Digitize This Book: Disrupting the Anarchist Bookfair

From The L Magazine - By Adam Klasfeld

The New York City tabloids wouldn’t know what to make of the Anarchist Bookfair, which happened this past spring. If the Post attended, its reporters would probably have been disappointed that there was no sign of bicycle bombers. The Daily News would have been shocked that nobody plotted mass destruction for the next political convention. These anarchists were mostly interested in reading books, attending lectures, and sometimes networking with activists involved in nonviolent dissent. Unfortunately, everybody knows that harmony and civic involvement make bland newspaper copy.

But there was still hope for hell-raising because a group called The Bad Egg Collective planned to stage a protest. They argued that the event betrayed the ideals of anarchism because the vendors sold their books for profit; the lectures created a hierarchy between the speaker and the spectator; and the format encouraged consumption over creativity. In short, the Anarchist Bookfair was insufficiently anarchic. To express his dissent, the leader of this group planned to bring a photocopier and pass out flyers. This was something that I could scoop the tabloids on: anarchist in-fighting.

As I approached the book fair at Judson Memorial Church, friendly Trotskyites passed out pamphlets from the Partisan Defense Committee and Workers Vanguard about the fight to free Mumia Abu-Jamal from death row. One woman invited me to participate in the upcoming protest in Philadelphia. While I sympathized with the cause of a man who was framed for shooting a cop, the demonstration was planned for the first night of Passover, and I already had plans to attend my family’s Seder. Between my religious and familial loyalties, I found out early on that I would make a poor radical activist. I picked up some newsletters and made a modest donation instead.

I entered the main hall where over forty vendors were proudly hawking subversive literature, but the protest was nowhere in sight. Eventually, I found it on a corner, where there was a strange handmade wooden structure with a red cardboard sign that had “COPY BOOKS HERE!” badly stenciled in black magic marker. It looked like a lemonade stand from a left-wing Peanuts comic strip, but the contraption was more sophisticated than it appeared. The wood was hand-cut with a rotary saw, and it held a digital camera pointed at a pane of glass that enclosed a book. The copier worked by photographing the pages one by one and sending the images to a laptop computer.

Its inventor Andrew Cady estimated that he only paid about $15 for the materials. He bought the wood, glass, and hinges at Home Depot, and he already owned the electronic equipment. His friend Steve, who was standing next to him, managed to program the software that made it function while stoned the morning of the event. It took about a week to conceptualize and build the machine, and it stood before the room as a work of shabby ingenuity.

(Andrew later told me that an inventor from Japan made one out of LEGO bricks. You have to admire Japanese craftsmanship.)

In any event, one man was so impressed with Andrew’s invention that he handed them his business card to shoot ideas off each other about spreading the technology. I never expected the protest to have such a warm reception. For hours, the two of them had taken books they wanted to read from vendors and digitized them onto CD-ROMs, and not once did anyone try to stop them. Instead, they got free books and a potential business opportunity.

Something had to be done. I thought that maybe the vendors never noticed the books being taken, and I offered to ask each vendor to photocopy one of their books to see how they responded. My first stop was the stand of the publishing house Seven Stories Press, where I picked up the collection of repressed journalism Censored 2008.

“Excuse me. Do you mind if I photocopy this book at that table at the corner?” I asked an attractive twenty-something who was manning the booth.

“Sure,” she replied, as if I just asked her to borrow a pen. “We don’t mind if it’s you guys doing it.”

I later found out that Seven Stories Press has four separate offices across three countries. Its New York branch is located in Tribeca, one of New York’s most expensive neighborhoods. I was beginning to see Andy’s point about anarchist-industrial-complex. Keeping up radical bona-fides can be a matter of sound business policy. In any event, I loved this particular journalism anthology, and I owned it on disc after about five minutes of photographing the pages. I thanked her when I gave it back, and she thanked me for returning it. She might have thought I would pull an Abbie Hoffman.

The next table was run by an anarchist collective called “A New World in Our Hearts” that runs direct action campaigns like urban gardening and food aid throughout Brooklyn. It had a book about Mumia called Dead Blossoms that got me intrigued, and they also had no problem with my asking to copy it. Still, it was one thing not to pay an international publishing house for a book and another to do the same thing with a charitable activist collective. I offered them a donation when I returned it.

At Autonomedia’s table, I picked up the book The Art of Free Cooperation, which appealed to my sense of irony. Again, the vendor had no problem when I asked to digitize the book, and she added, “We’re anti-copyright. It would be ridiculous of us to refuse you.” Everyone so far smiled as I calmly explained that I wanted to take the goods they were selling.

Of the vendors, only the saleswoman at AK Press looked even mildly annoyed by my request, but she grudgingly let me take the book Introduction to Anarchism. It was a small soft-cover that was difficult not to bend while photocopying, and I tried my best not to damage it under the glass. “Don’t worry,” urged Steve from behind the machine. “It’s already dead.” I figured that I was probably too polite to be a proper anarchist, and I brought the book back in more or less the same condition in which I found it.

Concerned that this anarchist melee was not turning out according to plan, I decided to take matters into my own hands. “Photocopy your books here!” I belted out like a sideshow barker across the room, hoping that would cause more of a stir. Nobody took offense or even responded, except for one girl who was interested in the offer.

“Was that obnoxious?” I asked Andrew.

“Yes, it was.”

“I guess that’s part of the role of the journalist – to be obnoxious,” I rationalized.

“That’s an unhappy way of looking at your profession,” Andrew philosophized.

Maybe he was right. I decided to take it easy for the rest of the demonstration. I looked for more free books at Red Emma’s Bookstore, which was visiting from Baltimore, but by then, the line for the machine had gotten too long. I decided to quit while I was ahead, and I helped Andrew pass out fliers agitating against profit-making from radical literature.

“Isn’t this crossing the line of my journalistic objectivity?” I worried.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “It’s gonzo.”

To celebrate their work, his friend planned to buy falafels, and they got an extra one for me. I came into the event hoping to cover revolution, but I was happy settling for CD-ROM books, new story ideas, and dinner.

As I was about to leave, one young woman looked appalled about the stand. “Won’t that machine bend the covers?” she complained, and the organizers of the protest shrugged. She explained that it bothered her because she worked at the radical Lower East Side bookstore Bluestockings.

“That’s where we’re going next,” Andrew said defiantly.

She looked upset and angry before she quietly walked away. That was about as heated as the protest got.

To further discussion, a

To further discussion, a mailing list has been set up at https://lists.riseup.net/www/info/samizdat

The pamphlet that was passed out at the fair can be seen at http://jerkface.net/anarchist-bookfair

Deleted comments from the infoshop version of the post can be viewed here and here.

thanks for those links. it's

thanks for those links. it's interesting to read more of the thinking behind this project.

as a sometime tabler at anarchist bookfairs i have to say that the comment -- about how if people believed in what they were doing (i wish i could quote the piece but since the link is an image i can't select text) then they'd have 500 copies of one book rather than 3 copies each of many books -- really seems idiotic to me.
i table with lots of books not just because people will have some things that i carry and not others, but because ideas exist in relationship to each other. the selection of books/pamphlets and magazines (etc) that i table with says something about me/my project and who i'm interested in engaging with (and the terms within which i'd like to engage). there is no one book that says everything. gawd, the very concept boggles the mind.

while chuck's defense is (as usual) off the mark, i do understand his frustration - mostly because the digitize project seems smug and purist, along exactly the lines that newcomers and neophytes frequently are. on the other hand, the point about anarchist bookfairs (and other events) becoming one more consumer experience is completely valid. i just wish that we could have more interesting conversations about what to do about that. the digital project setting themselves up as the rebellers within the rebellious is tiresome.

It was much more the

It was much more the reporter, than "the project," setting the effort up as "rebellers within the rebellious." The reporter, for instance, was the only person who ever called it a "protest."

The point about 500 copies of one book is not "idiotic." Just look at how major propaganda efforts work. 500 million copies of 150 words is power. 150 copies of 500 million words is not. All major propaganda efforts aim at the former, much more than the latter. Do you get it now?

The bookfair tablers surely "believe in what they're doing"--but what they're doing is providing an alternative choice for consumers. What they are doing is NOT fighting the infowar; it is NOT a genuine, focused effort to influence minds. Its focus is elsewhere.

the reporter doesn't account

the reporter doesn't account for the tone of this response, which seems condescending and simplistic.
i'm sticking with my "idiotic" comment. you're telling us that we should be competing with (taking the tactics of) major propaganda efforts at the same time that you're complaining that bookfairs are one more consumer scene. which is it? do you support abandoning market relationships or not?
and there are always multiple foci.

i said i agree about the consumer/consumption issue - but that i don't like the attitude of the people involved in this project (as displayed on this thread and on other online forums with the participants), and that that attitude does not help to have conversations that move people away from consumerism. your post responding to this, if anything, demonstrates my point.

so, thanks.

I don't mean to sound

I don't mean to sound condescending but you really have missed the point. A genuine effort to publicize an idea (etc.) does not look like a bookstore.

"you really have missed the

"you really have missed the point."

or we have different points, and are not interested in each other's.
(clearly, not meaning to be condescending doesn't mean you're not.)

To further discussion, a

To further discussion, a mailing list has been set up at https://lists.riseup.net/www/info/samizdat

The pamphlet that was passed out at the fair can be seen at http://jerkface.net/anarchist-bookfair

Deleted comments from the infoshop version of the post can be viewed here and here.

This rather innocuous

This rather innocuous posting about a relatively innocuous action (from several months ago!) drew down a very harsh response from the Reverend Chuck O of infoshop.org, who then proceeded to delete his own harsh response and most everything else concerning this tempest in a teapot.

It has been observed before: Chuck O treats anarchism as if it were a brand, and defends it against what he perceives to be ideas, writings or actions that deflate its value in the marketplace or supermarket of ideas (e.g., the Internet). It is really quite silly, actually.

As for the deletion of comments that show "disrespect" to ANARCHISM'S GREAT DEFENDERS: the matter is so subjective that the only honest policy is to create a "hidden" or "deleted" section so that readers may determine for themselves if "disrespect" was shown and/or if the deletion doesn't in fact reflect badly on the one doing the deleting and not on the one being deleted.

"As I approached the book

"As I approached the book fair at Judson Memorial Church, friendly Trotskyites passed out pamphlets from the Partisan Defense Committee and Workers Vanguard about the fight to free Mumia Abu-Jamal from death row. "

Soo, authoritarian leftist groups participating in bookfairs which are "anarchist". Shows the true nature of the "anarchist" left.

...Trotskyites pass out

...Trotskyites pass out pamphlets outside just about every anarchist event... they don't have actually participate in the bookfair.

And I would love to see how you can back up that the bookfair was "left" with groups like:

A Longing for Collapse Press
Anarchy Magazine
Microcosm Publishing
Little Black Cart

etc etc etc

"A Longing for Collapse

"A Longing for Collapse Press" is a fucking doucebag publication, selling indigenous resistance material to raise funds to support prisoners, profiting from indigenous knowledge like BODYSHOP without actively being involved in the struggle on the 3rd world, it actually fucked over small scale distro who actually are working with indigenous people. there is no duality indeed, more like a bunch of hypocrites psychoanalysing people who don't share their views, just as the majority of the trolls or patrons of this webpage with lines like "remember anarchism is simple", yea right..

all i see is how north american anarchist vanguards (and their hipster allies, see how the mainstream are juicing up the ideas- from book publishers to glossy magazines) undermining self determined insurgent activity by creating a 'hype' in the computer, the death to television or capitalism thing (which by the way is being used as a marketing strategy by viceland), in developing countries, most you are RACIST, IMPERIALISTS AND CAPITALISTS to us anyway..,

yea, and bash the fuck out of Infoshop.org, they raising a lot of money for a website? ($5000) more over to those people who accuse small distros in "developing countries" as capitalism.
http://news.infoshop.org/newspics/2008/jump-wall-street.jpg right, got it.. 'homeland insecurity' thing, for such a website that rely on egroups (like smygo for example) for its news pages, does it even deserve that much? nice veganshop adverstisement, make it appeal to asians, fucking orientalists bastards! 'mutual aid' in action, by kicking cash over those who profit from exploitation? there a too many worthwhile and struggle projects all over the place, infoshop.org is not one of them.

NNN1010101010101

/end rant.

/end rant.

Jeez, is the guy from above

Jeez, is the guy from above Harjit?

You know, we have a pill for

You know, we have a pill for rage now. *nods*

--ανομος

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