This weekend, the pen is mightier than the mob.
The inaugural Carrboro Anarchist Bookfair, held at art-space-cum-club Nightlight, features 19 vendors and organizations that will distribute literature throughout Saturday. Tabling will be accompanied by lectures and presentations by various anarchist groups.
Promotional materials advertise topics including “radical southern history,” “insurrectionary film,” “prison organizing” and “gift economics.” Groups such as the Asheville Local Exchange Trading System, Common Threads, Cuke and Sew zine, Durham Community Media and the Institute for Experimental Freedom will be represented at the fair.
The event aims to continue the work of the spring and fall NC Rising—two anarchist conferences which took place in Chapel Hill in March and Asheville in October—to “create a space where people who are interested in anarchism and alternate forms of organizing can meet each other,” said self-described anarchist Brian Dee. An author and community organizer, Dee is “working to coordinate the event”—none of the anarchists interviewed would directly identify themselves as leaders of the fair.
Anarchism’s academic heritage should speak to Duke students, Dee said.
“[Anarchism is] becoming relevant again in this crucial historical juncture through things like open-source software,” he said. “It exists as an intellectually rich tradition, even if it doesn’t always end up being taught.”
With dual connotations of Molotov cocktails and pseudo-intellectual noisemaking, anarchism frequently elicits knee-jerk revulsion from both liberals and conservatives, Dee said.
“The goals and tools of anarchism are frequently misunderstood,” he said. “Anarchism is a critique of power relations within society as opposed to J.R.R. Tolkien’s notion of ‘bearded men with bombs.’ It’s opposition to oppression in all forms, saying that all forms of hierarchical power are hostile to freedom, unhealthy and unnecessary.”
Lydia Theia, another coordinator of the book fair and co-manager of bookstore cooperative Internationalist Books, agrees.
“For me, anarchism is not just like an engineered utopia,” Theia said. “It actually is trying to transform the social relationships you have in your everyday life immediately… [to create] self-governing, non-coercive social relationships based on consensus.”
The tools of modern-day anarchism are similarly less radical than most would assume, said Mike Cohen, an organizer for Croatan Earth First!, a North Carolina-based environmental activist group.
“I don’t believe in the lifestyle self-flagellation some advocate,” Cohen said. “I drive a car to work, and I’m talking on a cellphone. I think while making technology-free spaces in our lives can be personally fulfilling, I don’t think scaling back individual use confronts the problem of industrial civilization.”
Event planners aim to close the gap between theory and practice with their presentations, which include a graffiti workshop, a discussion of anarchist philosophy and a documentary film covering the struggles of the Chilean Mapuche people against their government.
The bookfair is emphasizing the pragmatism of change through direct-action grassroots campaigns, Dee said. He is quick to maintain that the fair’s brand of anarchism is firmly grounded in reality.
“For me, the center of gravity is not to discuss the possible utopias that we don’t live in, but to navigate this world and make decisions in it,” he said. “I do vote, I do pay taxes [and] I don’t see the Rube Goldberg machine of the electoral process as the most important mechanism for social change.”
The day will conclude with a dance-party fundraiser for the Prison Books Collective, a Chapel Hill-based prison-abolitionist project that sends free literature to inmates.
And in Theia’s opinion, Duke students shouldn’t be intimidated: “People are less inhibited and friendlier at anarchist parties, and they’re a lot safer because people are less likely to steal your s*** if they think you’re comrades.”
Carrboro Anarchist Bookfair takes place Saturday at Nightlight, 405 1/2 Rosemary Street in Chapel Hill, from 1 to 7 p.m. A benefit show for the Asheville 11 begins at 8 p.m., and the dance party starts at 10:30, with the location to be disclosed at Nightlight. All events are free and open to the public, and donations are suggested. For more information, visit www.carrboroanarchistbookfair.wordpress.com.
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