From It's Going Down

Announcing the annual Another Carolina Anarchist Bookfair (ACAB) from June 28th to 30th in so-called Asheville, NC.

From June 28th to 30th, 2024, Another Carolina Anarchist Bookfair (ACAB) will once again converge on so-called Asheville, NC, opening a space for all of us committed to liberation and world-building in the here and now to plot and play, mourn and love, co-educate and collaborate. The ACAB collective invites you to join us!

The bookfair, an anarchist ritual of spiritual recovery, carves out time and space to gather and rethink our strategies for destroying this world in order to open the door for many others.

Amid all the horror, we cannot neglect our capacity for joy. To struggle against the state and for liberation, there must be a life worth fighting for. Our anarchism taps into our pleasures along with our disgust, our wholeness along with our brokenness. The bookfair offers us a space to feel and reflect on these oppositions together. During these gatherings, we witness the breadth of our interdependences and solidarities as we contemplate the crumbling of infrastructure and social well-being, devastation of ecosystems, and growing hot spots of fascist action. We see how much we already make possible through the spirit and substance of our practices.

There’s perhaps never been a better time and greater need for us to gather as anarchists. Over the last five months, we’ve witnessed the Israeli state’s genocide of Palestinians as the IOF, along with allies such as the United States, massacres people in Gaza and beyond. Every day it seems, there is news of some state legislation targeting bodily autonomy and queer people, libraries and critical thinking, or the basic necessities of life, or some transphobes or cops taking murder into their own hands, and a ballot-box choice between fascism and fascism ahead. And acts of resistance to these and so many other assaults are increasingly met with intense repression, demanding our resources and time to fight the state and its courts on their own terrain.

This list could go on and on. We know all too well what’s making our hearts hurt; we know all too well the sense of despair that permeates the present. But even more than that, everything is changing, and largely not at all in the ways we anarchists envision.

ACAB offers a counterspace for us to catch our breaths, reflect on the immense shifts, and plot as well as dream forward together. Indeed, as our participants over the past five iterations can attest, it’s a special bookfair, and likely this year, more so than ever. Asheville is a small town with a notoriously close-knit and extremely queer anarchist community, and many folks live in villages or the woods in the surrounding mountains, making for a deep connection to rural life and social struggles as well. Despite our smallness, we host the biggest regional bookfair, which has become a destination for people all over the Appalachia and the Southeast—and beyond. Yet at the same time, because of our smallness, there’s a sweet familiarity and friendliness at ACAB, like an annual anarchic family reunion.

Over the years, our bookfair has cultivated a reputation for offering an eclectic, “not-your-usual-suspects” array of talks and workshops, ranging from practical skills, to inspiring histories and report backs from imaginative present-day resistance, to theory and analysis, and much more. Amid all the wonderful options for collective learning and sharing, we’re known for the intimate social space the emerges among the people who travel to be with us. We emphasize social relations, and make plenty of room for parties and shows, formal and informal meetups, participatory conversations, and dedicated moments for ritual and grief. And this year’s bookfair falls on the anniversary of Stonewall, so the gayness will be dialed up extra big.

Help us make “Another Carolina” in the here and now, showing the world that Appalachia and its rural regions are hotbeds for radical activity and love.

The hope is that everyone will come away refreshed, feeling more whole and interconnected, better prepared for needed community self-defense and mutual aid ahead.

We invite you to propose a workshop, conversation, or talk that showcases what you have been up to in the last year. ACAB is a place to share your projects and get input from a community of dedicated anarchists. It’s a place for us to talk through dilemmas and draw out possibilities. To make a proposal, due by or before May 1st, go to: acabookfair.noblogs.org/acab2024/propose

If you have a distro or publishing project, come table with us and disseminate radical ideas to an eager readership! To request a tabling spot, due by or before May 1st, go to: acabookfair.noblogs.org/acab2024/apply

Or simply join us over three days of workshops, tabling, music, gathering, and so much more. These moments are the cracks of freedom against a backdrop of brutality —and we want you here with us to pry those wide open!

Comments

Redpanther/Bad Kitty (not verified) Wed, 04/03/2024 - 18:55

Small-acre yuppie subdivisions, with expensive deed restrictions, in the Asheville area.

I'm surprised that anarchists can afford to do land projects there.

anon (not verified) Thu, 04/04/2024 - 10:36

In reply to by Redpanther/Bad Kitty (not verified)

there's one 30 minutes from where i live, and it's a hotbed of commuters and shitty new age spirituality. "Vibes".

Anarchist advertising will always be funny and ultra-cringe.

Redpanther/Bad Kitty (not verified) Wed, 04/03/2024 - 20:18

There have been comments in r/appalachia complaining about yuppies and techies (who can work remotely) plus affluent retired boomers, pushing out people in southern Appalachia who have lived here for many generations. Building McMansions and looking down their noses at the rednecks.

These comments get lots of upvotes.

This could be the basis for a very broad working class counteroffensive, involving far more people than self-identified anarchists.

anon (not verified) Fri, 04/05/2024 - 19:11

In reply to by Redpanther/Bad Kitty (not verified)

That's a powerful fartbong you got there. Reddit comments "could be the basis for a very broad working class counteroffensive"...

anon (not verified) Fri, 04/05/2024 - 19:45

In reply to by anon (not verified)

Yeah, aside from the matter mobilizing rednecks up against wealthier liberals that came from big cities.

All I want for these places are effective ways to fuck up these picture-perfect lawns, in a way they can't be saved by the landscaping thugs.

anon (not verified) Fri, 04/05/2024 - 23:08

In reply to by anon (not verified)

Aren't you the guy who sprayed liquid shit all over a childrens playground to protest the people who had a mask-optional anarchist event in Portland a while back?

Take your meds, brow.

anon (not verified) Fri, 04/05/2024 - 23:39

In reply to by anon (not verified)

aren't you the guy who sprayed literal shit everywhere with two others who then got beat up in short order by like 20 people for being a fuckin covid whackjob?

anon (not verified) Sat, 04/06/2024 - 10:47

In reply to by anon (not verified)

No, but it's surely telling to see you continue to praise mob-mentality violence on an anarchist website.

What could it mean that the moderators kept your comment but deleted the response?

anon (not verified) Sun, 04/07/2024 - 10:41

In reply to by anon (not verified)

So you are confirming that you are either a non-anarchist or an "anarchist" with your comment.

Think carefully about what you've done.

anon (not verified) Sun, 04/07/2024 - 10:43

In reply to by anon (not verified)

And an authoritarian.

This is an anarchist anti-authoritarian website. You should explore other places to spread your non-anarchist thoughts.

anon (not verified) Sun, 04/07/2024 - 15:07

In reply to by anon (not verified)

I'm not fuckin married to this ideologically rigid conception of "anarchists do this or do that, blah blah". I do and think wtf I want as a free agent. Ironically, this actually makes me much freer and more anarchic than these supposed "anarchists" who check in to ask "what would kropotkin do?" for every little thing.

And yeah btw I stand on what I said. I'll repeat it again for the hippies and liberals in the back: Those 3 assholes who got beat down and thrown out got exactly what was coming to them. Deal with it.

anon (not verified) Sun, 04/07/2024 - 19:57

In reply to by anon (not verified)

But you and your little friends spraying liquid shit all over a kids playground because people at the event you're not even invited to decided not to mask up... that's not authoritarian?

anon (not verified) Sun, 04/07/2024 - 20:32

In reply to by anon (not verified)

I live in Europe, brah. Our playgrounds have excellent restroom facilities. You, it seems, are an internet news obsessed unhinged, raving authoritarian with a diarrhea fetish that seems to think all anarchists live in the North Western USA USA USA.

Let me put this in layman's terms: maybe the anarchist world isn't for you since you seems so opposed to it and are so into liquid human waste (it seems).

Please remember to wash your hands.

anon (not verified) Sun, 04/07/2024 - 20:03

In reply to by anon (not verified)

So you think its authoritarian to feel that some jerks who risked exposing kids to a bacteriological hazard deserved to get their asses kicked... yet I'm 100% certain that if they had instead gotten slapped for misgendering someone while rocking white dreads with no covid mask, you'd probably think that that was cool or righteous.

When Richard Spencer got punched by antifa and everyone said that he had it coming, was that "authoritarian" too?

anon (not verified) Sun, 04/07/2024 - 20:41

In reply to by anon (not verified)

We prefer chaos to logic, brah. And anyways all truly free anarchs spray our liquid feces directly ON kids to boost their immune systems with (natural organic) bacteriolotical (read: non-vaxxed) specimens. This provides the power of AT LEAST a weeks worth of active culture yogurt without the possibility of so-called lactose intolerance.
Everybody true anarch knows this.

anon (not verified) Sat, 04/06/2024 - 12:35

In reply to by anon (not verified)

yeah, 'cause being an anarchists means showing up at wanky bookfairs filled with leftists. get over yourself and your pathetic scene and go live anarchy.

A Bitch (not verified) Wed, 04/10/2024 - 20:54

But Cindy, what about how "this year has been particularly wrenching, from the pandemic dragging on, to the housing crisis, from fascism only worsening, to the genocide in Gaza, all straining our collective capacities and breaking our hearts" and "your need for a bit of a breather and some reflection time"??
KISS MY ASS

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