The Book Fair Committee would like to address the recent criticisms of the new location for the book fair, The Armory Community Center.
As has been mentioned previously, the old venue (The Hall of Flowers/County Fair Building in Golden Gate Park) had become prohibitively expensive and difficult to work with. Rental fees there almost doubled over the last three years, with additional mandatory “hiring” of Park Rangers (an armed branch of law enforcement), coupled with further punitive restrictions (e.g. no valet bike parking, restrictions on selling outside). After an exhaustive search and much discussion, we decided to relocate the Book Fair for 2013 to The Armory Community Center, owned by Kink.com.
In the search for the new venue, we considered many locations, but ruled them out because of several reasons, including size (being large enough to include all vendors), a room for speakers separate from the vendor hall, cost, and availability during March 2013. We have included below a list of the venues considered/investigated in the search to find a successor to the County Fair Building.
The Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair does not make a profit, is organized by a committee of volunteers, and is sponsored by the all-volunteer Bound Together Anarchist collective bookstore. We would like the book fair to remain free to attendees and affordable for vendors (current table price is $150 for two days, though in the past it has been as much as $205). In addition to the rental of the venue, there are additional costs to be considered such as: renting tables/chairs, poster design/printing, security, etc.
In an effort to accommodate all of the vendors, as well as to continue having speakers, we chose The Armory Community Center, which in addition to being affordable (and resulting in a 25% decrease in fees for vendors) is located near public transportation. We also considered that a number of local anarchists have or do work there. We announced this decision in August 2012 and have included the information in all of our materials.
It is our belief that there is a valid political criticism of every venue that is potentially available. The universities we considered, it seems almost self-evident to point out, are the prime engines of defense research, vivisection, and genetic engineering. Many of the venues under consideration are involved in labor disputes, and the County Fair Building/Arboretum is pivotal to privatization of the Parks (to say nothing of the corruption scandal involving the overtime pay of Park Rangers).
We acknowledge that pornography and sex work have been divisive issues in the anarchist community. The choice of the Armory Community Center is not a political statement, and the Book Fair Committee is taking no political position on pornography. We accept that members of the community (and even members of this committee) have differing opinions on this issue. We will be organizing a discussion on anarchist perspectives on pornography during the book fair, and if this topic interests you, we hope that you will attend. We will be hosting it at a venue near the Armory and hope to announce the details when the full book fair schedule is released next week.
Because we live in a capitalist society, and until we have created an explicitly anarchist infrastructure that can support this type of event, such contradictions and compromises are inevitable. We would be happy to consider additional venues for next year. If you have a suggestion of a venue that meets the criteria listed below, please email us at abookfair@yahoo.com.
In solidarity,
- Jen Angel, Ramsey Kanaan, and Joey Paxman
The Book Fair Committee
abookfair@yahoo.com
Venue Criteria:
Costs below $10,000 for two full days of rental (including tables, chairs, security)
Can accommodate 100 6-ft vendor tables indoors
Has a separate room (or two) for speakers that has a minimum capacity of 50
Is accessible by public transportation
Will not object to the political nature of the event
Venues originally considered that were too small / expensive /etc:
Oakland Convention Center
Laney College
The Concourse Exhibition Center
The Moscone Center
Fort Mason
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
Mission High School
Horace Mann Middle School
The Women’s Building
Mission Cultural Center
MLK Jr Middle School
Oakland Metro Opera House
Great American Music Hall
The Regency Ballroom
Oakland Asian Cultural Center
Berkeley Community College
California Institute for Integral Studies
University of San Francisco
University of California Berkeley.
Mission Bay Conference Center
San Francisco State University
San Francisco Design Center
Kezar Stadium
https://bayareaanarchistbookfair.wordpress.com/2013/02/07/on-recent-crit...

Comments
wait. what? this is the
wait. what? this is the criticism they respond to?! What about the criticism about them stacking the bookfair with PM press authors?
Comment was hidden
Wait so, let me get this
Wait so, let me get this straight. The bookfair moves to an AWESOME location that makes it cheaper for everyone involved and someone is complaining due to it being owned by Kink.com? I can think of about 10000 reasons why anyone complaining should shut the fuck up and why attendees should be thanking them for the change.
Thank you, this absolutely solidifies me going this year.
Identity politics, you know?
Identity politics, you know?
People are so god damned
People are so god damned stupid. You know they wouldn't be complaining if it moved to a university and THAT is sad.
Anarchist organizing = let's make everything totally inaccessible and still problematic
you can't think of 1,000
you can't think of 1,000 reasons. I bet you can't even think of five.
I can't even count to 1000
I can't even count to 1000
If you provide me an Excel
If you provide me an Excel spreadsheet of the line items on the California/federal budget in '13 which any public facility would provide funding for I am sure I could actually quite easily bro.
Kink.com has issues of
Kink.com has issues of treating their models right, dip shit.
That's what I was going to
That's what I was going to say, straight up puritan bullshit, let's get pissed off about porn instead of our money funding public coffers. Dumb.
I'm pretty sure it's the gang
I'm pretty sure it's the gang rape porn and not just porn that people were complaining about.
Yeah ... 2nd wave feminism.
Yeah ... 2nd wave feminism. We get it. This has all been picked over meticulously by smarter folks than you'll find here. Fact is, mature adults are in to some fucked up psychosexual shit and although the porn industry does tend to degrade everybody involved, you can't make categorical statements about pornography and misogyny without being a stupid reactionary. Has little to do with real trauma from actual rape because obviously that's a fucked up and very different thing.
Yeah, the problem is that
Yeah, the problem is that there are people making completely dumb objections to porn in general, and also much more worthwhile objections about the gang rape stuff, so it's quite easy for people to just focus on the dumbest statements as a way of avoiding having to deal with the more substantial criticisms.
A gang rape scene in a porn
A gang rape scene in a porn movie sucks, but so does a scene in a Hollywood movie of someone beng tortured to death in living color. How is this different, when both rape and torture are atrocious realities, but a movie depiction of either one is the work of skilled acting?
Oh man. Bike valet parking.
Oh man. Bike valet parking. What's become of us?
That's super embarrassing.
That's super embarrassing.
don't forget to tip!
don't forget to tip!
Does anyone know where to
Does anyone know where to find links to the origianl criticisms about the venue? I am curious to see what they are responding to, and I somehow don't see myself navigating on over to "kink-dot-com" to peruse their offerings. I am also curious as to the organizers' response to the criticism that this year looks like the PM Press book fair,it seems like if they are addressing one criticism, they might as well address all of them.
it's all on their Facebook
it's all on their Facebook event page and from today. Reading the arguments against the location is a form of BDSM, just to warn you.
blog.historyisaweapon.com
blog.historyisaweapon.com/post/42514007208/roxanne-dunbar-ortizs-letter-on-the-bay-area-anarchist
Letter from someone who was meant to be speaking and pulled out, I can see why they'd treat that a bit more seriously than just anons on the internet complaining about shit.
LOL at this person trying to
LOL at this person trying to sound cool because their grandpa was a wobbly
look i disagree with RDO on
look i disagree with RDO on this point and others but fuck you, she has put in a lifetime of hard work and analysis herself
Her analysis here is absolute
Her analysis here is absolute shit. You should have seen the thread that happened on facebook.
Basically BDSM is rape unless you state it that bluntly in which case that's not what she meant and anarchists would never defend renting a space from a corporation that did anything else. If it was a factory we'd be all like "Whoa man, people work there. That's fucked up"
i actually did read that and
i actually did read that and i personally know a number of the people who were arguing against her, and i think there are good points being made on both sides of the discussion. i think that it's cruel optimism that the emergence of the ideology of sex-positivity, and the development of enclaves of consent culture, neatly cleaves rape fantasy from rape.
just because some people are able to enforce a line between rape and rape fantasy in their lives, and just because some sex workers are able to firmly experience a separation between their exploitation and rape, by distinguishing the two forms of lack of consent either qualitatively or by degree -- does not mean this is true for everyone. and it is going to be a very big and problematic ask for some people to go onto the campus of this particular corporation. that's not because they're less enlightened and personally evolved than those sex hobbyist dorks who make winning at sex a part of their personal identity. fucking accusing people of puritanism or sex-negativity, basically trying to shame them because they haven't gotten over the centrality of rape in our society.
for the record, i don't agree with either the gail dines piece or the dgr one, it does sound like kink.com makes a valiant effort to navigate consent (especially compared with most existing porn production), and i think the response given above by the committee make a lot of sense. i'm not on the west coast but i hope folks can work it out and hear the good-faith objections -- and they are not all -- in good faith instead of lashing out, accusing ppl of gender essentialism, bragging about how brave you are w/r/t experiencing or viewing power play as play and not power, pretending third wave feminism actually cancelled out every problem raised by second wave, or that third wave feminism hasn't itself totally been fucked in its own regard, and stooping to bullshit ad hominems like that wobbly grandpa comment.
btw post-"essentialist" critiques of actually-existing "sex" is both possible and necessary:
http://negationparty.tumblr.com/post/39202245119/undoing-sex-against-sex...
"ust because some people are
"ust because some people are able to enforce a line between rape and rape fantasy in their lives, and just because some sex workers are able to firmly experience a separation between their exploitation and rape, by distinguishing the two forms of lack of consent either qualitatively or by degree -- does not mean this is true for everyone."
I think that it's the anti BDSM rhetoric here that blurs that line and that's the part that really pisses me off. People who hate rape can perpetuate rape culture and they often do. In this case by completely ignoring any kind of consensuality besides soft-lensed vanilla sex between people of equal social and economic status. Nobody in that thread was being sex-positive just to look cool or edgy. RDO was equating non-normative sexual practices with rape and torture and that pissed people off for a lot of reasons. One of them is that...
...eliding over the process of consent in BDSM creates excuses for perpetrators and will get people raped. FULL STOP.
Also, no critics I've seen
Also, no critics I've seen are discussing their own subjective discomfort at the idea of walking into a venue like this. They're treating their feelings like objective facts and throwwing "rape" "torture" and "misogyny" around like meaningless buzzwords while ridding rough shod over anyone with a different perspective. They're lumping everything that makes them even mildly uncomfortable into one big ball and contributing to rape culture and assailing consent culture in the process. That pisses people off and every thread about this takes hours of painful argument for the prudes to start talking sense. If someone want to talk about labor issues in BDSM porn or the problem of holding the book fair in any corporate venue or any other cop out criticism thrown out hours into one of these arguments then maybe they could start with that, maybe they could put it in their "open letters" and call-outs instead of leading off with arguments that aren't that different from saying that women who wear short skits at night are trivializing rape.
fair enough.
fair enough.
sort of beside the actual debate -- as a comrade, i hope also in sexual freedom, i really think people need to reconsider whether calling people who don't buy the ideological premises of sex-positivity "prudes" is still a technique that impresses or attracts more than it repels. if there's anything in this mess that truly smacks of being dated to the 60s/70s it's that. i'm seeing a lot of backlash to capitalism around the world follow the vanguard form of patriarchal attacks on the sexual liberalism of the "westernized" class strata, and i'm seeing a lot of it being successful. i really don't think actually existing capitalist porn is doing sexual freedom any huge favors in the process. the form of porn as a product is about addiction as much as anything. i can see the appeal in wanting to lash out against it on those grounds.
It's interesting the book
It's interesting the book fair collective didn't mention that one of the biggest reasons people are opposed to this location is that kink.com has a history of firing people who try to organize.
Is their history of union
Is their history of union busting (if it exists) worse than the state because that's where the money was going prior.
what they said was
what they said was interesting was that the SFBF collective didn't mention the criticism they were responding to.
not how spot-on the criticism was.
This is interesting, link?
This is interesting, link?
i know, let's pretend that
i know, let's pretend that your objections have nothing to do with your discomfort about the fact that porn is shot there. let's pretend it's purely a labor solidarity issue to you. let's talk about porn workers' rights without involving a single porn worker in the conversation.
riiiigigggghhhhhttttt. yeah
riiiigigggghhhhhttttt. yeah NO porn workers are involved in this discussion.
Have you ever met an anarchist from the bay before?
I dont think I have ever met an anarchist in the bay who wasnt a prossie or porn star.
People should talk to them
People should talk to them about making a political prisoner calendar featuring nude anarchists that haven't been caught for the benefit of those that have.
this wouldn't be an issue if
this wouldn't be an issue if people would just stop having stupid fucking bookfairs
I beg the organizers of the
I beg the organizers of the Bookfair, and anarchists in general, to answer me this one question: is pain different when felt by a woman?
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/02/08/anarchist-book-fair-porn/
Some people like pain. Is it
Some people like pain. Is it different when a woman likes pain?
so I guess the gay porn on
so I guess the gay porn on the site doesn't exist?
radfem blinders won't allow
radfem blinders won't allow it
yeah like who still hasn't
yeah like who still hasn't swapped them out for "sex-positivity" blinders?
"in stark violation of the
"in stark violation of the United Nations Convention Against Torture."
ha, i give a shit about what the UN thinks about it? do they care about the shit perpetrated by the State (owner of previous bookfair venue)?
Written by Ben Barker,
Written by Ben Barker, kidcutbank@riseup.net, AKA BEN CUTBANK, ORGANIZER FOR D.G.R. WISCONSIN, LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOOL.
Hey Ben, you're against capitalism, and money, and roads, yet you allow your subordinates to attend your events using roads (designed to facilitate capitalism) so you can raise money for your authoritarian capitalist enterprise, DGR.
“We acknowledge that capitalism and civilization have been divisive issues in the DGR community. The choice of the former State institution is not a political statement, and the Master's Chambers and Central Committee are taking no political position on civilization or capitalism. We accept that members of the community (and even members of this committee) have differing opinions on this issue. We will be organizing a discussion on DGR's perspectives on capitalism and civilization during the conference, and if this topic interests you, we hope that you will attend.”
Go pray to your leader, Derrick, you fucking parrot.
No, it was written by Bob
No, it was written by Bob Barker.
Subcultural ghetto or ivory
Subcultural ghetto or ivory tower? Difficult decision.
Perhaps I'm wrong to assume as such, but I'm under the impression that quite a few comrades have work or do work in the sex industry. Inspite of the bay's tolerant attitude towards naughty things and cultural trangressions, I still think its strange to decide on the Armory. The most clear reason is the awkwardness of having the place where you work or point in the economy where you are positioned be the same space as your marginal political sphere. The other more crass reason, is the fact that while everyone can feel all hunkydory with their tattoos and asses showing, this makes for an even more limitted space of aesthetics. Finally, even if we work in the sex industry, there is something more than awkward about aligning our marginal political sphere to the so called free and liberated cultural territory of pornography. Give a fuck about romantic concepts of love and sacredness, the question is if anarchists want to be the political consciousness of the freedom that the sex industry represents and upholds. My self, I'm done with such limited freedom.
Well the one good thing about
Well the one good thing about holding the bookfair at this venue is that Lierre Keith will probably be a no show. The cup is half full.
hope you can believe in
hope you can believe in
"The cup is half full."
"The cup is half full."
All this talk about porn makes this statement really awkward...
there seems to be a specific
there seems to be a specific genre of porn for every kind of awkward @ news comment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gokkun (even though it wiki- yes its a link defining said porn genre)
Having been a sex worker(male
Having been a sex worker(male) myself, I find this controversy problematic. Yes, labor conditions are much better in the part of the sex industry myself. On the other hand, people are complaining because the bookfare now rents space from a porn warehouse instead of effectively from the COPS! If the former location required us to pay for cops to harass ourselves, that should be an absolute and total block on the use of that space.
No porn producer ever sicced armed gangsters on an event I was part of (political or otherwise), but armed cops are quite another story. "Real street, real night" does tend to put this in perspective.
Your perspective is invalid
Your perspective is invalid because you have not had armed gangsters sicced on you by a porn producer. We need to hear from the perspective of someone who has.
It is exceptionally rare for
It is exceptionally rare for armed gangsters or even just plain pimps to try and screw with gay male sex workers-it's just too dangerous. I've heard of only one case of someone trying to pimp boys-and that pimp wound up in the hospital after a furious beating from one of his workers.
As far as I am concerned, COPS are armed gangsters. Also, coming from the intentonally promiscous part of the GLBT scene and having found that in my younger years occasional sex work beat the hell of or working for a boss, I tend to take a dim view of anti-porn positions.
If a particular porn producer exploits their workers, deal with it as a labor situation. The garment industry is as bad as any story about the hetro porn industry, but I don't see anyone here calling for a boycott of clothing. Instead I see calls for boycotts of Wal-Mart and union campaigns against sweatshops.
Wouldn't it be great to see workers at Hooters unionize to demand to be paid the sum of what one waiter plus one stripper would make for the same hours, with a protracted strike and boycott closing down every Hooters in the world otherwise? Hooters workers do two jobs, they should get two paychecks!
Exactly, the reason it's an
Exactly, the reason it's an issue is because people are fucking puritans, and I don't mean having intercourse with puritans.
You know these leftist academics (the people complaining) would rather have the bookfair at an unwelcoming, just as controversial university where they feel "comfortable" around other mostly useless academics. Instead of around sex workers, many of whom are anarchists in a very visible part of SF. It is important to note that the folks arguing the most viciously against the fucking puritans seem to be sex workers themselves.
Fuck them, I am stoked that the conference is in an awesome locale, makes me even more excited to go. Is there anything else we can do to isolate these fucking liberals? If there is let's do it!
I still don't understand why
I still don't understand why this is a bigger deal than the fact that most of the listed speakers aren't actually Anarchists. They should have started calling it the PM Anarch-ish Bookfair a long time ago.
I have to ask about the
I have to ask about the precedent being set here....
If I give money to a scumbag landlord, am I responsible for what he does with it? Am I complicit in what goes on at his other properties?
I had no idea tenants were such villains.
The poop is gonna hit the fan
The poop is gonna hit the fan. Anyone remember the mace pie thing from vegans in 2010? This one here is going to have full on war declared by RadFems. I'm not sure I want to be there for that.
There was nothing in those
There was nothing in those pies but pie.
"There was nothing in those
"There was nothing in those pies but pie." I didn't get hit with one as wasn't the woman speaking but if people criticize the vegan lifestyle or certain aspects of radical feminism (not to say the broader feminist tradition as a whole being discarded) they/we shouldn't be slandered and assaulted with pies. I can see this "discussion" on pornography at the book fair ending up bad. I'm not into BDSM myself and I can see how this role playing might or in some cases does reenforce some mens darker/sick urges to torture women but that whole fetish community kinda goes both ways and isn't based on outright coercion. If someone interviews all of the employees and finds out one or many of them are working there because they have no other way to survive I would support some sort of action to rectify the situation but the sex industry doesn't operate in such a linear fashion. My experience with certain radical feminists is they see ALL sex work as coercive with the woman having no agency, no control, no voice...no other option but to have sex for money. This is indeed the case if one walks around the Tenderloin or over by Capp St back in the 90's we see pimps controlling, exploiting and dominating women who are stuck in a sort of slavery but the thing is some radfems take those examples and paint the entire sex industry with that brush but we're talking about mace pies here right? Rant over....I just hope cooler heads prevail and this event doesn't turn into a slander fest or angry people throwing shit at each other. The pie thing in 2010 was lame.
Andrea Dworkin's ghost is
Andrea Dworkin's ghost is gonna puke on this whole book fair.
There DEFINITELY was
There DEFINITELY was something in those pies.
She had another scheduled speaking event at the GreenArcade immediately after the
bookfair. I went to see what, if anything, was going happen.
By the time I got there, a group of folks had gathered outside the store on Market Street.
There was some shouting, some video recording & some dialogue going on.
I pushed my way in & saw LK had swollen eye sockets, nostrils & obvious skin discoloration all around her face & neck.
Unless she's EXTREMELY allergic to that Non-Dairy whipped cream (I'm assuming it was Non-Dairy...) there was some spicy, peppery shit in the pie. Your eyes/nostrils don't just blow up like that over cream (cow's milk or other)...
Pepper Spray, Tear Gas, Noxious Chemicals do that.
You all should be familiar with those...
I can't stand LK's bullshit...& there was DEFINITELY something in those pies!!
If you search for the photos
If you search for the photos of her waiting to give a report to the SFPD immediately after she was pied, you will see some redness around her eyes and her hair being wet. There is no visible swelling anywhere. If you saw her eyes swollen and obvious discoloration around her face and neck, then it was a delayed reaction to something. It would have taken her between 20-30 minutes to travel from the Hall of Flowers to where you say you saw her, and oleoresin or "tear gas" (how one might go about placing that in a pie is surely beyond the capability of most vegan bakers) is debilitating from the moment it makes contact with mucosa, otherwise the police wouldn't bother using it for what they euphemistically call crowd control. Again, if what you describe is in any way accurate, then her reaction to being hit with those pies was markedly delayed. Therefore it could not have been pepper spray or tear gas or mace -- and isn't anyone suspicious that the alleged chemical agent is always changing?
Cayenne Pepper..it was
Cayenne Pepper..it was Cayenne Pepper, or a close facsimile.
You are a liar. You were
You are a liar. You were neither present nor did you prepare any of the pies.
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