WE’VE MOVED!! (New website info)

 Our official website has moved. [www.oooabooks.org]

Hi everyone! We’ve recently moved our official website. Follow this link to keep updated about all of our publishing projects and community events: www.oooabooks.org. The new site is more streamlined, easier to navigate, and generally snazzier all around.

Our WordPress site will stay online as our official blog. But the online bookstore, event calendar, photos, videos, and contact forms have all moved to the new website.

Thanks for continuing to support independent radical publishing!
-Staff

2014 Atlanta Zine Fest

14 JUNE 2014, FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC!

On Our Own Authority! will be participating in the 2014 Atlanta Zine Fest, an annual conference celebrating DIY media, handmade media, and other independent and counter-culture publishing projects in Atlanta.

The Atlanta Zine Fest will be held on June 14th, from 12pm-9pm, at the Erikson Clock building (364 Nelson Street, Atlanta, GA 30313). This year’s festivities will include:

• panels on various topics, such as zine archiving and libraries, distros, counterculture and zines, young adults/coming of age, and so on
• vendors exhibiting dynamic handmade art and media
• invited guest speakers
• “how-to” skillshare workshops focusing on Do-It-Yourself aesthetics, including wood blocking, paper making, photocopying, stamping, binding, and layout. booths for vendors to sell merchandise and network with other groups and individuals involved in independent media
• an interdisciplinary framework that highlights the crossover between artists, filmmakers, authors, independent craft makers, scholars, teachers, blog writers and zinesters

For more information about these events, please view the AZF press release by following this link: http://atlantazinefest.weebly.com/press-release.html

As usual, our own table will feature books related to anarchism, labor history, social movement history, anti-colonialism, post-colonial studies, Pan-Africanism, and Palestine solidarity. Please be sure to stop by the Atlanta Zine Fest and say hello!

 

OooA! Books in Radical Bookstores Near You.

On the shelves in NYC, Buffalo, and Montreal!

Following this year’s anarchist book fairs in NYC and Montreal, we are excited to add a few more bookstores to the list of independent booksellers carrying our books in the United States and Canada. We always encourage our readers to buy books from radical bookstores wherever possible. In doing so, you help support these important community institutions that provide much needed organizing space for radicals and revolutionaries who are committed to grassroots social change.

(These are only the most recent additions. For a more complete list of stores where you can find our books, please click here.)

Bluestockings is a radical bookstore, fair trade cafe, and activist center in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The bookstore carries over 6,000 titles on topics such as feminism, queer and gender studies, global capitalism, police and prisons, and black studies. They also hosts readings, workshops, performances, discussions and films almost every night.

(Visit Bluestockings at 172 Allen Street, New York, NY 10002, or online at www.bluestockings.com)

Burning Books is a radical bookstore, community center, and infoshop in Buffalo, New York. The store opened in 2011 and sells books related to historical freedom struggles, social justice movements, environmental struggles, and other movements for radical social change. In the short time that Burning Books has been open, the store has also hosted events from such notable speakers as Ward Churchill, Victoria Law, Scott Crow, Lisa Factora-Borchers, John Kane, Aaron Dixon, Richard X Clark, and Bill Ayers.

(Visit Burning Books at 420 Connecticut Street, Buffalo, NY 14213, or shop online at www.burningbooksbuffalo.com)

Librairie anarchiste L’Insoumise is an anarchist bookstore in Montreal, Quebec, carrying over 3,000 new and used books–in French and English–related to social movement history and anarchist politics. The store also sells a variety of CDs, DVDs, t-shirts, posters, patches, zines, and pins.

(Visit the store at 2033 St-Laurent Blvd, Montreal, or online at www.insoumise.wordpress.com)

NYC and Montreal — Two Book Fairs in May 2014

Happy May Day, everyone!

It is with great pleasure that we announce that this month, On Our Own Authority! will be tabling at two book fairs in New York City and Montreal, respectively. We’re very excited about these events and we’re looking forward to meeting new friends and comrades in Montreal and New York this year!

The 8th annual NYC Anarchist Book Fair will be held on Saturday, May 17, at Judson Memorial Church (55 Washington Square South) in New York City. The book fair will host “dozens of vendors and presenters from around the country.” The keynote speaker will be Ashanti Alston, the famous anarchist activist, speaker, writer, and former member of the Black Panther Party.

The 2014 Montreal Anarchist Book Fair will be held the following weekend, on May 24 & 25, at the Centre Culturel Georges-Vanier (2450 rue Workman) and the CEDA (2515 rue Delisle). The event will feature “over 100 booksellers, zinesters, distributors and groups from all over Montreal, Quebec, North America and beyond, sharing their publications and materials, most of which are hard or impossible to find at mainstream book stores.” Here is some more information from the Montreal Anarchist Book Fair website:

During the weekend, there is a Anarchist Film Room (this year for two days) screening alternative films and documentaries, while the walls of the Bookfair venue are covered with the works of anti-authoritarian artists as part of Art & Anarchy. . . .

Free childcare is available at the Bookfair at the Kid Zone; kids and parents are welcome and encouraged to attend!

There are also workshops and presentations throughout the weekend, in English and French. Some are intended as introductions to anarchism for those who are new to anarchy, while others explore an anarchist-themed subject in some depth.

As usual, our table will feature books related to anarchism, social revolution, workers’ self-management, Black liberation, social movement history, post-colonial studies, Pan-Africanism, Palestine solidarity, and international labor history. Books will be available from such noteworthy authors as Eusi Kwayana, Ida B. Wells, Joseph Edwards, Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, Kimathi Mohammed, Modibo Kadalie, Sen Katayama, and Lenni Brenner, among others. Please be sure to stop by our table and say hello!

See you at the book fair(s)!

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Love,
OooA! Staff.

THE COMMUNE: PARIS, 1871 — Now Available!

The Commune: Paris, 1871 

NOW AVAILABLE!
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143 years ago today, on 18 March 1871, enormous sections of the Parisian working class began a rebellion that shook the foundations of European society. Through this uprising, laborers seized direct control over their city, expelling their government and capitalist rulers. These revolutionary men and women declared Paris an independent municipality — a commune where they would directly and collectively manage their society through new institutions and voluntary associations of their own creation, providing for their own welfare and defense.

The state, of course, had other plans — and the Commune was annihilated 71 days later in one of the deadliest campaigns in French military history, La Semaine Sanglante, “The Bloody Week,” during which over 30,000 men, women, and children were murdered for their revolutionary aspirations.

Despite the brutality of its destruction, the Paris Commune uprising is remembered as a inspirational moment to radicals and revolutionaries the world over. In the near century-and-a-half that has passed since the Commune’s destruction, Anarchists and libertarian-socialists across the generations have looked to the 1871 Paris Commune, seeking to learn from its example, both its strengths and its limitations.

The Commune: Paris, 1871 is a new collection of classic anarchist and libertarian-socialist studies of the Paris Commune, compiled, edited, and introduced by Andrew Zonneveld. This concise volume includes critical reflections on the Commune from such radical authors as Louise Michel, William Morris, Mikhail Bakunin, Petr Kropotkin, Voltairine de Cleyre, Alexander Berkman and Maurice Brinton.

Order your copy HERE!

OooA! Spring Cleaning Sale – 25% Off

This March and April: Save 25% on all our books plus free shipping!

Have you been waiting for the right time to order those books you’ve been wanting to read? Wait no longer!

This March and April, we are offering a 25% discount on ANY online book order!  To get started, shop our complete selection of titles at our online bookstore, powered by Square. Just enter the coupon code SPRING25 at checkout to receive your discount!

As always, everything you order from our online bookstore qualifies for FREE SHIPPING via USPS Media Mail (U.S. customers only), making this sale twice as valuable for some orders.

Thank you for supporting independent radical publishing! Ordering your books directly from us helps to sustain these publishing projects and other forthcoming radical titles. We have a lot of exciting new books to announce in the coming months, so stay tuned!

[Shop Now] — Or click the “Current Titles” tab at the top of this page.

BLACK LIBERATION AND PALESTINE SOLIDARITY reviewed by Muslim Media Review

Praise for Black Liberation and Palestine Solidarity in Muslim Media Review

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Lenni Brenner and Matthew Quest’s Black Liberation and Palestine Solidarity has received a lot of attention and raise over the past month. Recently, Ayman Fadel of Muslim Media Review wrote a detailed review of the book, adding to the praise the book has already received from activists like Michael Letwin (Jews for Palestinian Right of Return) and Bob Brown (All African People’s Revolutionary Party).

The review is transcribed below and the original can be found here. The book can be purchased by following the link above. Don’t forget: all orders from our online bookstore qualify for free shipping!

Here is the review:

Authors Lenni Brenner and Matthew Quest collected in this volume some of the essays they published between 1993 and 2013 analyzing the positions of prominent figures in the movement for black liberation towards Zionism and Palestinian resistance to Zionism. These positions were reflections of their owners’ evolving understandings of the liberation struggles in the United States.

The liberation struggle evolved from the civil rights’ postures of late 1950s and early 1960s Martin Luther King, Jr and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peoples (NAACP) to the nationalist (Black Power) positions associated with Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael and even the socialist and revolutionary stances of members of the Black Panther Party like Huey Newton. Correspondingly, Black Americans changed from seeing Zionists as struggling for the rights of a minority (Jews) to seeing Zionists as an extension of white supremacy or global imperialism and capitalism into southwest Asia and northeast Africa.

Nevertheless, many factors have limited the development of the Palestine Solidarity movement in the United States. The most important, in my reading of the author’s claims, is the non-scientific (in the Marxist sense) nature of most resistance to Zionism (and other anti-colonialist struggles in Africa). For example, should Zionism, which placed one ethnic/religious group’s capitalist intermediaries over the means of production in Palestine, simply be replaced by a different ethnic or religious group’s capitalist intermediaries? Likewise, should Black Americans be struggling to allow their bourgeoisie the right to exploit workers or working to end exploitation of workers? Is the boycott, divestment and sanctions tactic falsely assuming that European and North American support for Israel is accidental and not intrinsic to Israel’s position in world capitalist relations?

Another non-scientific aspect of contemporary Palestine Solidarity movements is a failure to study the history of Jews in Europe, the United States and Israel. The authors believe that the Zionist movement’s contradictions are dissolving its support among Jews, and a Palestine Solidarity movement which presented a liberating alternative would be the end of Zionism. It would also avoid antisemitism.

In the United States, the lack of an political movement for liberation independent of the Republican and Democratic Parties, especially in the Age of Obama, has caused Black Americans’ solidarity with Palestinians to be instinctive and romantic yet theoretically ungrounded, expressive without being effective and easily subverted to electoral politics’ insatiable demand for money.

I recommend this book for those who are interested in Marxist analysis of liberation movements and United States history and Palestine Solidarity activists.

Many thanks to Ayman Fadel for his kind words and his support for this project. Black Liberation and Palestine Solidarity can be purchased via our online bookstore or in an independent bookstore near you. Thanks for reading!

Now Available: WORKERS’ SELF-MANAGEMENT IN THE CARIBBEAN by Joseph Edwards

Workers’ Self-Management in the Caribbean: The Writings of Joseph Edwards

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Price: $14.99
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Joseph Edwards (born George Myers, also known as Fundi, the “Caribbean Situationist”) was a Jamaican refrigeration mechanic and labor organizer from West Kingston. In 1969, he led a wildcat strike and workers’ council at Western Meat Packers in Westmoreland, and was a major organizer of the Unemployed Workers Council and Independent Trade Union Advisory Council.

Edwards was a profound critic of electoral party politics and trade union hierarchy and was among the most proletarian political theorists of his generation. His articles and pamphlets survey struggles for workers’ organization in banana and sugar cane fields, bauxite mines, clerical offices, and industrial factories. The first published collection of writings by Joseph Edwards, Workers’ Self-Management in the Caribbean transforms how we understand class struggle during the Caribbean New Left generation.

“[Joseph Edwards] was always involved in a practical way with the struggle of the dispossessed and the exploited for a new world. There was never a moment in his life when he was not engaged with some form of organization whether on the sugar plantation, in the factories or in the communities around Westmoreland. There is no figure in Caribbean radical history of the 1960s and 1970s that I respect more.”
— Bukka Rennie, author of The History of the Trinidad & Tobago Working Class in the 20th Century.

“Matthew Quest has made a tremendous contribution to the historiography of Caribbean labour by collecting together Joseph Edwards’s writings, and introducing this neglected but critical fighter for workers’ power to a new generation of anti-capitalists.”
— Christian Høgsbjerg, Department of History, University of York, author of Mariner, Renegade and Castaway: Chris Braithwaite.

“[A] brilliant analysis of the work and impact of Joseph Edwards, one of the respected socialist thinkers of the Caribbean radical tradition. [Matthew] Quest accurately depicts Edwards as embodying the voice of workers’ self-management and championing direct democracy.”
— Jerome Teelucksingh, Department of History, University of the West Indies, St. Augustine Campus, Trinidad & Tobago.

“Workers’ Self-Management in the Caribbean: The Writings of Joseph Edwards represents the resurrection … of a little known but monumentally significant radical thinker from the early post classical colonial period in the Caribbean.”
— Modibo Kadalie, author of Internationalism, Pan-Africanism, and the Struggle of Social Classes.

“The [Caribbean] region is overdue in giving Joseph Edwards the recognition he deserves as its own piercing voice of the libertarian left.”
— Justin P. Holder, Department of History and Philosophy (Undergraduate), University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, Barbados.

Order your copy of Workers’ Self-Managment in the Caribbean: The Writings of Joseph Edwards today from our ONLINE BOOKSTORE.

Christian Høgsbjerg — MARINER, RENEGADE, CASTAWAY: CHRIS BRAITHWAITE

Mariner, Renegade, Castaway: Chris Braithwaite — Seamen’s Organizer, Socialist and Militant Pan-Africanist  by Christian Høgsbjerg

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Imported from Redwords Publishing in London, On Our Own Authority! is now distributing Christian Høgsbjerg’s biography of Chris Braithwaite (aka “Chris Jones“), a leading organizer of colonial seamen in inter-war Britain. Having led a global network to implement workers’ sanctions against the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, Braithwaite played a critical role in the Pan-Africanist and wider anti-colonial movement alongside figures such as C.L.R. James and George Padmore. Høgsbjerg’s book recovers Braithwaite’s long overlooked life as a Black radical and political trade unionist, and suggests his determined struggle for working class unity in the face of racism and austerity retains relevance for us today….[Read More]

“Through his scrupulous research of the compelling life and times of Chris Braithwaite, Christian Høgsbjerg has uncovered the vital contribution of a pioneering Black activist and anti-colonial stalwart. Braithwaite’s brave achievement should be on the curriculum of all our schools.”
— CHRIS SEARLE, Race and Class.

“Chris was born in Barbados, in the West Indies [in 1885] and started to go to sea at a very early age. As a seaman he had the opportunity to travel round the world. The world was thus his university, and what an education it provided him! It was always a pleasure to hear Chris, who was of a most gay and youthful temperament, relate his many sailor’s yarns, and, in his more serious moments, to listen to him describing the conditions of the working class in the various lands it was his good fortune to visit.”
— GEORGE PADMORE, New Leader (September, 1944)