In the early 1980s, the Vancouver 5 were a group of Canadians convicted of bombing the Litton Systems plant in Toronto, where components for Cruise Missiles were being made, as well as several Red Hot Video stores, who were accused of selling violent pornography. Now, over twenty years later, Ann Hansen, who served seven years for her involvement, tells the true gripping saga of the anarchist guerilla group.
From its origins in the Canadian anarchist and counter-cultural milieu of the late 70s/early 80s; to going underground into a clandestine life of arms drills, explosive practice, stealing cars, and attempted armored car heists; to the massive reaction and surveillance of a State that felt (understandably) very much under attack; to the subsequent "trial by media" of those involved. This is very real, incredible revolutionary "true-crime" tale of unrepentant action.
Included are Communiqués issued for all the actions and Ann Hansen's "Statement To The Court Before Sentencing." A triumph of storytelling, history, and a very real debate about movement tactics, goals, and vision.
The newest Seth Toboccman work outlines pressing social and political struggles at the dawn of the 21st century—from post 9-11 New York City, to Israel and Palestine, to Iraq and New Orleans. In his bold comic style, Seth chronicles events as they happen, musing not on the chaos of instability and fear, but on the struggle against it. Includes an introduction by Mumia Abu-Jamal and a call to action that you cannot ignore!
The beloved and infamous zine Dishwasher....is now a book! Dishwasher Pete made it his mission to wash dishes in all 50 states, and this book tells the tale of his quest for dishdog glory. In a public opinion poll on job desirability, cites Pete, dishwashing was listed #745 out of #750, beating out only 5 jobs, including prostitution and panhandling. Still, despite prevailing public opinion about the profession, Pete forges ahead in search of another state to put under his belt...well, um, apron strings. Definitely a book you want to sit down and read cover to cover, or until you pass out...so you can wake up and read more. This book reminds you that you can be whoever you want to be, whether that's a doctor, a lawyer, or a dishwasher.
OUT NOW!! Basking in the trenches of left over teen angst, punk rock, and brutal honesty - Cristy Road romanticizes the underdog like it's nobody's business! Here is the first collection of 5 years of her artwork featured on 90 postcards. Her work has appeared in the pages of Jane Magazine, Bitch and Bust, as well as doing artwork for Green Day, Plan-it X Records, INCITE, The Queers, Esther Bell, and other bands, books, and publications! Cristy is creating the visual voice of angry DIY punk rock youth. Recently featured on the Sister Spit tour!
A fascinating graphic novel that details the art and science of screenprinting from inception to printed t-shirts to working in a print shop to understanding line screens, to hawking your printed wares on the street! How to build a screen, burn an image, test how things are going, pull ink, wash out screens, know what screen mesh to use, and creative ideas. It's a true joy to see the exaggerated illustrations while learning such a useful and practical craft! How to turn your home into a t-shirt factory! Essential for people who don't know how to screenprint or those a bit rusty. ISBN 0-9770557-4-4
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Cindy writes her zine, DORIS, like she is figuring out the human condition. She makes writing about the simplest and most common things - playing music, childhood, cooking, or sex, resonate with universal understanding. She helps us make sense of more complex things like the satisfaction from doing useful work, natural curiosity, the ability to use logic, gender dynamics, introspection, the need for challenge and change, combating depression, and creating art and literature. She shares and explores the emotions that go along with having an abortion, rape, dealing with the death of family, or sexual harrassment in a context that is enlightening and personal, feeling like a close friend opening up to you. What's most impressive though is that she relates these things into every article in her zine seamlessly. ISBN 0-9726967-8-4
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Double Duce is a reprinted, repackaged version of Cometbus #42, a novel from Aaron Cometbus. His characters ponder life's mundane questions with the seriousness of ancient philosophers: How to get by on no money, where to scam free photocopies, and the finer points of dumpster diving are the subjects of endless conversations. Also check out Despite Everything, also published by Last Gasp.
Rosalind B. Penfold is an appealing, successful, 35-year-old businesswoman running her own company when she falls deeply in love with widower Brian. But soon Roz begins to notice troubling signs that Brian is not what he seems. A pattern of lies and petty cruelties begins to emerge that, over the course of their decade together, comes to encompass a litany of physical, mental, and sexual abuse appalling in its scope and malevolence. Often too traumatized and ashamed to admit the true extent of what she is experiencing, Roz instead pours her anguish into a series of graphic diaries that provide a touching, profoundly shocking, and completely original portrait of domestic abuse. An extraordinary visual testimony, Dragonslippers presents the many warning signs of abuse and offers a frank examination of the psychology of both abusers and victims. "Deft, honest... Compelling." -Publishers Weekly
Obviously, for people who have experienced similar things, this might be a bit triggering and traumatic. Read with caution.
Doubling the size of the previous issue and graduating from the days of rubber band binding, Bill Brown treats us with so much magic inside the cover of this handwritten object of pocket-sized art. Bill just completed work on the film "The Other Side" which documents the work of activist groups who comb the desert for Mexican immigrants into the US, providing them with safe rides, water, and food. Many of his experiences and observations are captured here similarly. A wandering philosopher, he tells us funny stories and anecdotes - St. Roch, the patron saint of lost causes, whose church is littered with discarded crutches and prosthetic limbs. "I begin to wonder if the body parts St Roch cured stayed strong and healthy, even as the rest of the person who was healed grew old and frail." We are also treated to the tale of Mother Goose, an older lady who wears a long skirt and floppy sunbonnet who storms into local restaurants and sings nursery rhymes until someone kicks her out. "In Austin it was impossible to go on a simple errand without falling in love. Every time I mailed a letter or went to buy a loaf of bread, I'd end up with a broken heart." and "Jerry makes me hold [an instrument] before he tells me it's an indian hunting club made from an Alaskan walrus penis bone." His way of explaining things is simultaneously laugh out loud funny as well as engrossing and captivating. This is gold. 100% Post-consumer paper and soy inks (because we care). ISBN 0-9770557-8-7
An excerpt about hitching a ride on a cargo ship across the Atlantic:
"My cabin has a bed and a couch and a coffee table that's bolted to the floor. Those bolts worry me. They mean there are days on this ship when the furniture needs bolting down. I slept on the couch last night. Maybe that's out of habit. Maybe because I'm more comfortable on couches...I consider sleeping on the couch every night, like I'm couch surfing across the Atlantic Ocean. That's a couch surfer's dream, all all, catching a ride on some couch that'll take you around the world, like some slacker Magellan, mooching a circumnavigation."
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Dwelling Portably has been crammed full of information about living without a permanent residence for nearly 30 years! Super helpful and informative tips for biking, tents, showering, cooking, and living. Written by many folks who have lived the lifestyle far outside of cities and bereft of technology. According to many readers, '80-89 was their best material and here it is reprinted again in entirety (sans things that have become obsolete).
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Chomsky’s writings on politics and language have established him as a pre-eminent intellectual and as one of the most wide-ranging social critics of our time. Chomsky’s works have served as essential touchstones for dissidents, activists, scholars, and concerned citizens on subjects ranging from the media to human rights to intellectual freedom. This book assembles the core of his most important writings, including excerpts from his most influential texts over the past forty years. Here is an unprecedented, comprehensive overview of Chomsky’s thought.
Evasion is a non-fiction hobo travelogue in which the author manages to evade the authorities for trespassing, squatting, and dumpster diving. Evasion is a metaphorical tale depicting the rejection of the 40-hour workweek and hopeless boredom of modern living. The journey documents the authors' reclamation of his life through rejection of the "American Dream." the spaces surrounding them a life worth living and a world worth fighting for. The author of Evasion is a hitchhiker, train hopper, and urban scavenger. The roots of the novel stem from ten photocopies of the original manuscript scammed from Kinko's. Rapidly, the zine was mass duplicated and proliferated by thousands of its' fans. Innumerable copies have been sold to date without a single advertisement. I found a few things demeaning to people who live in a world of poverty without a choice but I think this offers a whole new horizen to bored middle class teenagers and twenty somethings.
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A study of the shocking epidemic of cultural appropriation of white youth stealing all of their fashion, ideas, and music from black culture. This book makes strong claims, points the fingers, and exposes a very embarrassing trend. "There's an old remark to the effect that if you toss a Harvard boy in a locked room with a ghetto kid for a month, well, who'll come out sounding like whom?" -Publisher's Weekly.
Here's an attempt at tackling the sociology of that transaction, as repeated perpetually throughout American culture. Subjects include Eminem, Richard Pryor, as well as a complex of film and social theory. A crucial study into a much neglected topic, especially over the last 15 years as it became increasingly common and popular.
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A good, short, introduction to anarchist ideas. There is probably more rubbish talked about anarchism than any other political idea. Actually, it has nothing to do with a belief in chaos, death and destruction. Anarchists do not normally carry bombs, nor do they ascribe any virtue to beating up old ladies.It is no accident that the sinister image of the mad anarchist is so accepted. The State, the press and all the assorted authoritarian types, use every means at their disposal to present anarchy as an unthinkable state of carnage and chaos. We can expect little else from power-mongers who would have no power to monger if we had our way. They have to believe that authority and obedience are essential in order to justify their own crimes to themselves. The TV, press and films all preach obedience, and when anarchy is mentioned at all, it is presented as mindless destruction.
Education discussions revolve around standardized testing, funding, certification—but never how to best help kids learn. Here we have some great historical and contemporary alternatives to school, demonstrating children's decreasing ability to learn as they enter school. Schools fail to teach kids to be self-directed life-learners; stifling creativity. At the same time, deschooling offers self-directed learning strategies for children, encourages community-building, builds critical thinking for active engagement and democratic self-governance, and alleviates the negative psychological effects of traditional schooling methods.
A radical classic! Why haven't we had any bell hooks books here before you ask? We're not really sure either. But she's a breath of fresh air in the feminist discourse. In this, one of her most famous books, she addresses some basic feminist ideas with life and intensity: work, parenting, sisterhood, and the role of men in the feminist struggle are all examined. If you're interested in feminism at all, then check out this book. And of course read whatever bell hooks books you can get your hands on!
Flood! is a powerful graphic novel by the socially and politically conscious illustrator Eric Drooker, frequent cover artist for the New Yorker and contributor to World War III Illustrated. This modern novel is written in the ancient language of pictures, and its expressionist graphics hold a film noir edge. Long out of print and now at its tenth anniversary, Flood! conveys all the joys and sadness that intermingle in our large cities ... and gives us a look at a possible future. This edition features a new introduction by historian and poet Luc Sante, a new cover by Drooker, and a complete redesign.
"[FLOOD!] is a complex, dream-charged vision of alienation in the wet, mean streets of New York City, where primal, natural urges are supressed in the lonely isolation of crowds. It's a picture of a soulless civilization headed toward the apocalypse. It's a poetic and lyrical novel - told virtually without words...
"Since images are usually open to broader interpretation than prose, each drawing in the sequence must work not only as a self-centered composition but also as a kind of heiroglyphic picture-writing. The page acts as a curtain to be raised, each page offering up new visual surprises... Mr. Drooker has discovered the magic of pulling light and life out of an inky sea of darkness." (Art Spiegelman, The New York Times Book Review)
MC #76015: The Urban Hermitt is a hip hop artist who hangs out with nightmarish hippies, punks, queers, and blurs the lines separating them. Watch the Hermitt move to Seattle at the age of 18 and react to the big city through a simultaneous process of self discovery. Watch him come out as queer in the midst of LSD-induced-heterosexist-rainbow-gathering love. He writes about the counterculture, with soul. It's a book about queer studies. It's a book about underground perspectives and culture. It's a funny book. It's just a book about a kid growing up. ISBN 0-9726967-0-9
This is the history of Food Not Bombs as well as its future. It is the guide to setting up your own serving group to feed your community as well as it is the story of many other group's successful or failed attempts. Full of useful insight and glory. Food Not Bombs is a nonprofit group that collects food that would otherwise be thrown away from local businesses and redistributes it to the local homeless and hungry community. This book is also rather inspirational.
Leah Ryan presents a brilliant selection of interviews, cartoons, photos and stories for and by service workers. From the diary of a dishwasher to the grind of an exotic dancer, For Here or To Go details the human struggle behind America's transformation into a service economy.
Leah Ryan is the Fiction Editor at Punk Planet Magazine. Her work has appeared in the anthologies Through the Kitchen Window, More Monologues By and For Women and Best of Temp Slave, as well as in several small magazines. Her plays have been performed in theaters across the US. She got her first dishwashing job at the age of 16. Currently, she lives in New York City and teaches creative writing.
Investigating public records, journals, and books - Terence Kissack expands the scope of the history of LGBT politics in the United States. The anarchists examined—such as Emma Goldman, Benjamin Tucker, and Alexander Berkman—defended the right of individuals to pursue same-sex relations, often challenging the conservatism of fellow anarchists as well as police, clergy, and medical authorities—who condemned LGBT people. He examines the trial and imprisonment of Oscar Wilde, the life and work of Walt Whitman, Tucker's Liberty and Leonard Abbott's The Free Comrade, and the frank treatment of homosexual relations in Berkman's Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist.
Cowards don't make history; and the women of Mujeres Libres (Free Women) were no cowards. Courageous enough to create revolutionary change in their daily lives, these women mobilized over 20,000 women into an organized network during the Spanish Revolution, to strive for community, education, and equality for women and the emancipation of all. Militants in the anarcho-syndicalist CNT union, Mujeres Libres struggled against fascism, the State, and reaction; and the less than supportive attitudes and concerns of their male comrades. Martha Ackelsberg writes a comprehensive study of Mujeres Libres, intertwining interviews with the women themselves and analysis connecting them with modern feminist movements. This new edition includes additional research Ackelsberg carried out for the Spanish language edition, together with a brand new introduction written in the light of the new social movements, and resurgence of anarchism, post-Seattle.
Martha Ackelsberg is a Professor of Government and a member of the Women's Studies Program Committee at Smith College, where she teaches courses in political theory, urban politics, political activism, and feminist theory. She has contributed to a variety of anthologies on women's political activism in the United States.
From China Martens comes a compilation of The Future Generation zine, started in 1990! The zine is by radical moms, for radical mom's, and has writings on issues like sexism, violence, and resistance. There's even an interview with a mom punk band dressed up as KISS! But the thing that really shines through is China's love of being a mom. This book has so much raw energy and heart, it's kind of incredible. Wait, there's also a story about 5 generations swimming at the same beach, a whole lotta love for Baltimore, and a chapter called, "Welfare Mothers Make Better Lovers." Basically, there's not enough space to list all the cool things about this book!
The long awaited follow-up to the smash How It All Vegan. Garden takes it one step further than the How It All basics, offering recipies for a more sophisticated palate, the gourmet, as well as the yummy easy to make stuff. Plus theres the tips for throwing a party, what to do when you screw up in the kitchen, and the frequently asked questions. A real treasure. "More than just a cookbook....Tanya and Sarah look to be having lots of healthy, animal-friendly fun in their kitchens." [Bust]
A brand new awesome vegan cookbook! We've carried Jae's zines Ripe before, and they sold out in no time. Luckily, we have a bunch of her recipes collected in this book so we don't have to hassle her for her zines all the time. Jae is a registered holistic nutritionist and vegan baker with a passion for eating and living healthy. The recipes in this book include: Andrew's Butternut Risotto, Apple Carrot Soup with Corriander, Blueberry Breakfast Polenta, Cocoa Avocado Mousse, Fettuccini No-Fredo, and Spiced Squashed Muffins. Get it Ripe is a cookbook that inspires you to eat healthier!
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