Don’t know if I mentioned it in a recent post or not, but out here in Baltimore, we’re right in the middle of a run of five AK Press related events co-hosted with Red Emma’s. We started on November 4 with Raúl Zibechi on Dispersing Power, and then followed that up with Kolya Abramsky on Sparking a Worldwide Energy Revolution and Ben Dangl on Dancing with Dynamite last week, and are finishing off the run with Eddie Conway (by speakerphone) last night (Tuesday), and our monthly Radical Publishing Happy Hour (read: cocktail party at the AK Baltimore warehouse!) on Thursday. Whew!
BUT, back last week, we had author and energy activist Kolya Abramsky here with us in Baltimore for a few days, and we managed to get a recording of his talk at Red Emma’s on the collection he edited for AK Press this past spring, called Sparking a Worldwide Energy Revolution: Social Struggles in the Transition to a Post-Petrol World. If you haven’t checked out this book yet, you really should—it’s massive, with essays documenting and discussing energy struggles in more than 50 nations around the world. This is the definitive volume on energy struggles and the crisis of capitalism, and, as the heated debate after Kolya’s Baltimore event demonstrated, these issues are really in the fore of people’s minds right now.
Here’s a link to the audio of the talk. Be sure to check it out! And, more reports on AK events in Baltimore to come!
It’s been a good year for new titles on Latin America at AK Press: in addition to Jeff Conant’s Poetics of Resistance (on the Zapatista mythos) and Raul Zibechi’s Dispersing Power (on the Amarya struggles against the state in Bolivia), we’re tickled pink to have just recently released Dancing with Dynamite: States and Social Movements in Latin America, the second book-length work by award-winning political journalist Benjamin Dangl. AK first began working with Ben back in 2007, on his first book, The Price of Fire, which took a critical book at resource wars in Bolivia. Three years later, Price of Fire is still one of our best-selling titles, and we’re thrilled to now offer Dancing with Dynamite, which revisits some of those same struggles, but ultimately takes a wider and more varied perspective on Latin America as a region, profiling the relationship between states and social movements in Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, Uruguay, Venezuela, Brazil, and Paraguay. Ben also turns his keen eye towards the homeland, positing the ways that social movements in the United States stand to benefit from, and have already benefited from, the example of movements in South America.
Sounds cool, right? It is. You might want to read Z-Net’s recent interview with Ben to get a bit more perspective on what the book attempts to accomplish (here), or check out Alternet’s interview with Ben, in which he discusses the dance between social movements and states in Latin America in more detail, and suggests some of the lessons we in the US have to learn from the Latin American example (here). Kari Lydersen reviewed the book right before it appeared in stores, and you can read that great review at In These Times (here). You might also want to check out the Dancing with Dynamite blog to see what Ben has been up to on his tour, or read his recent commentary at UpsideDownWorld.org & TowardFreedom.com.
We recently hosted an event for Ben on his east coast tour here in Baltimore at Red Emma’s, check out the audio from that event below:
And, finally, below you’ll find an excerpt from the Introduction of Dancing with Dynamite. Enjoy! And buy the book …
Introduction: Dancing with Dynamite
The motorcycle thundered off the highway onto a jungle road of loose red dirt framed by trees, families lounging in front of their farmhouses, and small herds of disinterested cows. We pulled up to a dusty store to buy food for our stay in the rural community of Oñondivepá, Paraguay, and asked the woman behind the counter what was available. She nodded her head, picked up a saw, and began hacking away at a large slab of beef. We strapped the meat and a box of beer on to the back of the motorcycle and roared off down the road.
A volleyball game was going on when we arrived in the area where landless activist Pedro Caballero lived. His wife offered us fresh oranges while his children ran around in the dirt, playing with some wide-eyed kittens. The sun had set, so Caballero’s wife lifted a light bulb attached to a metal wire onto an exposed electric line above the house, casting light on our small gathering of neighbors. Suddenly, the dogs jumped to action, joining in a barking chorus, and lunged toward the edge of the woods. They had found a poisonous snake, a common cause of death in this small community far from hospitals.
“We are the landless,” Caballero, a slight young man with shoulder length black hair, explained while peeling an orange for his young daughter. As a settler on the land, he works with his neighbors and nearby relatives to produce enough food for his family to survive. But he is up against a repressive state that either actively works against landless farmers, or ignores them. “No one listens to us, so we have to take matters into our own hands,” he said. Caballero spoke of the need to occupy land as a last resort for survival. “The legal route isn’t working, so we have to go for the illegal route, which does work.”(1) (more…)
Are you in New York? Because if you are, you need to cancel all of your plans for tonight and head over to Bluestockings to catch Uruguayan political analyst Raúl Zibechi, in the United States for the first time since the ’80s, on a mini-east coast tour to discuss the first English edition of one of his many books: Dispersing Power: Social Movements as Anti-State Forces, published this summer by AK Press.
Dispersing Power provides a prescient analysis of social struggles in Bolivia and the forms of community power instituted by that country’s indigenous Aymara. Like the movements it describes, the book explores new ways of doing politics beyond the state, gracefully mapping the “how” of revolution, offering valuable lessons to activists and new theoretical frameworks for understanding how social movements can and do operate independently of state-centered models for social change. This new translation by Ramor Ryan (author of Clandestines) captures the intensity of the original Spanish-language edition, and includes a preface by John Holloway, a preface by Ben Dangl (who is also on the road, and missed Raúl by a day in NYC), and an afterword by Colectivos Situaciones.
Zibechi has already spoken to packed houses in Baltimore (at Johns Hopkins and at the Renewing the Anarchist Tradition Conference), in Boston (at Encuentro 5), and in Amherst (Hampshire College & UCONN). He wraps up his first US tour in New York, with an event tonight (Thursday, November 11) at Bluestockings @ 7PM, and then another one tomorrow at the CUNY Graduate Center, @ 2PM. Don’t miss this opportunity!
If you’re not in the NYC area, then you might want to check out this recording Red Emma’s made of Zibechi’s talk at Johns Hopkins last week. His lecture there was entitled Suma Qamaña (Good Living) as an Alternative to the Crisis of our Civilization.
AK Press is already hard at work at additional translations of Zibechi’s works into English, so stay tuned for more! We’ll be trying to bring him back to the US in the Spring for a West Coast tour …
After a several-week hiatus for system repairs and etc., the AK Press blog is back! Sorry for the lack of bloggage, we’ll be back on the air with a ton of new posts in the next couple of days.
We are proud to present one of our newest titles to readers of Revolution by the Book. Paradoxes of Utopia was written by Juan Suriano and published in Buenos Aires in 2001. Chuck Morse translated the English edition, putting the final touches on it in early 2010. The following excerpt is lifted from Juan’s introduction. Enjoy.
In this work, I analyze the anarchist movement as a cultural, political, ideological, and social movement. I do not focus on the anarchist movement’s relationship to the labor movement, which other scholars have treated extensively, but rather examine institutions directly linked to the anarchist movement, such as its circles, press, and schools, within which anarchists defined their political and cultural strategies. I focus my investigation on the city of Buenos Aires during the two decades between 1890 and 1910, although I privilege the latter of the two, because that is when the anarchist movement was most interesting and developed.
Why restrict the study to Buenos Aires? First, because the anarchist movement’s national reach was very limited. Though it is true that there were groups and activists throughout the country, anarchists were mostly irrelevant in areas where more traditional social relations prevailed. It was in the large, economically dynamic cities along the coast that they had a meaningful presence: there, they had an influence on foreign-born and native workers who were swept up in the modernization process and provided them with a network of labor, political, and cultural institutions. Anarchists’ much greater impact in the cities than in rural areas makes the movement of the period an eminently urban phenomenon. And although anarchists had an effect on numerous towns and cities in the Pampa region, there is no doubt that movement reached its greatest magnitude in Buenos Aires, which was and is the country’s political center, its most important port city, and the site of much of its wealth, industry, services, and commerce. Deliberately or not, anarchists essentially selected this metropolis as the arena in which to mobilize and disseminate their ideas, and it was there that they evolved with the greatest vitality, which is not to deny their enormous influence in Rosario.
The temporal limit is also deliberate. The study begins around 1890, when the social effects of the modernization process began to make themselves felt and libertarian propaganda began to produce tangible results. It was at this time that anarchists started forming groups, publishing periodicals, and defining the strategies that the mature anarchist movement would pursue a decade later. I do not mean, by concluding the investigation in 1910, to suggest that the anarchist movement disappeared then, only that this was when its decline began. Indeed, while the broader public continued to imagine it as a dynamic social actor, its practical relevance—in political, social, and cultural terms—started to shrink inexorably by the end of the first decade of the century. (more…)
Breaking with tradition this month, I decided to be totally lazy (read:
frazzled, spread thin) and not choose a selection of books to offer at 50%
until mid-month. Neat eh? Sorry about that. We’ll prob extend this sale by a
week or so to make sure you have a decent amount of time to pick up some
values!
Also, for you discriminating souls who are interested in savings and
excellent books, all Feminist Press titles are on sale this month! 25% off
those til the end of October. Check them out HERE.
Edited by A.G. Schwarz, Void Network, and Tasos Sagris What causes a city, then a whole country, to explode? How did one neighborhood’s outrage over the tragic death of one teenager transform itself into a generalized insurrection against State and capital, paralyzing an entire nation for a month?
This is a book about the murder of fifteen-year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos, killed by the police in the Exarchia neighborhood of Athens on December 6th, 2008, and of the revolution in the streets that followed, bringing business as usual in Greece to a screeching, burning halt for three marvelous weeks, and putting the fear of history back into the bureaucrats of Fortress Europe and beyond. Now just $8.50! Direct Action: An Ethnography
By David Graeber In the best tradition of participant-observation, anthropologist David Graeber undertakes the first detailed ethnographic study of the global justice movement. Starting from the assumption that, when dealing with possibilities of global transformation and emerging political forms, a disinterested, “objective” perspective is impossible, he writes as both scholar and activist. At the same time, his experiment in the application of ethnographic methods to important ongoing political events is a serious and unique contribution to the field of anthropology, as well as an inquiry into anthropology’s political implications. Now just $13.00! Sister of the Road: The Autobiography of Boxcar Bertha
By Ben Reitman Another raging slab of real American history you’re not likely to find in the textbooks. It’s a window into a wildly under-appreciated dropout culture that gets left out of the stultifying fairytales that pass for history books—a much more rowdy and messily interesting tradition than the guardians of propriety, steeped in those other great American traditions of Puritanism and hypocrisy, let on.
Hobo jungles, bughouses, whorehouses, Chicago’s Main Stem, IWW meeting halls, skid rows, and open freight cars—these were the haunts of the free thinking and free loving Bertha Thompson. This vivid autobiography recounts one hell of a rugged woman’s hard-living depression-era saga of misadventures with pimps, hopheads, murderers, yeggs, wobblies, and anarchists. Now just $7.50!
By Paul Avrich In the turmoil of the Russian insurrection of 1905 and civil war of 1917, the anarchists attempted to carry out their program of “direct action,” workers’ control of production, the creation of free rural and urban communes, and partisan warfare against the enemies of a free society. Avrich consulted published material in five languages and anarchist archives worldwide to present a picture of the philosophers, bomb throwers, peasants and soldiers who fought and died for the freedom of “Mother Russia.” Including the influence and ideas of Bakunin and Kropotkin, the armed uprisings of Makhno, the activities of Volin, Maximoff, and the attempted aid of Berkman and Emma Goldman. Now just $10.00! Price of Fire: Resource Wars and Social Movements in Bolivia
By Benjamin Dangl New social movements have emerged in Bolivia over the “price of fire”—access to basic elements of survival like water, gas, land, coca, employment, and other resources. Though these movements helped pave the way to the presidency for indigenous coca-grower Evo Morales in 2005, they have made it clear that their fight for self-determination doesn’t end at the ballot box.
From the first moments of Spanish colonization to today’s headlines, The Price of Fire offers a gripping account of clashes in Bolivia between corporate and people’s power, contextualizing them regionally, culturally, and historically. Now just $8.00!
By Jules Boykoff Focusing on a variety of movements for political, social, and economic change in the US, Jules Boykoff shows the tools used by government agents to undermine the long-term viability of opposition in this country. Despite the pretense of democratic ideals, the US government has ruthlessly suppressed dissent, using hard-to-detect and rarely acknowledged tactics. Boykoff breaks it down for readers, using a methodical, step-by-step analysis to open the government’s bag of tricks for all to see. Now just $11.00!
‘Twas an unusually warm Saturday morning. But the prospect of a relaxing day was not going to stop me from supplying the world (SF Mission District) with highly classified literature (www.akpress.org). With Slingshots in one hand and bag of walnuts in the other, AK Press crossed the Bay Bride to attend the 10th Annual Teachers For Social Justice Conference held at Mission High School in San Francisco. Teachers for Social Justice is a non-profit teacher development group that uses grassroots organizing techniques to “provide opportunities for self-transformation, leadership, and community building to educators in order to affect meaningful change in the classroom, school, community and society.” Moving along, Every year T4SJ holds a conference where educations and students can gather, network, attend skill-building workshops and develop a professional learning community.
We were among great anti-royalty last Saturday. Other vendors included Haymarket books, The Beehive Collective, Bound Together Books, The Slingshot Collective, and Ashay Children’s Books. The organizers of the conference were quite hospitable; checking in with vendors, providing delicious, free vegan lunches and making sure they packed the school with educators hungry for books! The new kids book ABC’s of Anarchy was picked up rather quickly. Our Feminist Press titles sold well, particularly the second edition of Witches, Midwives and Nurses. Of course the just in 2011 Slingshots sold like hotcakes! Thanks, again T4SJ. See you next year!
Be sure to keep an eye out for AK coming to your part of town. Look for us in Portland for the Portland Anarchist Bookfair. We will also be tabling in Humboldt at the Humboldt Anarchist Bookfair. Sign up for our events e-mail to stay updated.
Okay, so you know AK Press Distribution has always been a reliable source your favorite calendars and organizers. We’ve already got 2011 Slingshots in stock, and we’ve got a bunch of other great ones on the way again this year—we’ll post about all of those soon. But this year, we’re also trying something new and exciting: publishing our own wall calendar!
The Work: 2011 Calendar is a collaboration between Justseeds Artists’ Collective and AK Press. Each month features an image by a different Justseeds artist, exploring the theme of work: what work is, and what it should be. Some of the artwork honors work and workers, while other pieces challenge workplace hierarchies, globalization, unjust immigration laws, and even the global financial system. That’s a lot of inspiration for the year of hard work we have ahead of us…
As you read this, the calendars are being printed at Eberhardt Press in Portland. We’ll have the finished calendars in hand within mere weeks. And on that note, we’d like to offer you a special deal: if you preorder, you’ll get 25% off the list price (making it $12, instead of $16). Wholesale customers, we’ve got a good deal for you too: if you buy these nonreturnable, we’ll give you a special 50% discount! In either case, what a small price to pay for the privilege of looking at this beautiful artwork on your wall all year as you ponder the most serious questions of labor and capital.
In all seriousness, this is a project we’re really proud of, and we think you’ll like it too. Preorder yours today!
We had the pleasure of launching AK’s latest book—a (gasp) novel—last weekend at the San Diego City College International Book Festival. Jim Miller’s Flash arrived fresh from the printer for the weekend’s festivities (it’s not even here in Oakland yet). As usual, the fine folks from San Diego City Works Press put on a great event. It’s nice to be a part of an event so well organized and borne of such camaraderie. Folks in San Diego bemoan the conservative atmosphere and lack of bookstores and radical cultural spaces so this annual event seems to really rally the troops and raise spirits. Congrats on another fun year.
Below is a shot of Jim reading at San Diego City College. Sharing the stage is musician Gregory Page who accompanied Jim with a great mix of Wobbly and related labor songs.
And be smart and order your copy today for 25% off and see what all the buzz is about!
Don’t know if I mentioned it in a recent post or not, but out here in Baltimore, we’re right in the middle of a run of five AK Press related events co-hosted with Red Emma’s. We started on November 4 with Raúl Zibechi on Dispersing Power, and then followed that up with Kolya Abramsky on Sparking a Worldwide Energy Revolution and Ben Dangl on Dancing with Dynamite last week, and are finishing off the run with Eddie Conway (by speakerphone) last night (Tuesday), and our monthly Radical Publishing Happy Hour (read: cocktail party at the AK Baltimore warehouse!) on Thursday. Whew!
What causes a city, then a whole country, to explode? How did one neighborhood’s outrage over the tragic death of one teenager transform itself into a generalized insurrection against State and capital, paralyzing an entire nation for a month?
In the best tradition of participant-observation, anthropologist David Graeber undertakes the first detailed ethnographic study of the global justice movement. Starting from the assumption that, when dealing with possibilities of global transformation and emerging political forms, a disinterested, “objective” perspective is impossible, he writes as both scholar and activist. At the same time, his experiment in the application of ethnographic methods to important ongoing political events is a serious and unique contribution to the field of anthropology, as well as an inquiry into anthropology’s political implications.
Another raging slab of real American history you’re not likely to find in the textbooks. It’s a window into a wildly under-appreciated dropout culture that gets left out of the stultifying fairytales that pass for history books—a much more rowdy and messily interesting tradition than the guardians of propriety, steeped in those other great American traditions of Puritanism and hypocrisy, let on.
In the turmoil of the Russian insurrection of 1905 and civil war of 1917, the anarchists attempted to carry out their program of “direct action,” workers’ control of production, the creation of free rural and urban communes, and partisan warfare against the enemies of a free society. Avrich consulted published material in five languages and anarchist archives worldwide to present a picture of the philosophers, bomb throwers, peasants and soldiers who fought and died for the freedom of “Mother Russia.” Including the influence and ideas of Bakunin and Kropotkin, the armed uprisings of Makhno, the activities of Volin, Maximoff, and the attempted aid of Berkman and Emma Goldman.
New social movements have emerged in Bolivia over the “price of fire”—access to basic elements of survival like water, gas, land, coca, employment, and other resources. Though these movements helped pave the way to the presidency for indigenous coca-grower Evo Morales in 2005, they have made it clear that their fight for self-determination doesn’t end at the ballot box.
Focusing on a variety of movements for political, social, and economic change in the US, Jules Boykoff shows the tools used by government agents to undermine the long-term viability of opposition in this country. Despite the pretense of democratic ideals, the US government has ruthlessly suppressed dissent, using hard-to-detect and rarely acknowledged tactics. Boykoff breaks it down for readers, using a methodical, step-by-step analysis to open the government’s bag of tricks for all to see.
The 
We had the pleasure of launching AK’s latest book—a (gasp) novel—last weekend at the San Diego City College International Book Festival. Jim Miller’s 