 sign hanging above Wooden Shoe Books (2006) | |
| Type | Book store |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1976 |
| Headquarters | Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States |
| Website | www |
Wooden Shoe Books and Records, also known as The Wooden Shoe, is an anarchist bookstore and infoshop in Philadelphia. Founded in 1976, the store specializes in radical and non-traditional literature. Wooden Shoe is run by an all-volunteer worker collective that encourages community building and anti-capitalist activism.
Located on 704 South Street in the South Street district, Wooden Shoe Books is in its third location. [1] The Wooden Shoe has always been primarily political, created with the intention of consolidating published anarchist materials into one location and providing opportunities for community organizing. [2] The shop volunteers its space to local organizations that align with its political goals of challenging systems of oppression. [3] Events include poetry readings, educational discussions, workshops, author talks, and rock shows. [3] The space also features a community board advertising local events such as book clubs and musical performances. [4]
The Wooden Shoe has been described as a "punk-rabbit-hole-on-acid of a shop." [3] Book categories include Native/Indigenous American Studies, Palestine, situationism, feminism, labor studies, imperialism, the prison–industrial complex, sustainable living, disabilities studies, and anarchism. [3] The collection includes books from anarchist publishers such as Autonomedia, AK Press, and Semiotext(e). [3] In addition to books, the store carries zines, vinyl records, buttons, stickers, posters, and t-shirts. [4]
The name of Wooden Shoe Books derives from workers who interrupted production during the Industrial Revolution by throwing wooden shoes ( sabots ) into machinery. [1] The bookstore opened in January 1976 and was founded by members of Philadelphia Solidarity, a group of libertarian socialists. [5] In a 2021 interview, cofounder Carl Craft describes that the collective did not anticipate making much of a "profit with just the books, so we also sold vinyl records." [5]
The original location of the shop was in a basement at 20th and Sansom Streets. [5] An electrical fire in 1997 burned the building down, and the store moved to 5th and South Street. [5] Looking for a larger space, in October 2009 the Wooden Shoe moved into its current location at 7th and South Street. [6]
The Wooden Shoe is a run by an all-volunteer, non-hierarchical collective. [7] Decisions are made by collective members by a consensus process at monthly meetings. [7] The bookstore is a 501(c)(3) organization with a mission of being "an empowering resource for activism, organizing, art, self-education, community-building, and the anti-capitalist struggle." [3] As of 2022, the collective has around thirty-five people to staff the store. [8]
Infoshops are places in which people can access anarchist or autonomist ideas. They are often stand-alone projects, or can form part of a larger radical bookshop, archive, self-managed social centre or community centre. Typically, infoshops offer flyers, posters, zines, pamphlets and books for sale or donation. Other items such as badges, locally produced artworks and T-shirts are also often available. Infoshops can also provide printing and copying facilities for people to produce their own literature or have a meeting space.
Red Emma's Bookstore Coffeehouse is a radical infoshop located in Baltimore, Maryland, United States and run by a worker-owner collective. Named for anarchist Emma Goldman, Red Emma's opened in November 2004 and sells fair trade coffee, vegetarian and vegan foods and books. The space also provides free computer access to the Baltimore community, wireless internet and film screenings, political teach-ins, and community events.
In the United States, anarchism began in the mid-19th century and started to grow in influence as it entered the American labor movements, growing an anarcho-communist current as well as gaining notoriety for violent propaganda of the deed and campaigning for diverse social reforms in the early 20th century. By around the start of the 20th century, the heyday of individualist anarchism had passed and anarcho-communism and other social anarchist currents emerged as the dominant anarchist tendency.
The Freedom Shop is the name of an anarchist infoshop which distributes books and information, based in Wellington, New Zealand. It operates on a non profit basis, injecting any income back into the project. The shop has been based in different locations and mainly sells books on anarchism, feminism, indigenous rights, ecology and a range of activist issues. It also carries patches, badges, clothing and music.
Spartacus Books is a non-profit, volunteer and collectively run bookstore and resource centre in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. It was founded in 1973. Spartacus sells new and used books, zines, comics, magazines, CDs, videos, T-shirts, patches, pins, posters and cards. Spartacus Books is one of the longest-running collectively run bookstores in North America.
Bluestockings is a radical bookstore, café, and activist center located in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York City. It started as a volunteer-supported and collectively owned bookstore; and is currently a worker-owned bookstore with mutual aid offerings/free store. The store started in 1999 as a feminist bookstore and was named for a group of Enlightenment intellectual women, the Bluestockings. Its founding location was 172 Allen Street, and is currently located a few blocks east on 116 Suffolk Street.
The Iron Rail Book Collective ran a volunteer-run radical library and anarchist bookstore in New Orleans, Louisiana. The infoshop's main focus was a lending library featuring a wide selection of books on topics including anarchism and socialism, fiction, gardening and philosophy. The Iron Rail also sold records, zines, local CDs and some miscellany. Events held at the Iron Rail included workshops and art presentations. The Iron Rail also contained the Above Ground Zine Library with a selection of thousands of zines, some very rare. As of September 2017, their personal site and Facebook page have not been updated in since 2015 and 2016 respectively.
Self-managed social centres in the United Kingdom can be found in squatted, rented, mortgaged and fully owned buildings. These self-managed social centres differ from community centres in that they are self-organised under anti-authoritarian principles and volunteer-run, without any assistance from the state. The largest number have occurred in London from the 1980s onwards, although projects exist in most cities across the UK, linked in a network. Squatted social centres tend to be quickly evicted and therefore some projects deliberately choose a short-term existence, such as A-Spire in Leeds or the Okasional Café in Manchester. Longer term social centres include the 1 in 12 Club in Bradford, the Cowley Club in Brighton and the Sumac Centre in Nottingham, which are co-operatively owned.
The Cowley Club is a libertarian self-managed social centre in Brighton, England. It opened in 2003, providing resources and meeting spaces for groups and individuals active in areas such as workplace and unemployed struggles, international solidarity, animal liberation, ecological defence, feminist and queer activism and opposing the arms trade. Its political identity is close to anarchism or libertarian socialism. It also houses a vegan community café, a bookshop, and free English lessons for migrants.
Internationalist Books and Community Center, located in Carrboro, North Carolina, was a volunteer operated infoshop, non-profit collective, and community center for local activists. The store name was a reference to the political philosophy of internationalism. Often, the center was called "The Internationalist" or merely "Eye Books" by its volunteers, members, and supporters.
Anarchy Alive!: Anti-Authoritarian Politics from Practice to Theory is a book by Uri Gordon that investigates anarchist theory and practice. An expanded reworking of the author's PhD thesis at the University of Oxford, the book was released by Pluto Press, a London-based radical publisher, in November 2007. It is presented as "an anarchist book about anarchism", and assumes some background knowledge and sympathy for anarchism on the part of the reader. Gordon considers his approach in the book to have many commonalities with that of anthropologist David Graeber, author of Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology.
Firestorm Books & Coffee is a worker-owned and self-managed "anti-capitalist business" in Asheville, North Carolina. Named after the firestorm, this infoshop operates with an eye on creating a sustainable, radical community event space. Firestorm features regular events, such as film screenings, political and economic teach-ins, local and traveling musicians and community workshops.
Queer anarchism, or anarcha-queer, is an anarchist school of thought that advocates anarchism and social revolution as a means of queer liberation and abolition of hierarchies such as homophobia, lesbophobia, transmisogyny, biphobia, transphobia, aphobia, heteronormativity, patriarchy, and the gender binary. People who campaigned for LGBT rights both outside and inside the anarchist and LGBT movements include John Henry Mackay, Lucía Sánchez Saornil, Adolf Brand and Daniel Guérin. Individualist anarchist Adolf Brand published Der Eigene from 1896 to 1932 in Berlin, the first sustained journal dedicated to gay issues.
Bound Together is an anarchist bookstore and visitor attraction on Haight Street in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco. Its Lonely Planet review in 2016, commenting on its multiple activities, states that it "makes us tools of the state look like slackers". The bookstore carries new and used books as well as local authors.
Left Bank Books Collective is an anarchist bookstore, founded in 1973, in Seattle, Washington. It is located at 92 Pike Street, in the Corner Market building at Pike Place Market. Its Lonely Planet review states that it "displays zines in español, revolutionary pamphlets, essays by Chomsky and an inherent suspicion of authority."
Self-managed social centers, also known as autonomous social centers, are self-organized community centers in which anti-authoritarians put on voluntary activities. These autonomous spaces, often in multi-purpose venues affiliated with anarchism, can include bicycle workshops, infoshops, libraries, free schools, meeting spaces, free stores and concert venues. They often become political actors in their own right.
Librairie L'Androgyne was an gay, lesbian, feminist bookstore in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, active from 1973 to 2002.
An anarchist bookfair is an exhibition for anti-authoritarian literature often combined with anarchist social and cultural events. They have existed since at least 1983, beginning in London, and are held either annually or sporadically. Some have speakers or other events related to anarchist culture.
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