USSF or Bust!
Greetings from Detroit, dear readers! I am pleased to report that the AK Press USSF Adventure 2010 has begun! I’ll be here at the second United States Social Forum (along with Suzanne) all week, and we’ve promised ourselves (and now you) that we’re going to try and post a reportback on the goings on in these parts right here on the AK Press blog every day. No guarantees … but we’ll do our best.
Like just about any tabling gig I do these days, our USSF adventure started off with … driving. On Saturday, John and I loaded up our little car with as many crates and boxes of books as we could fit – along with our 10 X 10 popup tent, a handtruck, a folding bookshelf, and other assorted tabling materials, and then crammed ourselves and our dog into the front seat and drove to Jersey, where we unloaded everything into a larger, borrowed car that we’d be driving to Detroit. (Anybody here ever been on a four hour car ride with a border collie on your lap? It’s not particularly comfortable.)
Good thing we had arranged that larger car. Made the drive up to Detroit much more pleasant. I’m one of those tablers who doesn’t really like to pack light. I can make it a week on a backpack full of clothes, but I need to have a copy of every possible book I think someone might want to take a look at, plus multiples of the ones I think will probably sell. On my shortlist of books that are likely to be a hit at the USSF this year:
Uses of a Whirlwind: Movement, Movements, and Contemporary Radical Currents in the United States, edited by Team Colors Collective (AK Press)
Brand-spanking-new. Like, really. I had cases of this thing overnighted direct from the printer in Canada so that we’d have ’em for the USSF. It’s bound to be a hit here at the Social Forum – half of the contributors to the book are here in town for the event, many of them giving workshops of their own, in addition to participating in the two Team Colors-organized panels.
Detroit, I Do Mind Dying: A Study in Urban Revolution, by Marvin Surkin and Dan Georgakas (South End Press)
One of the best books on working-class struggle, and specifically centered around the rise and fall of the auto industry in Detroit, as predicted by the Revolutionary Union Movement and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. A classic from the 70s, but an incredibly important book, and one that folks never seem to tire of reading.
The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex, edited by INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence ( South End Press)
Another classic, edited by the ass-kickingly-awesome folks behind INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence. This is always a big hit at tabling gigs, and at a place like the USSF, where the attendees are likely to be both dependent upon and highly suspicious of grantmaking organizations and other non-profit-y structures, it’s destined to strike a chord.
Anarchism and Its Aspirations, by Cindy Milstein
This has been one of our best tabling books this season, and I don’t expect to see any drop-off in interest in Cindy’s new, short, and highly-accessible primer on anarchism and its goals and theoretical framework. Since Cindy’s one of the AK authors speaking on a variety of panels and workshops, the interest in this title should be strong.
I had more to write, but my computer is about to die, and I need to move on to the next tasks of the day: tracking down a USSF organizer to find out what’s happening with vendor load-in tomorrow, finding the UPS pickup location to claim the TWENTY boxes of books Suzanne shipped out here for the event, and then fetching Suzanne herself from the airport. Wish me luck! And see some of you tomorrow when the Forum opens!