Hi everyone! We’re looking forward to seeing you this weekend. A few things to know!

Getting There

• The entrance to the book fair is at 333 14th Street, between Mission and Julian – look for the sandwich board signs shown above!
• Public transportation: The book fair is located approximately 2 blocks from the 16th St Mission BART station, and on several bus lines.
• Bicycles: There will be bike racks inside the venue for bike parking.
• Parking: On January 6, 2013, San Francisco started Sunday hours at parking meters. There is street parking right near the Armory, and meters are enforced 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday and noon to 6 p.m. on Sundays, and most spots have a 1 or 2 hour time limit. There are several parking garages in the area, the closest one is on the corner of 14th and Julian, almost across the street from the venue. If you don’t mind walking a few blocks, you can head east toward Folsom St to find unmetered street parking.

Food

• Because of construction in the building, there will be NO food for sale inside the book fair this year. However, there are tons of cafes, shops, and restaurants within a few blocks.

Hours

• The hall will be open 10 am to 6 pm on Saturday and Sunday.
• The complete speaker schedule is here. We will have paper copies of the schedule available at the info table.
• There are tons of events going on within a few blocks! Check out a list here.

Need anything else? Stop by the info table near the door!

* * *

THURSDAY MARCH 14: 7:00 pm: Build to Resist

“BUILD TO RESIST“  with Linda Evans (All Of Us Or None),  Josh Harper (SHAC7), Azadeh Zohrabi (Hunger Strike Coalition), and Jenny Esquivel (Sacramento Prisoner Support). 518 Valencia in San Francisco,

FRIDAY March 15 7 pm: Anarchist Cafe

The Anarchist Cafe is on!
The Anarchist Cafe will happen on Friday March 15th from 7-10pm, the night before the San Francisco Anarchist Bookfair.
It is time to step away from our meetings and be social. We will have food, coffee, tea and music indoors and a covered hang out space outdoors. We are serving dinner until 9pm or until the food runs out, whichever comes first. As in past years, the Cafe will happen at 225 Potrero Avenue in San Francisco. We are asking for a donation of $5-20 at the door, but no one will be turned away. The money will go to support political projects.
Please no drugs or alcohol. Note the ending time, so don’t show up late and get disappointed.
If you are interested in volunteering at the Café contact Mike E. at mikee1051 (at) yahoo.com or through the event’s facebook page and include what you would like to do (make food, do dishes, or work the door) and the approximate times you can be available for.

SATURDAY MARCH 16 11 am to 6 pm: Hack for Anarchy!

Join us for a day of skillshares and talks around hacking, anarchism, social disorder, robots, security and all things awesome.

Noisebridge, 2169 Mission St, San Francisco CA

SATURDAY MARCH 16 11 am to 5 pm: A Day of (A) THEORY & DIY Skill Shares!

In The Work presents: A Day of (A) THEORY & DIY Skill Shares!’A Day of (A) Theory & DIY Skill Shares” will aim to retain, deepen and strengthen the subversive and dangerous texts, ideas and ways of being and doing that anarchist thought and practice make possible.

The day will include tabling from various anarchist publishers and thinkers, discussion relevant to struggle in our current post-modern trajectory, and craft presentations. If you have an interest in tabling, talking, or presenting something practical drop us a line!

All tables and speakers/discussions will use In The Works event space for free/donation only. All donations received from this event will go
to the <em>Free Jeremy Hammond!</em> legal fund. Jeremy Hammond is a 28 year old anarchist and web-developer from Chicago who is being accused of hacking Strategic Forecasting(Stratfor), and publishing this information via the website Wikileaks.org, as the ‘Global Intelligence Files’.

WHERE: In The Works/ is located 1 1/2 blocks from the 16th Street Mission BART station at 3265 17th Street, between Mission & Capp Streets.

SUNDAY March 17: BASTARD Conference

We humbly request your participation in the 2013 instance of the Berkeley Anarchist Students of Theory And Research & Development conference. We meet every year to discuss new, old, and interesting ideas in anarchist theory. This year our emphasis is on Ethics & Aesthetics. Submit your proposals to conference@sfbay-anarchists.org

This year, BASTARD is interested in the relation of ethics and aesthetics to our ideal; are we trying to make the world more beautiful or more ethical? If we are hewing to an aesthetic vision, how does replacing the ‘good’ with the ‘beautiful’ prevent us from recreating the problems of moralism with different language, if we are retaining some concept of ethics, how is it distinct from christian or liberal morality?
What motivates us as anarchists? Not only what is sexy and appealing and easy to say, but what shapes the worlds we are trying to move toward? What criteria do we use to assess our actions or affirm our intentions, how do we make assessments of others?
How does the interplay of Ethics and Aesthetics shape our tactics, relationships, projects, and conceptions of ourselves as anarchists? How is this question related to the broad strains of anarchist thought?
We will be meeting on March 17th 2013 from 10am – 6pm. Most likely this meeting will occur in the East Bay. We look forward to seeing you all there.

REVISED!

In response to the criticisms of the Armory Community Center as the venue for the 18^th Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair, the organizing committee has taken several steps, including organizing a forum to address some of the issues raised, at a venue outside of the Armory so that those critical of the venue would feel comfortable attending.

The forum will be Saturday March 16 from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at CIIS. This moderated discussion will include two sections:

Mapping the conflict: What is the actual issue here? Is it pornography? BDSM? Kink.com’s labor practices?  How anarchists interact with institutions and/or with non-anarchists? This first section will attempt to parse out the conflict so that those present have greater understanding of the priorities and values that have shaped the debate, and what the divides in our community actually are. This will happen as a large group or in smaller groups depending on how many people are present.

This will be followed by a group discussion with guiding questions provided by the moderators.

For background on this debate, please read:

• Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s Letter on the Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair
• On recent criticisms of this year’s Book Fair venue
• San Francisco Bay Guardian: “Anarchists play rough: Kerfuffle over radical book fair in the porn palace”

As has been mentioned previously, the old venue (The Hall of Flowers/County Fair Building in Golden Gate Park) had become prohibitively expensive and difficult to work with. Rental fees there almost doubled over the last three years, with additional mandatory “hiring” of Park Rangers (an armed branch of law enforcement), coupled with further punitive restrictions (e.g. no valet bike parking, restrictions on selling outside). After an exhaustive search and much discussion, we decided to relocate the Book Fair for 2013 to The Armory Community Center, owned by Kink.com.

In the search for the new venue, we considered many locations, but ruled them out because of several reasons, including size (being large enough to include all vendors), a room for speakers separate from the vendor hall, cost, and availability during March 2013. We have included below a list of the venues considered/investigated in the search to find a successor to the County Fair Building.

The Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair does not make a profit, is organized by a committee of volunteers, and is sponsored by the all-volunteer Bound Together Anarchist collective bookstore. We would like the book fair to remain free to attendees and affordable for vendors (current table price is $150 for two days, though in the past it has been as much as $205). In addition to the rental of the venue, there are additional costs to be considered such as: renting tables/chairs, poster design/printing, security, etc.

In an effort to accommodate all of the vendors, as well as to continue having speakers, we chose The Armory Community Center, which in addition to being affordable (and resulting in a 25% decrease in fees for vendors) is located near public transportation. We also considered that a number of local anarchists have or do work there. We announced this decision in August 2012 and have included the information in all of our materials.

It is our belief that there is a valid political criticism of every venue that is potentially available. The universities we considered, it seems almost self-evident to point out, are the prime engines of defense research, vivisection, and genetic engineering. Many of the venues under consideration are involved in labor disputes, and the County Fair Building/Arboretum is pivotal to privatization of the Parks (to say nothing of the corruption scandal involving the overtime pay of Park Rangers).

We acknowledge that pornography and sex work have been divisive issues in the anarchist community. The choice of the Armory Community Center is not a political statement, and the Book Fair Committee is taking no political position on pornography. We accept that members of the community (and even members of this committee) have differing opinions on this issue. We will be organizing a discussion on anarchist perspectives on pornography during the book fair, and if this topic interests you, we hope that you will attend. We will be hosting it at a venue near the Armory and hope to announce the details when the full book fair schedule is released next week.

Because we live in a capitalist society, and until we have created an explicitly anarchist infrastructure that can support this type of event, such contradictions and compromises are inevitable. We would be happy to consider additional venues for next year. If you have a suggestion of a venue that meets the criteria listed below, please email us at abookfair@yahoo.com.

In solidarity,

- Jen Angel, Ramsey Kanaan, and Joey Paxman
The Book Fair Committee
abookfair@yahoo.com

Venue Criteria:

• Costs below $10,000 for two full days of rental (including tables, chairs, security)
• Can accommodate 100 6-ft vendor tables indoors
• Has a separate room  (or two) for speakers that has a minimum capacity of 50
• Is accessible by public transportation
• Will not object to the political nature of the event

Venues originally considered that were too small / expensive /etc:

• Oakland Convention Center
• Laney College
• The Concourse Exhibition Center
• The Moscone Center
• Fort Mason
• Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
• Mission High School
• Horace Mann Middle School
• The Women’s Building
• Mission Cultural Center
• MLK Jr Middle School
• Oakland Metro Opera House
• Great American Music Hall
• The Regency Ballroom
• Oakland Asian Cultural Center
• Berkeley Community College
• California Institute for Integral Studies
• University of San Francisco
• University of California Berkeley.
• Mission Bay Conference Center
• San Francisco State University
• San Francisco Design Center
• Kezar Stadium

We are hard at work finalizing the poster and have confirmed some speakers, and we will post information next week.

Over the years, working with Golden Gate Park’s Hall of Flowers has become prohibitively expensive. Combined with increased restrictions on bike parking, outdoor selling, and requirements for security as well as the changing nature of the park and the neighborhood, the Book Fair committee felt that it was important to investigate alternatives.

The Armory Community Center was chosen because of the few San Francisco Bay Area venues that have the capacity for such a large event (including a separate room for speakers), it is the most affordable. This reduced cost will mean a significant reduction in the cost of table rentals for vendors. We believe that this savings is enough of a benefit to the community to warrant a venue change.

Although parking might be a bit more difficult and there’s no Golden Gate Park to lounge around in, the accessibility to BART and the cost savings make The Armory Community Center a great choice for the Book Fair.

If you have questions about the new venue, please email us at
abookfair@yahoo.com.

See you in March 2013!

Folks who want to set up a blanket and sell zines, distribute information, etc in the Courtyard on Saturday, March 31, will need to fill out a day of registration form this year as required by our lease for the County Fair Building. Please note that the Courtyard will not be available at all on Sunday, April 1.

It’s a great line-up!  You can check out all our speakers’ bios here, and you can find out when they will be speaking on the schedule page.

More speakers have been confirmed:

• Kim Stanley Robinson
• Rudy Rucker
• Scott Crow: co-founder of Common Ground in New Orleans, author of Black Flags and Windmills. 
• Peter Linebaugh: legendary social historian, co-author of The Many Headed Hydra, author of London Hanged and The Magna Carta Manifesto.
• Sasha Lilley
• Selma James: author of Sex, Race, and Class.
• George Katsiaficas: author of numerous books including Imagination Of The New Left, and Asia’s Unknown Uprisings.
• Alexander Akin
• Iain Boal: editor of numerous books, most recently, West Of Eden.
• Kenneth Wishnia:  author of numerous crime/mystery novels

…and a growing list of panels:

• ‘Surrealism, Art And Anarchy’: with Penelope Rosemont, Ron Sakolsky and V. Vale.
• ‘Occupy the Future! SF writers on radical visions of tomorrow’:  with Kim Stanley Robinson, Rudy Rucker, and Terry Bisson.
• ‘Love And Struggle: David Gilbert, SDS, Weather Underground, and beyond’:  with Terry Bisson, Claude Marks and other ex- Weather folk.
• ‘On The Ground: The 60′s Underground Press’:  with Trina Robbins, Judy Gumbo Albert, Terry Bisson, Jay Kinney.
• ‘Rad Dad’ – with editors Tomas Monis, Jeremy Smith and contributors.
• ‘West Of Eden: Communes and Utopia in Northern California’: with editors and contributors Iain Boal, Cal Winslow, Janferie Stone and Jeff Lustig.
• ‘Terrorism, Dissent, and Repression’: with Scott Crow, Claude Marks and others.
• ‘Global Connections, Universal Intuition and Social Movements’:  George Katsiaficas, Andrej Grubacic, Barbara Epstein.