Reviews

Audio: Sassafras Lowrey presents the Kicked Out! Anthology

by Sassafras Lowrey Editor

Sassafras Lowrey - editor of Kicked Out - published by Homofactus Press, came to Red Emma's to speak about how the book brings together the voices of current and former homeless LGBTQ youth and tells these forgotten stories of some of our nationâs most vulnerable citizens. Diverse contributors share stories of survival and abuse with poignant accounts of the sanctuary of community and the power of creating chosen families. Kicked Out highlights the nuanced perspectives of national organizations such as The National Gay & Lesbian Task Force and The National Alliance Against Homelessness and regional agencies, including Sylviaâs Place, The Circus Project and Family Builders. This anthology introduced by Judy Shepard, gives voice to the voiceless and challenges the stereotypical face of homelessness.

http://www.homofactuspress.com

Audio: Noel Ignatiev on C.L.R. James

by Noel Ignatiev and C.L.R. James

Red Emma's hosted a lively and exciting talk with Noel Ignatiev - former member of the Sojourner Truth Organization, co-founder of the journal Race Traitor, and author of the essential book of antiracist history How the Irish Became White. Noel recently put together a collection of the writings of C.L.R. Jamesâan autonomist Maxist decades before the Italians made it popular, an anticolonial activist both in his native Trinidad and around the world, as well as the most important cricket journalist ever and a pathbreaking scholar of Herman Melville.

When we heard that Noel wanted to come to Baltimore to talk about the collection, which includes the two critical programmatic essays Every Cook Can Govern (James' nuanced take on the birth of democracy in ancient Greece) and The Invading Socialist Society (which traces the autonomous sparks of real socialism growing within the heart of industrial capitalism), we were ecstatic!

http://www.pmpress.org

Audio: Eric Lyle's SCAM: The First Four Years and Jeff Miller's Ghost Pine: All Stories True

by Eric Lyle and Jeff Miller

Red Emma's celebrated the launch of the book collections of two of North America's finest zines! The tales of life lived boldly and often illegally published in the early issues of Erick Lyle's SCAM zine made it one of the most influential zines of the 1990s. His new book collects the out-of-print first four issues. Jeff Miller's Ghost Pine is one of Canada's best loved and longest running punk zines. The best of his engaging, slice of life stories are collected in Ghost Pine: All Stories True. Erick and Jeff  read with Baltimore author China Martens (The Future Generation).

Audio: You're not listening: Baltimore youth speak out

by Baltimore City High School Youth

You're Not Listening is a compilation of narratives recorded by Baltimore, Maryland high school students about their experiences, perceptions, and opinions on a range of topics: family, school, sex, identity, racism, politics, and crime. They chose the title You're Not Listening to express concern that adults donât listen closely enough to their voices. Indeed, their narratives offer important lessons to teachers, parents, and public officials who interact with urban youth on a regular basis and challenge readers to reexamine the predispositions and stereotypes they may hold about cities and city kids.

Audio: Craig Hughes presents Uses of a Whirlwind

by Team Colors

There was some excellent discussion following this equally excellent overview of the new Team Colors critical omnibus of contemporary radical social movements in the US, but because people were speaking really freely and frankly about their questionable experiences in the belly of the non-profit industrial complex, we're not going to post all that here!

Audio: "In our Control" w/ Laura Eldridge

by Laura Eldridge

In the most comprehensive book on birth control since the 1970s, women's health activist Laura Eldridge discusses the history, scientific advances, and practical uses of everything from condoms to the male pill to Plan B.

Do diaphragms work? Should you stay on the Pill? What does fertility awareness really mean? Find these answers and more in In Our Control: The complete guide to contraceptive choices for women, the definitive guide to modern contraceptive and sexual health. Eldridge presents her meticulous research and unbiased consideration of our options in the intimate and honest tone of a close friend. Eldridge goes on to explore large-scale issues that might factor into women's birth control choices, urging her readers to consider the environmental impacts of each method and to take part in a dialogue on how international reproductive health issues affect us all.

www.sevenstories.com

Audio: A little truth on your shirt w/ Sonya Renee Taylor

by Sonya Renee Taylor

Def Jam poet, educator and activist, Sonya Renee Taylor came to Red Emma's to read from her latest book, A Little Truth on Your Shirt. The book is published by local publisher Girlchild Press; dedicated to giving voice to women and girls. A Little Truth on Your Shirt is Taylor's pull-no-punches debut collection delivered sometimes as a controlled spill, sometimes as a fiery tidal wave, her work weaves together the messiest of truths.

www.girlchildpress.blogspot.com

So many new books....

by v/a

It's been a pretty great week for new radical books - just in at the store is David Roediger's brand new anthology of the work of groundbreaking antiracist/autonomist theorist George Rawick, Listening to Revolt, published by our friends at Charles H. Kerr, the world's oldest left publisher.  PM Press has also been good to us this week, with a reissue of mid-century American anarchoqueer legend Paul Goodman's anarchist writings and William Blizzard's definitive insider's history of the battle of Blair Mountain and Appalachian class struggle, When Miners March.  Plus we've got Jordan Flaherty's new book on Haymarket Press, Floodlines: Community and Resistance from Katrina to the Jena 6.

And if that's not enough, there's three new super-exciting titles out this week from AK Press as well: Jeff Conant's new study of the Zapatista movement, The Poetics of Resistance, Kolya Abramsky's long-awaited (and massive!) compendium Sparking a Worldwide Energy Revolution: Social Struggles in the Transition to a Post-Petrol World, and Team Colors' essential Uses of a Whirlwind: Movement, Movements and Contemporary Radical Currents in the United States, which includes a nice piece with some Baltimore contributions coming out of the City From Below conference, as well as dozens of amazing pieces charting the depth and breadth of struggle and struggles in the US today, and, on top of all of that, three great interviews with Robin D.G. Kelley, Ashanti Alston, and Grace Lee Boggs.  A few of us had the privelege of seeing Whirlwinds released this past week at the US Social Forum in Detroit - and we're really excited that Team Colors will be coming through town to present the book on the 17th of July.

And speaking of the US Social Forum, we brought back two amazing books from our trip, both published by Urban Guerilla Entertainment, the publishing wing of Urban Network, an African-American owned bookstore, social center, and organizing nexus that's making trouble in Detroit.  Yusef Shakur's The Window 2 My Soul is a political autobiography chronicling the author's radical awakening while incarcerated (squarely in the tradition of the autobiography of Malcolm X) - you can check out a great interview with Yusef via Critical Moment, the free Detroit radical newspaper.  We've also got Stop Snitching Volume 1: To the Neighbors, by Urban Network co-conspirator Kwasi Akwamu, which takes a hard look at the way policing tends to reinforce rather than reduce crime and argues instead for a radical and neighborhood based system of self-determination.  

And if all this isn't enough for you, check out what else we brough back from the USSF: this amazing video of Grace Lee Boggs and Immanuel Wallerstein laying out the big picture for us:

Dispersing Power: Social Movements as Anti-State Forces

by Raul Zibechi

One could, if one had confined one's horizon to North America in 2010, be forgiven for the (mistaken) impression that a serious project aimed at the concrete negation of the state was of little relevance in today's world-historical political conjecture - that the kinds of politics that describe themselves as anti-state or anarchist in, for instance the United State, are, at their best, precarious, small experiments, inspiring flashes of real revolt from below making unexpected or unlikely appearances in the interstices of late capitalism, and are, at their worst, farcical distractions from real struggles.   The experiences of, for instance, the Greek anarchists over the past half a decade have taught us in order to understand what a real challenge to state power, grounded in popular movements and able to shake the foundations of the global economy, might look like, we should remember to look outside our own immediate geographical context, that if, here, in the heart of Empire, anarchism might be mistaken for a beautiful dream; elsewhere it lives and breathes and fights and makes history.

Raul Zibechi's book Dispersing Power teaches us that we also should remember, when we look across the globe to see where anti-state struggles are taking place, that the most successful, vibrant, and instructive of these struggles may not proceed under the name of anarchism, may not fly the black flag, and may lay outside of the horizon of European modernity altogether.  The book, the first work of Zibechi's to be translated into English, is a theoretical and sociological examination of the struggles of the indigenous Aymara people in Bolivia (or rather, against Bolivia), where some of the most inspiring victories against neoliberalism have been realized.  Zibechi himself is no anarchist, but rather a Marxist with a strong proclivity towards the valorization of self-organized class struggle, a position which he has developed in his investigations of the past decade of revolt and social movement in Latin America.  

Audio: Roots of Steel - Boom and bust of an American milltown

by Deborah Rudacille

The daughter of a steelworker, Deborah Rudacille spoke at Red Emma's about her book "Roots of Steel: Boom and Bust in an American milltown" giving us an intimate history of the rise and decline of a steel town and an industry. She dissected the complicated racial, class, and gender politics that played out at the steel mill through her personal narrative, interviews with workers, and extensive research.

http://deborahrudacille.com/

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800 St. Paul St. * Baltimore, MD 21202 * (410) 230-0450 * info@redemmas.org

Red Emma's is open Monday through Saturday from 10AM-10PM, and Sunday from 10AM-6PM. Our weekly collective meetings are Sunday at 7PM, and are open to anyone interested in the project, except for the first Sunday of every month, which is closed to everyone except collective members. Red Emma's is part of IU 660 of the Industrial Workers of the World, one of the only unions to recognize that worker collectives can stand in solidarity with those fighting the bosses as part of one big union.