- September 1-3 at Queen Alexandra Hall, 10425 University Ave.
- Free food and childcare provided.
- Vendors will be accessible the entire event, including during workshops and at meals.
Vendors include:
- AK Press: A international worker run book publisher and distributor organized around anarchist principles. All decision-making, including which titles they distribute and which ones they publish, is made collectively. Their goal is to make available radical books and other materials, titles that are published by independent presses, not the corporate giants, titles with which you can make a positive change in the world.
- Turning the Tide: Saskatoon radical bookstore.
- Haymarket Worker-owned Cooperative: Calgary radical bookstore.
- Freedom Press: the oldest surviving anarchist publishing house in the English speaking world, based in London England.
- Spartacus Books: a non-profit, volunteer & collectively run bookstore & resource center based in Vancouver. The store has been successfully run for over 35 years.
- Industrial Workers of the World: The Edmonton branch of this international worker-run union.
- ThoughtCrime Ink: Edmonton-based not-for-profit activist T-shirt company.
- Black Books: Edmonton anarchist/activist literature distributor.
- More TBA
Bookfair Workshop Schedule
Friday, September 1
Bookfair Open 6pm-10pm
8:30 – 10:00: Feature Film: Bozo Texino
Bozo Texino is an actual person, although most people only know him by the graffiti art he scrawls on boxcars. Stories abound about his background: some claim he is a migrant worker from Texas, while others say he is a conductor on the Sunset Limited. Regardless of his real personage, Bozo Texino is one of scores of artists whose cryptic symbols can be found throughout the nation on its rail cars. Most of this work is rendered in chalk, but can travel thousands of miles before dissolving. Daniel stumbled across these graffiti marks while living near the Santa Fe railroad line in Dallas. Familiar with a now defunct system of chalk marks used by hobos to communicate across long distances, Daniel realized that he had found a new form of art-monikers, caricatures, and poetry scribbled by boxcar jumpers on freight trains and under bridges. He began documenting their artwork, and with the encouragement of a grant from the Film Arts Foundation, decided to turn his work into a full-length documentary.
Saturday, September 2
Bookfair Open 11am-7pm
11:15 -12:00: Eugene Plawiuk: Presentation on Anarchist Governance
12:00 - 12:30: Lunch (vegan and free!)
12:45 - 1:15: Sean Boomer (Black Books): Confessions from Over the Hill - Anarchism as a Way of Life
1:30 - 2:15: Mark of the @: Guerrilla Art – Graffiti Workshop
2:30 - 4:30: Billy Cromb (Food not Bombs): Activism for Everyone: Addressing Accessibility in Activist Work
Discussion/oral presentation about strategies for making activist events and groups more accessible to marginalised people in society, focusing on people in poverty but touching on other intersecting inequalities as well. One thing that I've noticed doing anti-poverty work for the past few years was how much frustration from the people who have most to gain from activism, who often can't make it to meetings or events because of barriers such as price, time, lack of childcare or even physical barriers. This is a huge issue, and breaking down the barriers to access would help everyone involved.
4:30 - 5:30: Edmonton Movie Premier: The Free Voice of Labour – The Jewish Anarchists
The film presents newsreel footage of key figures in the history of American anarchism, among them Sacco and Vanzetti, and Emma Goldman. ("What is your opinion of Italy?" a reporter asks her. "Beautiful country minus Mussolini," she snaps in reply.) And there are contemporary interviews with figures including Mollie Steimer, Emma Goldman's girlhood friend, and the poet Kenneth Rexroth, who reads his Sacco and Vanzetti poem. There is also some discussion of what the film makers take to be anarchism's practical applications, such as food co-ops and town meetings. Karl Hess, formerly a Newsweek writer and speechwriter for Barry Goldwater, discusses his evolution from Republican to anarchist. And the writer and teacher Murray Bookchin gives an exceptionally articulate description of his own ideological development. He explains why he finds anarchism more all-embracing than Marxism, because he believes it addresses "not just classes but hierarchy." Anarchism can be broadly applied, he says, to forms of domination "which may not have any economic meaning at all." A wonderful evocation of the radical political past and what has become of its activists in their old age. It takes it's name from the Yiddish anarchist newspaper, which finally died in 1987 at the age of 87. The film is an oral history, given by those who lived through the era. It's more than merely that, however. It uses clips from old movies, in Yiddish, that dealt with the ugliness of the sweatshop. You hear the Yiddish songs and poems inveighing against oppression and calling for the people to rise up. But the joy in the film lies in the people who belonged to the movement. They have aged gracefully, with their sentiments unchanged, but with their world different in ways they would never have dreamed of years ago. They speak with humor of demostrations, picket lines, battles of long ago. They speak as Jews, but secular Jews whose visions were of an unbossed universality. They are grandmas and grandpas, as sunny and mellow as any others, but their courage, intelligence and social concern still shines in their faces. They were a movement, mostly nonviolent, unlike the caricature anarchist bomb-thrower, but their families have grown into middle-class America. They no longer fight, but they still think."—New York Times
5:30 - 6:00: Dinner (vegan and free!)
6:00 - 7:00: Ramsey Kanaan (AK Press): TBA
Sunday, September 3
Bookfair Open Noon-5pm
12:00 - 12:30: Lunch (vegan and free!)
12:30 - 1:15: Grant Horwood (Haymarket Books): FBI Crackdown on Radical Environmentalists
In late 2005, the FBI launched a nation-wide campaign called "Operation Backfire". Its goal was to crush the radical earth and animal liberation movements in the United States. Today, fourteen activists face thousands of years of jail time if convicted. This presentation will address the history of Operation Backfire and the need for effective prisoner support. Special emphasis will be given to Darren Thurston, an activist originally from Edmonton currently imprisoned in Oregon.
1:45 - 2:30: Jenika Watson: Compassionate Communication
3:00 - 5:00: Nick Driedger (IWW): Direct Action on the Job
Falling union membership has meant that the traditional venue for improving working conditions is no longer available to about 80% of the workforce. This workshop is designed for workers in industries without the benefit of a collective bargaining agreement to improve their workplaces and build solidarity with co-workers. Based on the IWW’s solidarity unionism model we will investigate how to map and plan successful actions at work, and how to build a fighting workplace group to take on the bosses.
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