Announcing the 2017 Seattle Anarchist Book Fair

“It is happening again…”

We are happy to announce the return of the Seattle Anarchist Book Fair. This year the book fair will be on Saturday, August 26th, and this year we will be returning to our longtime home, the Vera Project at Seattle Center.

As always, our desire is to create an opportunity for old friends to come together, new connections be made, and for those new to anarchy to have an opportunity to engage with the many and varied perspectives of what has been called the Beautiful Idea. While anarchists are often portrayed through our direct confrontations with the state and capitalism, a book fair allows a space where people have more of an opportunity to converse, exchange ideas and, hopefully, learn from each other. Here we can find commonalities and intersecting goals, as well as further flesh out those places where our individual projects and desires diverge.

In addition to being an opportunity for anarchists to more generally share ideas, we find ourselves in a particular moment where anarchist ideals, action and forms of organization are particularly prescient.

Corporations are expanding and speeding their exploitation of the last wild parts of the earth in complete disregard for the rapid and global ecological catastrophe. Immigration raids have received more spectacular media coverage in the last handful of months, aiding in expanding the territory of the border; whether that be the ICE Agent in your head or the increased number of border patrol agents on the so-called “Mexican border.” White supremacists and fascists have moved closer to the centers of power both in the United States and abroad, and as a result, their minions are emboldened and escalating attacks on those most marginalized by capitalism.

Leftist politicians offer empty solutions like increased minimum wages as palliative care while seeking to consolidate their own power under the authority of the state. All the while, the Seattle Police Department lead the charge into “21st century policing” and we find our old tricks of the trade growing out of date with their escalated tactics of control in the streets.

Yet, what can be conceived as the new normal swings both ways; violent street confrontations between emboldened white supremacists and anti-fascists grace the headlines almost weekly, immigrants held at the Northwest ICE Detention Center rattled their cages with a hunger strike in mid-April, and their are murmurs of pipeline expansion in the Coastal Salish territories that could potentially see fierce resistance as per the precedent of those in the so-called “Northern B.C.” territories. In this context, more people as of late are considering radical politics as they are brought face to face with the misery of daily life under capital and democracy.

Let us find new experiments to play with on this liberatory path.

–2017 Seattle Anarchist Book Fair Crew

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