12th Annual Anarchist Book Fair

Damn, I wanted to make it to this year's conference. Ah well. We'll drop the Loompanics bomb on them next year I suppose. This article isn't all that great but I couldn't find many reports on how the Fair actually went. Here's an entry about the first day from The SF Book Fair's website, complete with the first day's interviews on video with some radical individuals. See you there?

by Jen Thomas, staff writer for The Golden Gate Express Online.

Hundreds of anarchists, socialists, and activists gathered at the SF County Fair Building in Golden Gate Park this weekend for the 12th annual Anarchist Book Fair.

Attendees, mostly in all black attire and some sporting blue mohawks, began pouring into the park at 10 a.m. on Saturday, where thousands of books were available for purchase. Titles included everything from the uncensored version of "The Jungle" to "Chomsky on Anarchism".

The fairground’s cafeteria also housed a medley of free controversial literature. Entire books were photocopied and touched on topics such as homemade guns and ammunition, driving techniques for escape and evasion and setting fires with electrical timers.

“I bought some cheap Dostoevsky, but I’m here more for the free stuff,” said Neil Smith, 24, a first time attendee of the anarchist event. “But I avoided the free bootleg books on how to make home explosives.”

Bookstores, college outreach programs and other volunteer groups sold books at the fair, for a profit or to raise money for a positive cause.

Students from Sonoma State University manned a booth and sold literature on issues they deemed underreported on in the media.

“The genocide in the Congo is neglected by journalists,” said Andy Roth, professor of Sociology at Sonoma State University. “Serious business interests are protected by suppressing this issue.”

Keith McHenry passed out free pamphlets to promote his all-volunteer organization, Food Not Bombs, which provides food and supplies to survivors of terrorist attacks and natural disasters.

“We were the people who fed Katrina,” said McHenry. “We had a kitchen set up in New Orleans two days after the hurricane.”

The event, which spanned both Saturday and Sunday, doubled as a forum for panelist discussions.

Author Josh MacPhee held a discussion on his book, "Realizing the Impossible: Art Against Authority", in the cafeteria, which served as the auditorium for the event. MacPhee views his book as an instrumental conceptual tool, and hopes it will incite discussion on anarchist art.

“There are very few people involved in the dialogue,” said MacPhee. “And I think that needs to broaden and change.”

Despite the events' name, not all in attendance considered themselves anarchists.

“I definitely hold some anarchist beliefs,” said Kevin Stolle, 22, communications major at Sonoma State University. “But I don’t know if I fit the anarchist definition.”

Anarchism was widely viewed, at the event, as the absence of an oppressive government. Attendees sought to dispel the common conception that anarchy definitively equates to lawlessness.

“[Anarchism] is not necessarily about chaos,” said MacPhee. “It’s largely about organization. The society we live in now is actually more chaotic.”