Humboldt County’s First Anarchist Bookfair
On December 13th, Humboldt county, CA, will experience it’s first anarchist bookfair. The all-day event will take place in the Manila Community Center (1611 Peninsula Drive, Acrata, CA, 95521) from 10am to 6pm, and is being presented by Humboldt Grassroots. As the group describes both the locale and the event:
Located on the physical and psychic edge of the disintegrating American Empire, Humboldt has a reputation as a zone of resistance, where free people have fought bitterly against encroachments of federal and local authorities in their autonomy. We present: a literary celebration of this spirit of freedom, which has magnetically attracted rebels, eccentrics and misfits of all types to mountainous Northern California for generations. The bookfair will bring radical speakers, publishers and artists from across the West Coast and America to mingle behind the “Redwood Curtain” and cross-pollinate with local groups and organizations. Hard-to-find, limited-run books, zines and literature from West Coast authors and distributors focusing on anarchist and anti-authoritarian approaches to vital struggles including ecology, labor, racism, patriarchy, prisons and the fight for freedom in an increasingly repressive society, will be made available to the public.
For more info, visit their website. In the meantime, check out the following interview with the event organizers, conducted by AK collective member Victoria, a recent transplant from Humboldt herself:
This upcoming bookfair is pretty significant, in that it is the first Anarchist Bookfair to ever take place in Humboldt. Where did the idea/motivation to host an anarchist bookfair in your neighborhood come from? Why have an anarchist bookfair and not, say, a “radical bookfair” or an “alternative media bookfair” or an “independent press bookfair”?
Humboldt County anarchists have been known to pack 12-20 kids into a veggie oil run school bus and make the yearly 16 hour trip to the San Francisco Anarchist Bookfair. We sit around our kitchen tables, easels, typewriters, garden plots, libraries and under eucalyptus and redwood canopies singing and strategizing how to connect with anarchists all over in order to dismantle imperialism. We want EVERYONE in our neighborhood to hear our songs of struggle and sing themselves. We’ve come to realize the importance of doing a specifically anarchist bookfair because the spirit of freedom and resistance in this community is so strong.
What has the organizing process for the bookfair looked like? Who all has been involved, in terms of groups/collectives/communities/constituencies/organizations? What have been the biggest challenges in organizing this event?
The organizing for the bookfair began with a small tight-knit affinity group with years of relationship and spread to an open committee primarly made up of local community organizers that were part of different autonomous groups. We’ve tried to include a myriad of trends existing in the Northern California scene such as rural farming and communes, city punks and class struggle activism, nomadic travelers, police brutality and prison abolition, pirate radio and the proud history of the direct action environmental movement that our region is so rich for. The biggest challenge has been the suspense of waiting for our day!
What are the goals of the bookfair? What do you hope to see happen at the bookfair? What do you hope to see happen as a result of the bookfair?
The bookfair is a space to bring all the anarchists hiding deep in the forest out of the woodwork, to entice students to mingle with mentors, and to encourage talk and dance and connection between people who didn’t know the other’s secret identity. We want the Bookfair to be a day to gather in a group space of respect and sharing and inspiration; we want people to recognize their right to organize and build strength against an ever increasing fascist strangle-hold.
How do you see this bookfair fitting into other organizing efforts taking place in Humboldt? How will this bookfair help advance those struggles?
We’re going to show the common threads that underline all of our different methods of anti-imperial action all over our Pacific Northwest. The bookfair will disseminate fresh concepts and theory into an area that is rural but packed with radical action. We also know that our brothers and sisters in the hills have much to teach incoming cityfolk and out-of-towners about sustainable living and histories/mysteries of the land.
Is there anything I didn’t ask that you would like to mention? If so, mention it here?
The fact that LA and Humboldt independently organized their bookfairs on the same day reveals either the verifiable truth of astrology or an over-dependence on the schedule of university students.
Miscellaneous Question: What are going to be some bookfair highlights?
Face painting, free food, kissing booth, dunk a politician, tattoo a crusty, pin the charges on the treesitter. Sugar Bones the gender-spectrum anarchy owl.