victoria Fontan
Deric Shannon
Rethinking the National Question in the United States
W610
Fred Ho - Editor of Legacy to Liberation: Politics & Culture of Revolutionary Asian/Pacific America
Ten Years Later: Organizers Reflect on the 1999 Seattle WTO Protests
W507
Chris Dixon (Chair) Contributor to The Battle of the Story of “The Battle of Seattle”
Horizontalism and Grassroots Democracy in the Americas
W503
Marina Sitrin - Editor of Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina
Topics: AK Authors!, Events | No Comments »
We Are an Image from the Future tour disrupted
By kate | March 17, 2010
As many of you know, some of the editors of AK’s amazing new book on the Greek Insurrection of 2008 are here in the US this month (and next) on a tour to promote the book and build solidarity between activists and anarchists in Greece and the United States.
Last night, the window of their borrowed car was smashed while it was parked in a quiet Berkeley neighborhood, resulting in the loss of hundreds of dollars of books, pamphlets, videos, and other merchandise, as well as a video projector and a number of external hard-drives and other electronic equipment. On top of the cost of gas and travel across the US and back again, this is a staggering financial blow.
The Greeks need your help to continue the tour, and recoup their losses (especially the video projector, which was owned by their collective in Greece). If you are able to make a donation to help defray the expenses of window repair, and replacement equipment and stock, please do so! Your donation would be greatly appreciated - any and all donations received through the button below will go directly to our Greek friends. Please help out if you can!
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Holler From the Rooftops: Creating Some Kindling
By Zach | March 16, 2010
A new agitational paper is circulating around the bay area: Holler From the Rooftops. Long-time anarchist rabble-rouser Tommy Strange is at the helm. Tommy’s not the guy at every meeting and gathering, not the guy “on-the-scene” making a name for himself, he doesn’t travel the country going from book fair to book fair. When he says “ I don’t back down and I haven’t gotten soft,” he’s not full of shit. I invited Tommy to some anarchist meetings a while back and he told me, “I want action, I don’t wanna go to school.” How could I argue?
Here’s a link to some of the content from the first issue. Hopefully folks out there will see fit to contribute to the paper; not for Tommy’s sake, but because he’s bottom-lining a new (tried and true?) way to communicate our views to potential comrades. There’s a whole world to win, and Tommy’s not gonna get bogged down debating each and every nuance of your favored political persuasion. As every decent anarchist paper has done throughout history, Holler seeks to make our ideas known and accepted by those outside our circles, while holding the line.
To get a copy. contact Tommy (POB 40656, SF, CA 94140) or ask for one to be included in your next AK order. We’ve got a bundle or two that we’re including in mailorder shipments as you read this.
Why a local newspaper? Why now?
A free newspaper is the only way I see an individual reaching out to complete strangers, outside of the internet, and building some coherent base of radical face-to-face democracy. If you sell it, it ends up in only certain bookstores, and only certain people will pick it up. It’s not something I think I should be doing with my inability to write journalistic concise articles, or that I think I will excel at, but it’s a push forward for myself personally, even if only as an act of desperation. It is not simply a venue for news, facts, and horrors that the media leaves out—though on the surface that may appear to be its purpose—but a connecting point for strangers to make some attempt at bottom-up resistance.
What’s the editorial vision for the paper? Where is Holler from the Rooftops coming from? And whom do you see as the audience?
If I don’t quit—as I consider every other day, since I have that American infection of desiring immediate gratification—I would like it to be a left socialist/anarchist venue for what tiny portion of the masses that it can reach. Perhaps a mixture of the Anderson Valley Advertiser or Counterpunch, mixed with the urgency of old time anarchist papers such as the Masses and Rocker’s Arbeter Fraynd. As an editor, my main goals would be to find ten or more people to contribute, create a lengthy letter section, and act as a filter on a hard-line libertarian socialist viewpoint.
There are not many choices, many ways to look at history or present day problems, or two sides to every story. There is only one ethical “common ground” in which I view the choices for the future, and it is certainly not original, nor is it a naïve, unsubstantiated belief in human needs or human nature. I find no value whatsoever in presenting a Trotskyist or Leninist version of socialism, or revolution. The letters section is another thing. I will print many views there.
On the look of the first issue though, the paper definitely needs more workers’ voices that are not barking this intransigent view, but speaking from experience and the heart.
The last thing I want it to be is Tommy’s monthly rant, which the first issue is.
The audience is meant to be the workers, small business owners, people who still might even, after all the shit that is coming down, call themselves middle class….who have come to the obvious conclusion that there has to be another future, and we have to start building the road now. As I have handed out hundreds to complete strangers, and seen surprise and interest, I would say my overuse of the word “atomization” is not wrong. We live among millions in the USA that are just so sick of the experts and politicians, and in the past twenty years, due to great left book publishers and the internet, there are millions educated about how change really comes about. I don’t believe this paper will have anything to do with a large “spark.” I’m too cynical for that. But I do believe I have to try to create some kindling. To predict what is going to happen shortly in our lives, can either be a cynical intellectual exercise that brings on despair and inaction, or it can be a reasoned and optimistic heartfelt outlook that demands all contact possible to find real community based on physical proximity and common desires.
Your intention is for Holler to become a monthly paper. Tell us about the local independent and radical media in SF and what a paper like yours has to offer.
There is no mass radical print in the bay area. A strange thing in itself. There are tens of thousands in the bay area doing amazing organizing work, mutual aid, and education projects. The people here have the hearts and minds capable even of a long general strike against the wars. I doubt I can spark that. And I can’t change the defeatist “it can’t happen here” mindset absorbed from the ruling class’ and elites’ propaganda, among a large enough number of people. …I don’t think so anyway… More simply, it is a tangible thing you or I can pass on. Thirty percent of the country doesn’t even go on the web still, let alone to far left discussion forums. Yes, I have a problem with people relying on the internet thing as a main source of discussion. I’ve spent years in discussion forums online. Outside of its indispensable use as a great organizing avenue for actions and its obvious use as a source of information and cheap fast communication, when it comes to a “discussion forum,” …I find it dogmatic and flywheel and most often dominated by men who have too much time on their hands…(myself included for years). There is nothing comparable to face-to-face democracy. It creates responsibility and human bonds: comradery comes from the socialistic desires inside all of us. Typing alone is typing alone. Read the rest of this entry »
Topics: AK Allies, Anarchist Publishers | No Comments »
AK Press authors on parade!
By kate | March 13, 2010
It’s shaping up to be a great spring; we’ve got authors out on the road promoting their new books every month from now through the fall … so stay tuned for tour details for Seth Tobocman, Ben Dangl, AK Thompson, Tricia Shapiro, Cindy Milstein, Jeff Coant, Void Network, Team Colors, and more!
In the meantime, our friends in the Pacific Northwest and Ontario have got a great couple of weeks ahead of them: Matt Hern tours the NW next week, and Michael Schmidt, South African co-author of the excellent Black Flame, tours Ontario, with the help of Common Cause. Check out the full schedules below!
And, note: we’re currently looking for funding to bring both Lucien van der Walt (Black Flame) and Raul Zibechi (Dispersing Power) to the US this summer/fall. So please get in contact if you happen to work with an organization or a university that might be willing to cover travel costs for either of these
folks!
Matt Hern in the Pacific Northwest
Starting with his appearance this Sunday (March 14) at the 15th Annual Bay Area Anarchist Bookfair, Matt Hern, author of AK’s new Common Ground in a Liquid City: Essays in Defense of an Urban Future, and editor of Everywhere All the Time: A New Deschooling Reader, takes to the road for a quick tour up the Pacific Coast. If you’re in Portland, Olympia, Seattle, or San Francisco, be sure to come on out and meet Matt!
Sunday, March 14 | Matt Hern in San Francisco
Bay Area Anarchist Bookfair, 11:30AM
SF County Fair Building, Ninth Avenue and Lincoln Way, at Golden Gate Park
Studio for Urban Projects, 7-9PM
3579 17th Street, San Francisco
Monday, March 15 | Matt Hern in Seattle, WA
Left Bank Books, 7PM
92 Pike Street, Seattle
Tuesday, March 16 | Matt Hern in Olympia, WA
Orca Books, 6PM
509 4th Avenue East, Olympia
Wednesday, March 17 | Matt Hern in Portland, OR
The Red & Black Cafe, 7PM
400 Southeast 12th Avenue, Portland
*****
Michael Schmidt in Canada
South African journalist Michael Schmidt heads to Canada next week for a week-long tour of Ontario to promote Black Flame: The Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism, organized by the wonderful folks at Common Cause. Be sure to check out one of Michael’s events if you’re in the area!
Monday, March 15 | Michael Schmidt in Waterloo
Wilfrid Laurier University, 4-6PM
School of Business and Economics, Room 2260
75 University Avenue West
(Sponsored the Communication Studies and Global Studies departments.)
March 16 | Michael Schmidt in London, details tba
March 17 | Michael Schmidt in Hamilton
McMaster University, 12-2pm
MUSC Rooms 311 and 313
1280 Main St. West
Limited seating.
Please RSVP at commoncauseontario@gmail.com
(Sponsored by the LIUNA-Mancinelli Professorship in Global Labour Issues and the School of Labour Studies.)
Sky Dragon Centre, 7-9pm
27 King William Street
Hamilton, ON
Organized by Common Cause Hamilton
commoncausehamilton@gmail.com
March 18 | Michael Schmidt in Montreal, details tba
March 19 | Michael Schmidt in Ottawa
University of Ottawa 3:00pm
Desmarais Building room 3120 (DMS)
(the newer building at ‘Laurier Station’ on the Transitway)
Exile Infoshop 7pm
256 Bank St, 2nd floor
(at the corner of Bank and Cooper)
March 20 | Michael Schmidt in Toronto
University of Toronto, 3-5PM
Bahen Centre, Room 1220
40 St. George Street
(Co-sponsored by the Pan African Solidarity Network and the Work and Labour Studies Programme, York University.)
Keep an eye out for updates at linchpin.ca, or email Common Cause at commoncauseontario@gmail.com.
PLUS! I almost forgot … the folks at Common Cause have made a promotional web video for Michael’s tour, making Black Flame the first book (I think) to have it’s own promo video. How cool is that? Stay tuned for more exciting forays into the world of 21st century technology … and enjoy the video!
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Anarchism and Its Aspirations — Book Excerpt
By AK Press | March 11, 2010
Cindy Milstein’s new book, Anarchism and Its Aspirations, has been printed and is on its way to our warehouse. It’ll be available at the Bay Area Anarchist Bookfair this weekend (where Cindy will be giving two talks).
For those of you who can’t make the bookfair, you can order it now (at a 25% discount!).
Wherever you are, here’s a taste of what’s in store: two brief excerpts lifted from the book’s title essay. Enjoy!
♦♦♦
The aim of anarchism is to stimulate forces that propel society in a libertarian direction.
—Sam Dolgoff, The Relevance of Anarchism to Modern Society, 1970
Classical anarchism’s aims were no bulwark against the brutal transformations that swept the globe with the rise of actually existing communism and fascism. Historical forces drove society in a murderous direction. Anarchism did not disappear during this time. Yet its ranks were decimated. Touchstone figures were killed, including Gustav Landauer by protofascists following the Bavarian Revolution in 1919 and Erich Mühsam by Nazis in the Oranienburg concentration camp in 1934. Others died in prison, like Ricardo Flores Magón in 1922, and some committed suicide, such as Alexander Berkman in 1936. Anarchists were increasingly isolated. Kropotkin’s death in 1921 marked the last mass gathering of anarchists—for his funeral procession, and then only with Vladimir Lenin’s permission—in Russia until 1987. Thousands of anarchists worldwide were incarcerated, exiled, or slaughtered. They were victims of repressions like the Red Scare in the United States and purges of radical opposition by numerous Communist parties. As a result, anarchism became far less vibrant, a ghost of itself. This made it difficult for people to discover the politics, further reducing the number of anarchists and anarchistic efforts. It was as if the antiauthoritarian Left skipped a generation or two.
At the same time, the world itself was transformed—but in a polar opposite way from anything that anarchists had advocated. Fascism, Bolshevism, and Maoism; the rise of the United States as a world superpower; the birth of multinational financial institutions along with the “advancement” of capitalism; the cold war with its nuclear threat: these and other emergent phenomena dramatically expanded the forms of domination that any liberatory politics needed to address. Attempts to rebuild anarchism were slow going, but never truly disappeared. In the postwar era, through the 1960s and beyond, anarchism struggled to tailor itself for the late twentieth century. It gained insight from other overlapping or like-minded movements, such as radical feminism and queer liberation, or the Autonomen in Germany and Zapatistas in Mexico. It inspired, both explicitly and in less obvious ways, everything from the playful urban politics of Amsterdam’s Provos to new forms of radical ecology like the antinuclear movement and Earth First! to the British poll tax rebellion.28 While anarchism seemed behind the curve on some issues—the collapse of Communism and the subsequent rise of unipolar neoliberalism, for instance—it continued to grow and develop.
By the close of the twentieth century, the “battle of Seattle” in 1999 was, for anarchism, just one manifestation of a whole chain of reinventions within its own tradition.29 Often seen as the birth of a “new” anarchism, the now-famous role of anarchists in Seattle’s mass mobilization against—and successful shutdown of—the World Trade Organization meetings was more a marker of something that had already occurred: a modern anarchism had developed in a direct, however hidden or circuitous, line from its “classical” past. What Seattle did do, though, was spotlight this reinvigorated anarchism, whether via images of “black bloc” anarchists throwing bricks through Starbucks windows, or explanations of how the affinity group and spokescouncil model worked in practice.30 Mostly, it gave visibility and voice to anarchism in general, helping it recapture the political imagination, in league with a host of other “movements from below” around the world.
The modernization of anarchism is also marked by what at times seems an almost dizzying array of different emphases. This increasing multiplicity is frequently a healthy development, challenging anarchism to remain germane to today’s world, and draw its reconstructive visions from potentialities within the present. Yet anarchism is not immune from the increasing fragmentation and immediacy, among other conditions, that characterize much of contemporary capitalist society. It is just as damaged by the phenomena it decries. Even as anarchists advocate a community of communities, they are, like most people today, alienated from any sense of place and hence each other. Nonetheless, there remains a profound sense of recognition between anarchists, based on a shared set of distinct values, which in turn structure their lives and projects. So let’s return to this amorphous entity called anarchism, in order to add flesh to what still may feel like a vague definition by exploring the constellation of sensibilities that describes all anarchists.
—-
A Revolutionary Stance
First and foremost, anarchism is a revolutionary political philosophy. That is, anarchism is thoroughly radical in the true sense of the word: to get at the root or origin of phenomena, and from there to make dramatic changes in the existing conditions. Anarchism aspires to fundamentally transform society, toward expansive notions of individual and social freedom. Much of the time, in practice, this means engaging in various “reforms” or improvements, but ones that at the same time attempt to explicitly articulate a revolutionary politics. This reform-pointing-to-revolution is certainly hard to navigate, much less implement. Debates within anarchism relating to strategies and tactics hinge on this question, and rightly so, since capitalism, in particular, has an astonishing knack for recuperating anything that seems to stand in its way.
Despite the difficulties, anarchists never advocate a purely reformist attitude. They try their best never to participate in reform as an end in itself, or to bring about improvements that also make the present social order look attractive. Their efforts to move from “here” to “there” intentionally highlight how current social arrangements cannot, by their own raison d’être, meet everyone’s needs and desires. Anarchists do not “rest content with the ideal of a future society without overlordship,” as anarcho-syndicalist Rudolf Rocker put it long ago; they simultaneously direct their organizing efforts at, for one, “restricting the activities of the state and blocking its influence in every department of social life wherever they see an opportunity.”31 Anarchism is not satisfied with remaining on the surface, merely tinkering to make a damaged world a little less damaging. It is a thoroughgoing critique aimed at a thoroughgoing reimagining and restructuring of society. It views this as essential if everyone is to be free, and if humanity is to harmonize itself with the nonhuman world.
As mentioned earlier, anarchism from the start focused on what appeared as the two biggest stumbling blocks to a libertarian society: capitalism and the state. This pair, sadly, are still the predominant forms of social immiseration and control. Capitalism and statecraft loom large in terms of naturalizing—and thereby being at the root of—this immiseration and control. Their separate yet often-interrelated internal logics consolidate power monopolies for a few, always at the expense of the many. This demands that each system must both continually expand and mask its dominion. To survive, they have to make it seem normal that most people are materially impoverished and disenfranchised as economic actors, and socially impoverished and disenfranchised as political actors. They have to restructure social relations in their own image—as unthinkingly assumed ways of being and acting. The world that most of humanity produces is, as a result, denied to the vast majority, and a relative handful get to make binding decisions over all of life. Anarchism is therefore staunchly anticapitalist and antistatist, which ensures that it is a revolutionary politics, since battling such primary systems necessarily means getting to the root of them. Moving beyond capitalism and states would entail nothing less than turning the world upside down, breaking up all monopolies, and reconstituting everything in common—from institutions to ethics to everyday life.
So, for example, whereas many in the global and now climate justice movements focus on corporations as key, anarchists see these entities as only one piece of capitalism, and a piece that if removed, wouldn’t destroy capitalism—bad as corporations may be. One can have capitalism without corporations. Capitalism’s essence—ensuring that society is forged around compulsory social relations along with inequities in power and material conditions—would remain in place. And given capitalism’s grow-or-die logic, small-scale capitalism would by definition unfold into a larger scale again. Or as contemporary networked and informational capitalistic structures indicate, allegedly localized capitalism can be a way to hide an increasing concentration of social control and injustice. Capitalism itself, in its totality, and because it strives toward totality, is the root problem. Anarchists, then, look to wholly undo the hegemony of capitalist economic structures and values, or the many components that mark capitalism as a system—from corporations, banks, and private property, to profit, bosses, and wage labor, to alienation and commodification.
Notes
28. A sampler of some histories of these movements includes Alice Echols, Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967–1975 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989); Andy Cornell, “Anarchism and the Movement for a New Society: Direct Action and Prefigurative Community in the 1970s and 1980s,” Perspectives (2009), available at http://anarchiststudies.org/node/292; Tommi Avicolli Mecca, ed., Smash the Church, Smash the State! The Early Years of Gay Liberation (San Francisco: City Lights Publishers, 2009); George Katsiaficas, The Subversion of Politics: European Autonomous Social Movements and the Decolonization of Everyday Life (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2006); Ziga Vodovnik, ed., YA BASTA! Ten Years of the Zapatista Uprising: Writings of Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2004); Richard Kempton, Provo: Amsterdam’s Anarchist Revolt (Brooklyn: Autonomedia, 2007); Barbara Epstein, Political Protest and Cultural Revolution: Nonviolent Direct Action in the 1970s and 1980s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991); Earth First! Journal, available at http://www.earthfirstjournal.org; Danny Burns, Poll Tax Rebellion (Scotland: AK Press, 1992).
29. While there are numerous books, articles, films, and news accounts about this mobilization, many written soon after Seattle 1999, the most recent one is David Solnit and Rebecca Solnit, The Battle of the Story of the “Battle of Seattle” (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2009), timed for the tenth anniversary.
30. For more on black blocs, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_bloc; David van Deusen and Xavier Massot, eds., The Black Bloc Papers, 2nd ed. (Shawnee Mission, KS: Breaking Glass Press, 2010), available at http://www.infoshop.org/page/BlackBlocPapers. For more on affinity groups and spokescouncils, see http://www.rantcollective.net/article.php?id=30.
31. Rudolf Rocker, Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice (1938; repr., Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2004), 73.
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The Bay Area Anarchist Bookfair & Surrounding Events (Not To Be Missed!)
By Suzanne | March 10, 2010
Those of you from the Bay Area have probably (hopefully? if you read our blog, at least) already heard that this weekend is the 15th Annual Bay Area Anarchist Bookfair. We’ll be there all weekend, showing off our latest and greatest published books and distro items. Get three new AK titles hot off the press! Witness the dramatic premiere of four new t-shirt designs from John Yates! Check out our whole table of sale items for $5 or less! Plus of course you can hear a slew of AK authors speaking and check out a whole building full of awesome anarchist publishers, distros, infoshops, artists, and more. Seriously, if you are around, you have to go. You’ll be kicking yourself until next March if you don’t.
Here, again, are the details:
15th Annual Bay Area Anarchist Bookfair!
Saturday, March 13 from 10:00AM to 6:00PM
AND Sunday, March 14 from 11:00AM to 5:00 PM
SF County Fair Building @ Golden Gate Park, 9th Avenue & Lincoln Way, San Francisco
FREE
And you can get more complete info here.
But wait, that’s not all that’s going on this week! There are lots of other events being organized around the bookfair too. So whether you’re coming in from out of town and looking to be entertained, or you’re a local just wondering where all the cool kids will be hanging out, let AK Press be your guide! Here are some of the choice events that will be going on this week. Hope we’ll see you all out and about—we’ll be (a few of) the nerds in the AK Press hoodies…
Wednesday, March 10 at 7:30PM
Paper Politics: Socially Engaged Printmaking Today
CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission Street (at 9th), San Francisco
FREE
Join AK author Josh MacPhee (Realizing the Impossible and a dozen other political print and poster makers as they discuss Josh’s new book on PM Press, Paper Politics, as well as the current state of political graphics making: What are we doing? Why? And is it working? Short presentations by a few artists will be followed by a large roundtable discussion with audience participation encouraged.
Thursday, March 11 at 7:00PM
The War Before: The Writings of Safiya Bukhari (Bay Area Release Event)
Women’s Building, 3453 18th Street, San Francisco
FREE
The Bay Area release event for the new book The War Before, just released by The Feminist Press! The book traces Safiya Bukhari’s lifelong commitment as an advocate for the rights of the oppressed—from middle-class student to Black Panther to political prisoner—and shows how past social justice movements have paved the way for the today’s struggles. This book release event features Safiya Bukhari’s daughter, Wonda Jones; the book’s editor, Laura Whitehorn; former Panther Kiilu Nyasha; and other guests.
Thursday, March 11 from 7:00PM–midnight
Defiant Proclamations: Radical Posters from the 1960s to the Present
CELLspace Gallery, 2050 Bryant Street, San Francisco
FREE
For decades, Bay Area walls have been pasted with bold art and pertinent messages about politics, practices, and the abuses of contemporary mainstream culture. Speaking from both inside and outside of the frameworks of organized labor and left movements, individual artists and collectives have broadcast defiant proclamations with ink and paper. This one-night-only exhibit of posters, handbills, and artifacts will feature works old and new, giving a glimpse of the broad range of opinions and styles that have papered walls across the region.
Friday, March 12 from 7:00-10:00PM
Anarchist Café
St. Martin de Porres House, 225 Potrero Avenue (between 15th & 16th), San Francisco
$5–20 suggested donation
Gather with your fellow anarchists for food, coffee, tea and performances indoors and a covered hang-out space outdoors. Dinner will be served until 9pm or until the food runs out, whichever comes first. No drugs or alcohol please! If you are interested in volunteering at the café contact Mike at mikee1051@yahoo.com; if you would like to perform, email marcus@midnightspecial.net.
Saturday, March 13 at 7:00PM
Sparks Fly: An evening in honor of Marilyn Buck
Uptown Body & Fender, 401 26th Street, Oakland
$10–50 suggested donation
After 25 years, political prisoner Marilyn Buck is scheduled to get out of jail later this year. Jailed for actions in solidarity with the Black liberation and anti-war movements, Marilyn has been a voice for justice during her entire incarceration. Come out for an art auction, poetry, music, and speakers—then a dance party starting at 10PM—to help raise funds for her release.
Sunday, March 14 at 7:00PM
Visions of the Urban Future: Discussion & book signing with Matt Hern
Studio for Urban Projects, 3579 17th Street (at Dolores), San Francisco
FREE
If we want to preserve what’s still left of the natural world, we need to stop using so much of it. And cities are the best chance we have left for a sustainable future…but only if they remain vibrant, dynamic spaces that are unfolded by millions of people working together, not by master plans and planners. What will it take to make our cities truly sustainable? Join AK author Matt Hern for a discussion of his new book Common Ground in a Liquid City: Essays in Defense of an Urban Future.
Monday, March 15 at 7:00PM
An Anarchist Look at the Barcelona Squatting Movement, with Peter Gelderloos
Station 40, 3030B 16th Street, San Francisco
$3–5 suggested donation
Most of us have heard stories about (or experienced firsthand) the squatting movement in Spain. But we frequently fail to think about the effect that this network of squatted and autonomous spaces has on the social activist movement in Europe, generally, and Barcelona, specifically. How does the prevalence of squatted spaces impact the anarchist world in ways that are structurally different from the anarchist world in the United States? What do we stand to learn from each other? Author and activist Peter Gelderloos, who made headlines in 2007 when he was arrested in conjunction with a squatters’ protest in Barcelona, will explore these and other aspects of the squatting movement.
Also going on all week (March 9–16)
8 Days of Anarchy
A study group, a film screening, the BASTARD conference, and a handful of other events.
Go here for more information.
Topics: AK Allies, Anarchist Publishers, Events | No Comments »
AK Press authors at the SF Anarchist Book Fair, 2010
By Zach | March 10, 2010
Book fair time again in San Francisco. Another year, another whirlwind weekend. We thought we’d take a break in our preparations to let you know which AK authors will be presenting this year at Bound Together’s 15th annual event. For a full list of speakers go to the official site.
AK Authors who are speaking solo:
Margaret Killjoy (ed. Mythmakers and Lawbreakers), 3:30PM on Saturday
Void Network (ed. We Are an Image From the Future), 4PM on Saturday (in Cafe)
Cindy Milstein (Anarchism and its Aspirations), 11AM on Sunday
Matt Hern (Everywhere all the Time, ed. and Common Ground in a Liquid City), 11:30AM on Sunday
Ward Churchill (On the Justice of Roosting Chickens, Pacifism as Pathology, Since Predator Came, Life in Occupied America, Doing Time, Pacifism and Pathology, In a Pig’s Eye, contributor: Academic Repression, Red State Rebels, Monkeywrenching the New World Order) 4PM on Sunday
AK Authors who are speaking on panels:
IAS Panel w/Cindy Milstein (Anarchism and its Aspirations), 11AM on Saturday
Radical Parenting Panel w/Jessica Mills (My Mother Wears Combat Boots), 12PM on Sunday
Socially Engaged Printmaking Panel w/Josh MacPhee (Realizing the Impossible and Signs of Change), 1PM on Sunday
Contributors to AK Books who are also speaking:
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz (Quiet Rumours, Red State Rebels, Uses of a Whirlwind)
Andrej Grubacic (Uses of a Whirlwind)
John Zerzan (Igniting a Revolution)
Kim Stanley Robinson (Mythmakers and Lawbreakers)
And of course many other friends, authors, and contributors will be attending and tabling this weekend. See you there!
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50% Off More AK Titles!
By Lorna | March 8, 2010
Hello dearest hearts,
Another month, and so another series of AK backlist that we’re offering at 50% off the list price. I am biased of course, but really, these are all great, and you should have already got them! Procrastination has its reward!
Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America
Edited by Paul Avrich
Starting out with a bang, are we not?
Unabridged! The anarchists represented in this book were active between the 1880s and the 1930s and represent all schools of anarchism. Their stories provide a wealth of personal detail about such anarchist luminaries as Emma Goldman and Sacco and Vanzetti, as well as their own selves. (More than once, people have come up to us when we are tabling and told us their granny is in it!) This work of impeccable scholarship is an invaluable resource not only for scholars of anarchism but also for those studying immigration, ethnic politics, education, and labor history.
Now just $14!
You Can’t Win
By Jack Black
A legendary book, bestseller in 1926, and hovering at the edge of our memory since; William Burroughs’ (who writes the introduction) and my landlady’s favourite book! A journey into the hobo underworld, freight hopping around the still-Wild West, becoming a highwayman and member of the yegg (criminal) brotherhood, getting hooked on opium, doing stints in jail, or escaping, often with the assistance of crooked cops or judges. Our lost history revived. Summer vacation reading in March!
Now just $8!
Since Predator Came: Notes from the Struggle for American Indian Liberation
By Ward Churchill
Rational, angry, yet ultimately hopeful, Ward Churchill’s is a leading voice against the ongoing genocide perpetrated on Native American peoples. Intellectually cogent while remaining accessible to the general reader, the eighteen essays herein will challenge you to think, and then act, in the fight for justice waged since Columbus’ arrival.
Now just $11!
Reinventing Anarchy, Again
Edited by Howard Ehrlich
This book brings together the major currents of social anarchist theory in a collection of some of the most important writers from the United States, Canada, England, and Australia. The book is organized into eight sections, which are “What is Anarchism?,” “The State and Social Organization,” “Moving Toward Anarchist Society,” “Anarcha-feminism,” “Work,” “The Culture of Anarchy,” “The Liberation of Self,” and, finally, “Reinventing Anarchist Tactics.” A must have!
Now just $12.50!
Direct Action: Memoirs of an Urban Guerilla
By Ann Hansen
The Vancouver 5, or Squamish 5, were five Canadians convicted in the early 80s of (successfully) bombing a hydro-electric power sub-station, the Litton Systems plant in Toronto, where components for Cruise Missiles were being made, and several Red Hot Video stores, accused of selling violent pornography. Now, finally, twenty years later, Ann Hansen, who served seven years for her involvement, tells the true gripping saga of an anarchist guerilla group.
Now just $10!
A Living Revolution: Anarchism in the Kibbutz Movement
By James Horrox
This is new, so obviously you should have it, but for those stragglers…
“These pages bring to life the most radical and passionate voices that shaped the second and third waves of Jewish immigration to Palestine, and also encounter those contemporary projects working to revive the spirit of the kibbutz as it was intended to be, despite, and because of, their predecessors’ fate.” —Uri Gordon, from the foreword
Now just $9!
The London Years
Rudolf Rocker
From the Jewish Bakers Union to the 1912 tailor’s general strike, which abolished sweatshops, The London Years chronicles the vibrant Jewish immigrant community in London, and how it organized, and fought back against poverty, anti-Semitism, and anti-immigrant hysteria. An incredible window into this now largely-forgotten world, and an engaging autobiography of a remarkable man. This edition includes a lengthy introduction by Colin Ward (perhaps you’re familiar with his work?), long-time anarchist agitator, propagandist, and editor.
Now just $11!
And it has been pointed out to me that I appear to be giving blog readers the finger in that picture last week. Day three of inventory, the most hairy part—I was giving Suzanne the finger, sillies!
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Distro Top Ten — March 2010
By HastaLaVictoria | March 5, 2010
Hey folks. There are several new and exciting titles that have poured into our warehouse in the past couple of weeks, so I’ll go ahead and cut to the chase:
What Kind of Liberation? Women and the Occupation of Iraq
Nicola Pratt & Nadje Al-Ali
Here we have a succinct study on the shifting roles of Iraqi women, from all sectors of society, living under the current U.S. military occupation in Iraq. This book further discredits the Dubbya administration’s initial proclamations of seeking freedom for the women of Iraq through military force and argues that the situation for these women has actually worsened due to U.S. interference.
Procesos revolucionarios en América Latina
Alberto Prieto
Adding to our growing Spanish-language section, this book comprehensively highlights various struggles, rebellions, revolutions, and insurrections that have taken place throughout the centuries in Latin America, from Túpac Amaru to Jose Martí, from Simon Bolívar to Augusto Sandino, and many many more.
La revolución negra: La rebelión de los esclavos en Haití, 1791–1804
Maria Isable Grau
More new books in Spanish! This book is part of Ocean Press’ History from Below series and looks at the history of the armed Haitian struggle against French colonization led by L’Overture—a rebellion inspired in part, ironically, by the French Revolution.
The War Before: The True Life Story of Becoming A Black Panther, Keeping the Faith in Prison & Fighting for Those Left Behind
Safiya Bukhari
I am very excited about this book. It is full of mixed-documents that piece together the life of a woman who opted out of the false comforts of Black middle class assimilationism and instead decided to dedicate her life, full force, to bringing about freedom for her community by any means necessary.
Meditations on Frantz Fanon’s Wrethched of the Earth: New Afrikan Revolutionary Writings
James Yaki Sayles
If this title sounds familiar to you, it is because this new book from Kersplebedeb is the expanded version of a two-part pamphlet of the same name that was initially released in 2006. Here, Sayles completes his musings on Wretched of the Earth, critiquing common misinterpretations of the text historically, while applying Fanon’s philosophy to the Black community in the United States.
Quick and Easy Vegan Comfort Food
Alicia C. Simpson
Not only do you get 150 recipes for face stuffing considerations, but Simpson also lays out reasons as to why it’s easier, cheaper, healthier, and more delicious to be vegan. I would imagine this book makes a great gift, but I wouldn’t really know since I’m keeping it for myself.
How to Make and Use Compost: The Ultimate Guide
Nicky Scott
No matter what your living situation, you can start composting your way to a healthier, more earth-friendly diet today—with the help of this book, of course. Includes a section on compost troubleshooting!
The Madame Curie Complex: The Hidden History of Women in Science
Julie Des Jardins
Just in time for Women’s Herstory Month, this book from the good folks at Feminist Press CUNY sheds light on the seldom-heard stories of some of the women who influenced the way scientific research is conducted.
Red Alert! Saving the Planet with Indigenous Knowledge
Daniel R. Wildcat
This small book makes a big impact! Here, Wildcat uses traditional Indigenous knowledge, drawing upon ancient Native American wisdom and nature-centered beliefs, to advocate a modern strategy to combat global warming.
Black Music
Amiri Baraka
Originally published in 1967, this book is comprised of interviews, reviews, essays, liner notes, etc. and features some of the most gifted jazz musicians of the time, including Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and more.
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