Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair

Nessie says check it out

By nessie

If all you know about anarchism is what the corporate propaganda mill has shoveled down your throat, you probably think it means wearing black, breaking windows, and not being organized. This is not true. Some of the best organized people on this planet are anarchists. My personal favorites are the people who run Bound Together Anarchist Collective Book Store on Haight Street in San Francisco. Since 1976 they've been running a thriving business without even a hint of a boss. There are usually somewhere between 15 and 20 of them. Some of them were there when the store started up. Some hadn't been born yet. They all have equal say in how the place is run.

Bound Together Books is part of a federation called the Network of Bay Area Worker Collectives, NoBAWC (pronounced "no-boss") for short. There are currently 32 member collectives. The smallest has six employees. The largest has over a hundred. Businesses include a printer (Inkworks), a pizza parlor (The Cheese Board), a bakery (Arizmendi), a major local grocery (Rainbow), and a publishing house (AK Press). Bound Together is run by volunteers. Everybody else in NoBAWC makes their living working as part of a collective. They make good wages and have excellent benefits. They are living proof that working people need neither capitalists nor commissars to tell them how to take care of business.

In fact the worker self-owned, worker self-managed workplace is the most efficient structure ever devised for the job. In part this is because just cutting the boss out of the equation means a lot more money for everyone else; in part this is because the people who actually do the work have a far better idea of what it actually entails than any boss ever could. The boss only knows what people tell him and everyone lies to their boss. As the old anarchist proverb says, "If you want to know how many widgets to order for next month, don't ask the boss. Ask the widgeteer."

Anarchy doesn't mean out of control. It means out of their control. It's the best place to be. Want to learn more? You're in luck. This coming Saturday, Bound Together Books presents:

Sixth Annual Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair

Saturday, March 24th, 2001, 10 a.m.-6 p.m.

County Fair Building, in Golden Gate Park

9th Ave. and Lincoln Way

Approximately 60 anarchist groups and alternative book and magazine publishers will be represented at tables selling and distributing materials and examples of their work. There will be a café, films, spoken word presentations, a panel discussion, and a gallery exhibit. The food at the café will be cheap, healthy, and delicious. Admission is free. A splendid time will be had by all. Be there or be square.

For more info call Bound Together, (415) 431-8355, or e-mail akpress@akpress.org.

Be sure to check out the exhibit "Texas Death Row: Executions in the Modern Era," official portraits (mug shots) of all offenders executed by the state of Texas since 1982, when the death penalty was reinstated after an 18-year hiatus. As of Feb. 15, 2001, 243 individuals have been executed by the state of Texas. The exhibit accompanies the book Texas Death Row: Executions in the Modern Era, which presents photos and factual data from the files of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice regarding the first 222 offenders executed in Texas since 1982. You can read an interview with Bill Crawford, one of the people who compiled the book and exhibit.

If the speakers (see below) and the food and the vendors don't interest you, you can still have an excellent time just hanging out. The crowd itself is extremely amusing. Typically three or four thousand people show up. People of every age, race, trade, gender, and persuasion will be there. A more diverse bunch seldom assembles. Anarchists may have their faults, but not knowing how to have, and share, a good time isn't one of them. Come and meet some. Find out for yourself how wrong the corporate media is.

If you want to get a head start, there will be an Anarchist Cafe on Friday, March 23, starting at 7:00 p.m. at 225 Potrero Ave. This is a benefit for both the Anarchist Book Fair and S.F. Food Not Bombs. A $5 donation is requested, but no one will be turned away for lack of funds. There will be a vegan feast and performers and DJs galore. Come eat, dance, and celebrate community! This is a drug and alcohol free space. But who needs drugs and alcohol when there's people like this to hang out with? Not me, that's for sure. If any of you want to meet me in person, here's your chance. I'll be there, hanging out. You can't miss me. I'll be dressed in black. Feel free to just walk up and introduce yourself.

Speakers this year include:

Paul Krassner – cofounder of Yippie!, editor of The Realist, author of Psychedelic Trips for the Mind; Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut!

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz – author of Red Dirt: Growing up Okie and Indians of the Americas: Human Rights and Self Determination. Red Dirt is an exquisite rendering of her childhood in rural Oklahoma, from the Dust Bowl days to the end of the Eisenhower era. Dunbar-Ortiz brings to life one of the least understood groups in U.S. history: poor rural whites.

Elizabeth Martinez – author of Five Hundred Years of Chicano History in Pictures and (with Angela Davis) De Colores Means All of Us: Latina Views for a Multi-Colored Century.

M.A. Jaimes-Guerrero – a leading Native American scholar, writer, and researcher. Her most recent work examines the ethical and legal questions raised by the Human Genome Diversity Project and its implications for indigenous peoples. She is an editor and contributor to The State of Native North America: Genocide, Colonization, and Resistance and author of Native Womanism: Blueprint for a Global Revolution.

Ruthie Gilmore – a leader in the No Prisons Movement and an Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of California at Berkeley. She was catapulted into thinking about the politics of race, crime, and prison in 1969, when her cousin was murdered and his wife subsequently arrested in the context of the FBI Cointelpro war against the Black Panthers. Gilmore's research led her to challenge the conventional wisdom that economically depressed areas can't resist prison-produced benefits. Her study of the town of Corcoran, where two new prisons were built between 1988 and 1998, demonstrated that the population below the poverty level nearly doubled while the town barely grew.

Michelle Tea – author of The Passionate Mistakes and Intricate Corruption of One Girl in America and Valencia. She is cofounder of Sister Spit, the traveling girl-poetry road show.

Read Boogie Dykes by Michelle Tea and a profile of her.

Cindy Milstein – a faculty member at the Institute for Social Ecology. She is a board member of the Institute for Anarchist Studies, a nonprofit organization that provides grants to radical writers, and an organizer of the annual Renewing the Anarchist Tradition conference, which attempts to create a scholarly space for a new generation of libertarian left theorists. Milstein also writes for antiauthoritarian periodicals, including a regular column in Arsenal magazine.

Chris Crass – an anarchist organizer with the Direct Action Network in San Francisco and a student at SFSU majoring in "Race, Class, Gender and Power Studies". Chris will be moderating a panel discussion on anarchism, race, and organizing.

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