Search

AK Related

Friends & Allies

Meta

Upcoming Events

View All Events

A Punk Writer: Vijay Prashad remembers Alexander Cockburn

By kate | August 25, 2012

(This essay originally appeared on Frontline: http://www.frontlineonnet.com/stories/20120907291709500.htm)

The whole thing is a blur to me. It was sometime in 1985 or 1986, a warm night, when a band member from either Black Flag or the Circle Jerks told me about Alexander Cockburn. We were standing in one of the side alleys near Los Angeles’ Roxy Theatre, smoking, when he told me about Cockburn’s fulminations against Ronald Reagan and contemporary America. Reagan’s jarringly brutal wars were a preoccupation for me. My political friends and I took our lessons from the cyclostyled sheets produced by the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES) and the various solidarity committees for divestment from apartheid South Africa. Their content was of the essence, but the papers were dreary to read.

Events seemed to drain the ink of human vitality: massacres of Salvadorian peasant farmers and police firing at black workers did not require embellishment, only the dry tones of an activist’s pen. Finding Cockburn was a treat. He was no less moved by the outrages of our time, and he seemed to be reading the same activist broadsheets as I did. But his stylistic translation into his columns of those events and the rage that should greet them for The Village Voice and The Wall Street Journal, for The New York Review of Books and Vanity Fair took my breath away. As my musician friend told me, this guy was a punk writer.

Already known as a superb left-wing stylist in England, Alexander came to the United States in June 1972 to escape what he called “the relics of an empire corrupted far beyond the reach of popular indignation”. He arrived in the U.S. at the time when President Nixon’s burglars broke into the Watergate hotel, and when the bombardment of South-East Asia had discomfited U.S. allies, who had begun to leave its side (the Thai army left in January and New Zealand’s forces left in December).

Washington and its hypocrisies provided sufficient material for his acidic pen. Alexander took up residence at The Village Voice, the counter-cultural journal of New York City, where he hosted the “Press Clips” column and (with James Ridgeway) wrote “The Moving Target” reports. As the American media gasped for breath between the claustrophobia of its ulcerative political landscape and of its corporate-induced “balanced” journalism, The Village Voice became a life raft. Old-school municipal journalism came from Wayne Barnett, vibrant essays on imperialism, socialism and gay rights came from the witty pen of Andrew Kopkind, amusing music journalism and bold essays on abortion rights and feminism came from Ellen Willis, and sharp and witty film reviews came from J. Hoberman. This was good company.

Read the rest of this entry »

Topics: AK Authors!, Current Events, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Excerpt: Territories in Resistance: A Cartography of Latin American Social Movements

By christa | July 27, 2012

Territories in Resistance: A Cartography of Latin American Social Movements

By Raul Zibechi, Translated by Ramor Ryan

Chapter 3

A community has an emancipatory approach to health care when it recovers its own healing powers, which have been ex- propriated by the medical industry and the state, and liberates itself from the control that capital exercises over health care through multinational pharmaceuticals. Zapatista health care practices, as well as those of many indigenous peoples and piqueteros groups, share many commonalities despite their enormous cultural differences.

Indigenous peoples often recover their ancestral knowledge, which goes hand-in-hand with recognizing the wisdom of traditional health practitioners while not discarding modern medicine. In fact, they attempt to combine the two. Much like when communities decide to construct a school, so too the first step in community health care is constructing a lo- cal dispensary capable of dealing with those emergencies that cause the highest mortality rates.

But Indian peoples have their own long tradition of healthcare.

Read the rest of this entry »

Topics: AK Authors!, AK Book Excerpts | No Comments »

Alexander Cockburn, 1941-2012

By AK Press | July 24, 2012

The AK Press collective was saddened this weekend to hear of the death of our comrade Alexander Cockburn. Over the years, we have had the privilege of working closely with him on publishing our popular CounterPunch book series—including several titles written or edited by Cockburn himself.

We find ourselves a bit at a loss for words at the moment, so we’ll leave you with the words of his longtime collaborator (and CounterPunch book series co-editor) Jeffrey St. Clair:

“Alex lived a huge life and he lived it his way. He hated compromise in politics and he didn’t tolerate it in his own life…

He taught at least two generations how to think, how to look at the world, how to live a life of joyful and creative resistance. So, the struggle continues and we’re going to remain engaged. He wouldn’t have it any other way.”

You can read Jeffrey’s full tribute on CounterPunch.

(Photo by Tao Ruspoli, from CounterPunch.)

Topics: AK Allies, AK Authors! | No Comments »

Review of Eyes to the South: French Anarchists and Algeria

By christa | June 29, 2012

We were very pleased to see this review of David Porter’s Eyes to the South: French Anarchists and Algeria by Javier Sethness-Castro.

It is held in some circles that anarchism, like Marxism, is a form of thought and praxis that originated in nineteenth-century Europe and as such is inseparably related to this social milieu; interventions and mobilizations taken outside of this geographical-historical intersection, however strongly critical they be of patriarchy, the State, and capital, are in patronizing manner considered not to be anarchist. This raises the question of ethnocentrism among self-identified proponents of anarchist social philosophy—a concern that is not without its historical basis, given that even the Spanish anarchists of the CNT and the FAI refused seriously to consider emancipating Spain’s colonies in Morocco as part of the radical socio-political program it would counterpose to feudalism and capitalism in the Iberian peninsula.1 These glaring trends are ones that anarchist academic David Porter confronts and challenges strongly with his Eyes to the South: French Anarchists and Algeria, an extensive work that examines the various dramas of modern Algerian history and the engagement by French anarchist observers of this. In broad terms, it can be said that Porter in this work seeks to advance a mutual enrichment between established Western anarchist perspectives with the effectively anarchist practices seen in the Algerian context after the military defeat of Nazism in Europe, in addition to challenging the reactionary tendency of residents and workers of core Western societies to identify with the colonial projects promoted by their ruling classes as well as showing the potential of anarchism’s relevance to the lives of the social majorities of the world—following in the example of the CNT-FAI in Spain.
Read More

Topics: AK Authors!, Reviews | No Comments »

AK Author Cindy Milstein on the Maple Spring

By christa | June 21, 2012

Our friend and author Cindy Milstein has been spending quite a bit of time in Montreal recently and has been thoughtfully blogging about the Maple Spring.


A Little Bit of Direct Democracy (for Now), Montreal, Day 55

The past two days, I finally got my first chance to check out self-governance in Montreal: a neighborhood assembly yesterday, and the CLASSE Congress today. Both in 100% French, and my French is next to nothing. But I can recognize some words, such as “démocratie directe” and “autonomie.” Better yet, I can read the body language of good cheer and respectful interactions, and follow the informal & formal processes–all of which put most of what I participated in and saw within US occupy to shame.

Read More


This Bike Is a Poster, or “A-Anti-Anticapitalista,” Montreal, Night 51

This past weekend in Montreal’s unfolding maple-spring saga pitted the Grand Prix’s blatant display of wealth and sexism against the brave display of disruption and solidarity. Many of the always-illegal marches were a collaborative call from CLAC, an anarchist organization that’s at least 10 years old and probably more like 12 or so, and CLASSE, the most radical of the student associations, including many anarcho-syndicalists in particular from what I hear.

Read More

Topics: AK Authors!, Current Events | No Comments »

This Thursday: Demand Reinstatement of Friend of a Friend!

By kate | June 19, 2012

For our readers in Baltimore:

On Thursday June 21st 2012 at 9am community and student organizations will host a demonstration to demand the immediate reinstatement Friend of a Friend program at Jessup Correctional Institution following its arbitrary indefinite suspension.   The demonstration will take place at 300 East Joppa Road in Towson, Maryland.  Please join us, and bring signs and placards that read Reinstate Friends!

The Friends program was founded by a group of concerned men in the prison system, including political prisoner Eddie Conway, to provide mentoring to young prisoners. The program began with an attempt to identify the problems, expectations and daily needs of prisoners – many of whom are of African descent – and excluded from full participation in the social and political process.

Following a graduation ceremony for program participants at the Jessup Correctional Institution (JCI) we were informed that the project was being “dismantled” with no explanation except that contraband was found on the premises. There is no evidence that the Friends volunteers were involved in the smuggling of the contraband, nor is there any evidence that our incarcerated participants were involved.  We are asking the entire community to attend this demonstration and support our incarcerated brothers, to demand immediate reinstatement of this program that has helped hundreds of prisoners and former prisoners, and more transparency in the Maryland Office of Public Safety and Correctional Services. We are asking concerned community members to email and/or fax the Secretary of Public Safety and Correctional Services Gary Maynard atgmaynard@dpscs.state.md.us and the fax number is 410-339-4240.

Demonstration Co-sponsors include: Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle, Students Against Mass Incarceration-Howard University, The Social Justice Committee of Pleasant Hope Baptist Church, Red Emma’s, the Baltimore Free School, The Youth Resiliency Institute, and Nommo Theater.

Topics: AK Allies, AK Authors!, Happenings | No Comments »

New sale titles & ebooks from AK Press!

By kate | June 19, 2012

Join the AK Press mailing list to get announcements of sales and special items just like this in the future!

New E-books from AK Press!
Some of you may have noticed that we’re going a bit e-book crazy lately. We’ve been producing e-books for a while now, but finally with our awesome new website, we are newly able to sell them directly (which also means we can make them available DRM-free)! Below are just a few of our latest e-book offerings; visit the downloads section on our website for more, and check back soon–we’re continually adding new ones!
Also, for all you e-book aficionados, be sure to check out our awesome new Friends of AK Press e-book options…

Anarchism and its Aspirations Anarchism and its Aspirations 

Cindy Milstein · AK Press
E-book ISBN: 9781849350297 · $9.00

 

From nineteenth-century newspaper publishers to the participants in the “battle of Seattle” and the recent Greek uprising, anarchists have been inspired by the ideal of a free society of free individuals-a world without hierarchy or domination. But what exactly would that look like, and how can we get there? Anarchism and Its Aspirations provides an accessible overview of an often-misunderstood political philosophy, highlighting its principles and practices as well as its reconstructive vision of a liberatory society.

 

Captive Genders Captive Genders

Edited by Nat Smith & Eric A. Stanley · AK Press 

E-book ISBN: 9781849350716 · $14.99  

Pathologized, terrorized, and confined, trans/gender non-conforming and queer folks have always struggled against the enormity of the prison industrial complex. In the first collection of its kind, Eric A. Stanley and Nat Smith bring together current and former prisoners, activists, and academics to offer new ways for understanding how race, gender, ability, and sexuality are lived under the crushing weight of captivity. From rioting against police violence and critiquing hate crimes legislation to prisoners demanding access to HIV medications, and far beyond, Captive Genders is a challenge for us all to join the struggle.

Chomsky on Anarchism Chomsky on Anarchism

Noam Chomsky · AK Press     

E-book ISBN: 9781849350372 · $12.95 

 

We all know what Noam Chomsky is against: among other things capitalism, imperialism, domestic repression, and government propaganda. But relatively little has been said about what exactly Chomsky stands for, his own personal politics, his vision of the future. That is, until Chomsky on Anarchism, a collection that shows the anarchist principles that have guided him since he was a teenager. This collection of Chomsky’s essays and interviews paints a fresh picture of Chomsky, showing his life-long involvement with the anarchist community, his constant commitment to nonhierarchical models of political organization, and his hopes for a future world without rulers.

 

 

Common Ground in a Liquid City

Common Ground in a Liquid City 

Matt Hern · AK Press     

E-book ISBN: 9781849350310 · $13.95

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-and not by master plans and planners. What will it take to make our cities truly sustainable? Engaging, accessible, and relentlessly original, Common Ground in a Liquid City is an appealing portrait of what the urban future might look like-if we can get our act together.

Dancing with Dynamite Dancing with Dynamite
Benjamin Dangl · AK Press
E-book ISBN: 9781849350464 · $11.99

 

In the past decade, grassroots social movements played major roles in electing left-leaning governments throughout Latin America, but subsequent relations between the streets and the states remain uneasy. Dancing with Dynamite explores the complex ways these movements have worked with, against, and independently of national governments. From dynamite-wielding miners in Bolivia to the struggles of landless farmers in Brazil and Paraguay, Benjamin Dangl discusses the dance between movements and states in seven different Latin American countries, and suggests how Latin American social movement strategies could be applied internationally to build a better world now.

 

50% Off These AK Press Summer Reads!
Just for this month, we’ve decided to discount a few titles that make great summer reading–full of travel, intrigue, and adventure! Check these titles out and get them at half-price through the end of June.

 

Clandestines Clandestines 

Ramor Ryan · AK Press
PB ISBN: 9781904859550 · Now just $7.98!

 

A shrewd political thinker and philosopher, with a knack for ingratiating himself into the thick of precarious situations, Ramor Ryan has been there and lived to tell about it. As much an adventure story as an unofficial chronicle of modern global resistance movements, Clandestines spirits the reader into subterranean locales. From the teeming squats of Berlin, to intrigue in the Zapatista Autonomous Zone, a Croatian Rainbow Gathering on the heels of the G8 protests in Genoa, mutiny on the high seas, the Quixotic ambitions of a Kurdish guerilla camp, the contradictions of Cuba, and the neo-liberal nightmare of post-war(s) Central America we see everywhere a world in flux, struggling to be reborn. 

 

Peace, Love & Petrol Bombs Peace, Love & Petrol Bombs

D.D. Johnston · AK Press 

PB ISBN: 9781849350617 · Now just $7.48! 

 Wayne Foster is fed up. How long can you work in a dead-end job as a full-time burger-flipper in a small town in Scotland before you start to wonder what comes next? Set in the heady days of the early antiglobalization movement, and centered around a group of friends working at “Benny Burgers” who find themselves thrust into the midst of a conflict with the bosses and the cops, Peace, Love & Petrol Bombs is the modern working-class novel. Rife with dry wit and disaffected humor, this is the perfect antidote to “serious” political fiction.

Suffled How It Gush Suffled How It Gush

Shon Meckfessel · AK Press     

PB ISBN: 9781904859857 · Now just $8.48!

 !  

Shon Meckfessel appropriates the peculiar slogan of an Albanian mineral water company as the title for this uniquely intellectual book. Equal parts journalism, history, and personal memoir, Suffled How it Gush records Shon’s travels throughout ex-Yugoslavia and the greater Balkans region, chronicling the beauty of an area too renowned for its ugliness. George Katsiaficas says: “Shon Meckfessel bathes in undercurrent discourses and points us to Balkan dynamics contradicting the nationalist loyalties that distort people’s lives. Rather than making ethnic claims or endorsing any hierarchy, he clarifies existing struggles against states and points toward a region free of domination.”

 

 

Yellow Kid Weil

“Yellow Kid” Weil 

J.R. Weil; Edited by W.T. Brannon · AK Press     

PB ISBN: 9781849350211 · Now just $9.00!

Bilked bankers, grifted gamblers, and swindled spinsters. Welcome to the world of confidence men. You’ll marvel at the elaborate schemes developed by The Yellow Kid and cry for the marks who lost it all to his ingenuity: $8,000,000 by some estimations. Fixed horse races, bad real-estate deals, even a money-making machine, were all tools of the trade for the Kid and his associates. A fantastic, engaging read you won’t be able to put down! “I never cheated an honest man, only rascals. They wanted something for nothing. I gave them nothing for something.”-Joseph “Yellow Kid” Weil

 

New Sale Titles from AK Press Distro!
 

Guerilla Art Guerilla Art 

Sebastian Peiter · Laurence King Publisher
HB + DVD ISBN: 9781856695930 · Now just $14.95!

 

This unique book features full-color images alongside interviews with key artists including Banksy, Futura, Ramm:ell:zee, Os Gemeos, Invader, Barnstormers, WK Interact, Zevs, Blek le Rat, André, Noki, and Eine. Graffiti-inspired street art pioneers discuss their own work, how street art was born out of the days of subway train graffiti, spraypainting and tagging, and how the new movement of street artists are doing things differently. Filmed in New York, London, Paris, São Paulo, and Tokyo, the accompanying documentary shows the artists at work. 

 

Stuffed & Starved Stuffed & Starved

Raj Patel · Melville House  

PB ISBN: 9781933633497 · Now just $5.00! 

 It’s a perverse fact of modern life: there are more starving people in the world than ever before while there are also more people overweight. To find out how we got to this point and what we can do about it, Raj Patel launched a comprehensive investigation into the global food network. What he found was shocking, from the false choices given us by supermarkets to a global epidemic of farmer suicides, and real reasons for famine in Asia and Africa. Yet he also found great cause for hope in international resistance movements working to create a more democratic, sustainable and joyful food system. Going beyond ethical consumerism, Patel explains, from seed to store to plate, the steps to regain control of the global food economy, stop the exploitation of both farmers and consumers, and rebalance global sustenance.

 

Be Our Friend… For Life! 
Friends of AK Press


Sign up as a Friend of AK Press and receive Imperiled Life , plus a Friends of AK Press tote bag, as your first month’s shipment. For a limited time you will also receive a free AK Press title of your choice as a free thank-you gift!

As a Friend of AK, you’ll get EVERY new AK Press release delivered to you hot off the press, and great discounts on everything else you order from us, and you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that you are doing your part to help get our books out into a world that’s now, more than ever, desperately in need of them. Our publishing program has grown by leaps and bounds in the past few years, and we depend on the Friends of AK to help us keep up our frenetic pace. We’ve got no shortage of ideas and energy, but times are tough and we need to raise funds to help support our efforts. That’s where you come in!

We now offer several different options for Friends of AK Press: receiving print books, e-books (in Kindle or epub formats), or both! Just take your pick. For the first time in a decade, we’ve also decided to reopen the Lifetime Friends of AK Press program, and make available a limited number of Lifetime Friends memberships! We rely on all kinds of Friends to keep us going, just pick the subscription that’s right for you!

. Find out more, and sign up, on our Friends of AK page!

Topics: AK Distribution, AK News | No Comments »

Friends of AK Press: Now available as DRM-free ebooks!!

By kate | June 14, 2012

There’s never been a better time to join the Friends of AK Press program …
Now featuring ebooks!
Every single book we publish, delivered straight to your door.
 
Friends of AK Ebooks
Or your email.
 
Automatically. 
 
Every month.
 
Sign up before September 1st and get a free copy of any previously-published AK Press book you want!
 
Learn More
 
E-Book-Only Friends of AK Press Subscription
 
$15 a month worldwide.
 
Brand-spanking new, and DRM-free: Get a copy of every new AK Press book in ePub or mobi format sent to you via email and a 50% discount on any additional AK titles you buy, plus a 20% discount on everything else!
Friends of AK EbooksPrint & E-book Friends of AK Press Combined Subscription
 
$35 a month in the US. 
($40 Canada, $45 Elsewhere)
 
Wanna have it all? Now you can: Get a copy of every new AK Press book in ePub or mobi format sent to you via email, and a copy of the print book in the mail. Plus a 50% discount on any additional AK titles you buy, and a 20% discount on everything else!
Print-Only Friends of AK Press Subscription

 

$25 a month in the US. 
($30 Canada, $35 Elsewhere)

 

The classic: Get a copy of every new AK Press book in the mail. Plus a 50% discount on any additional AK titles you buy, and a 20% discount on everything else!

 
Sign up for an ongoing subscription before September 1st and get a free copy of any AK Press book as a special gift! 
 
(Sign up for the combined program and get both a print book and an ebook …) 

 

There are multiple ways to pay! Sign up for an ongoing subscription and we’ll charge your card on the 15th of every month. Or, pay for three, six, nine months, or a year at a time. Plus … for a limited time only, don’t miss the deal of a lifetime: $2500 gets you a Lifetime Friends of AK subscription – you get every book we publish for the rest of your life or ours. Now THAT’s a deal.

 

Topics: About AK, AK Distribution, AK News, Happenings, Recommended Reading, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Imperiled Life: Read an excerpt from the latest Anarchist Interventions title!

By kate | June 11, 2012

The latest AK Press release, and the fourth in our popular collaboration with the Institute for Anarchist Studies, is Javier Sethness-Castro’s Imperiled Life: Revolution Against Climate Catastrophe.

Check out what readers are saying:

This is an extremely well-researched and well-written book, providing both a history of our awareness of the coming global environmental collapse, and a plausible and even inspiring plan for present and future action. The more people who read it, the better humanity’s chances will be.
—Kim Stanley Robinson, author of  Green Mars

Imperiled Life is an angry and urgent dissection of the omnivorous economic system that is mercilessly turning the planet into a death camp.
—Jeffrey St. Clair, coeditor of Counterpunch and author of Born Under a Bad Sky

In a climate change debate pumped full of duplicity and evasion, Javier Sethness-Castro blasts in air-clearing testament to the calamity facing humanity. Sethness-Castro argues boldly that humanity is the asteroid this time, responsible for one of the great extinctions in earth’s history. Imperiled Life is no halfhearted call to shuffle the lightbulbs on a sinking terrestrial Titanic. It demands we rethink our philosophies, reorganize our societies, and rework our economies if we are to escape a fate of being survived only by valleys of bones and mountains of garbage.
—Arun Gupta, cofounder of the Indypendent and the Occupied Wall Street Journal

Javier Sethness-Castro here importantly diagnoses the ways in which today’s dominant trends toward fascist authoritarianism, casino capitalism, and cataclysmic militarism ominously intend a planetary future predicated on widespread genocide, ecological collapse, and the enclosure of moral progress. Moreover, Imperiled Life provides hope that social movements around the world are actively struggling to find common insurgent cause together—to democratically occupy the global power structure, work for human, animal, and earth liberation, and create sustainable community alternatives. May this fundamentally change the political climate of our future such that justice, peace, and happiness on Earth are more than just utopian urges or filthy privileges of the super affluent!
—Richard Kahn, author of Critical Pedagogy, Ecoliteracy, and Planetary Crisis

Want to know more? Click here to download an excerpt from the book: CLICK TO READ!

Convinced? Be sure to buy a copy on our website – 25% off through the end of the month: CLICK TO BUY

Topics: About AK, AK Authors!, AK Book Excerpts, Recommended Reading, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Spring Special for Wholesale Customers! Free Shipping (Within the US) on Orders of 25+ Units through 6/11!

By Suzanne | June 1, 2012

Just a quick note for all you wholesale customers out there—AK Distro is celebrating the season by offering a spring wholesale special, starting now! Place an order of 25+ units before Monday, June 11 and mention the spring special to get free shipping (within the US) on all in-stock items. It’s a great chance to put together that restock you’ve been putting off, as well as catching up on the latest AK Press and distributed titles you may have missed.

Bookstore buyers, if you’ll be at BEA next week and haven’t scheduled an appointment to go over our latest releases and place your order, it’s not too late, just get in touch and let us know your availability.

And for the rest of you, maybe you’re thinking of starting up an infoshop or distro? Or you’re about to go on tour with your band and want to take some books along for your merch table? Even if you don’t have a wholesale account with us yet, why not set one up, and take advantage of this free shipping special (as well as our usual wholesale discounts!) by placing your first order now. Check out this information on wholesale ordering, and send an e-mail with questions or to get set up and place your order.

Topics: AK Distribution | No Comments »


« Previous Entries Next Entries »