Don't miss the 2010 Radical Bookfair Pavilion at the Baltimore Book Festival!


Special Thursday night kickoff event at the Creative Alliance (3134 Eastern Avenue):

Of Riots and Resistance: Readings from Marshall Law: The Life and Times of a Baltimore Black Panther, by Eddie Conway
$10 donation requested, all proceeds to benefit Eddie Conway's defense fund. Local artists, actors, and activists read from Eddie's new momoir, due out in February.



Friday, September 24, at the Baltimore Book Festival:

Noon - 5PM: The Annual Zine Bazaar! Baltimore zinesters sell (and trade, and give away) their wares! Tabling is free. Email zines@redemmas.org to reserve a spot. Readings throughout the day.

5PM: Zack Furness presents One Less Car: Bicycling And The Politics Of Automobility

Presenting an underground subculture of bike enthusiasts who aggressively resist car culture, Furness maps out the cultural trajectories between mobility, technology, urban space and everyday life. He connects bicycling to radical politics, public demonstrations, alternative media production (e.g., zines), as well as to the development of community programs throughout the world.


6:30PM: Anarchism 101 with Cindy Milstein
What exactly is anarchism? Turns out the answer's not so simple. Cindy Milstein, author of the new excellent primer on anarchist history, politics, and praxis, Anarchism and Its Aspirations kicks off the bookfair with a discussion of the genesis of contemporary anarchism.



Saturday, September 25, at the Baltimore Book Festival:

12PM: Josh Macphee presents Signs of Change: Social Movement Cultures 1960s to Now and Signal: A Journal Of International Political Graphics & Culture

Two amazing collections of politically charged art from one of the people behind the Justseeds Artists Cooperative.


1PM: Panel: Feminism and Representations of Women
Lisa Jervis: Bitch Magazine
The quintessential DIY feminist response to pop-culture, now in its second decade of irreverent rabble-rousing.
Sheri Parks: Fierce Angels: The Strong Black Woman in American Life and Culture: An analysis and critique of the damage done by the mythical image of the strong black woman so prevalent in the American cultural landscape.


2PM: Panel: The Cost of Coal
Tricia Shapiro, Mountain Justice: Homegrown Resistance to Mountaintop Removal
A journalist embeds herself in the fight to save the Appalachian wilderness from wholesale destruction, following the activists taking on the coal industry with courageous acts of civil disobedience and non-violent direct action.
Mark Nowak, Coal Mountain Elementary
One of America's most innovative political poets remixes verbatim testimony from the surviving Sago, West Virginia miners and rescue teams, the American Coal Foundations curriculum for schoolchildren, and newspaper accounts of mining disasters in China to create a poignant reminder of coal's toll on the human race.


3PM: Panel: Political Prisoners in the United States
Eddie Conway, The Greatest Threat & Marshall Law
A recorded address from Marshall "Eddie" Conway, the former minister of defense of the Baltimore Black Panther Party on his new book, The Greatest Threat, which explores the COINTELPro infiltration of the BPP.
Paul Coates, Black Classic Press
The former Panther and founder of local publishing house Black Classic Press discusses the current situation fo Eddie Conway's case, and the Panther Party and the politics of imprisonment.


4PM: Ted Rall presents An Anti-American Manifesto
One of the foremost political cartoonists on the left today (as well as an accomplished radical journalist), Ralls new book calls for the immediate revolutionary overthrow of the United States of America.


5PM: The City from Below
Max Rameau, Take Back the Land: Land, Gentrification, and the Umoja Village Shantytown
A first-person account of the initial salvo in the now national movement to reclaim the right to housing through the unpermitted and autonomous occupation of vacant properties; a movement which has recently spread to the Mid-Atlantic with ONE DCs ongoing occupation of Parcel 42.
David Harvey, The Enigma of Capital
The acclaimed Marxist geographers sweeping analysis of the financial crisis and the possibilities for anticapitalism in the 21st century.


6PM: Team Colors presents Uses of a Whirlwind: Movement, Movements, and Contemporary Radical Currents in the United States
The geographically dispersed autonomous research collective presents the results of their multi-year survey of social movements on the ground in the United States today, joined by contributors Ashanti Alston, Max Rameau, and longtime Baltimore community activist Betty Robinson.



Saturday night: Celebrate five years of the Radical Bookfair and twenty years of AK Press at the Baltimore Free School!

Join us for a reception hosted by The Red Emma's Collective at our newest space, The Baltimore Free School (1323 N. Calvert Street)! Bring your dinner along, and hear from Bookfair organizers, our invited speakers, local folks, and the members of the newly transplanted AK Press collective, which now splits its offices between Oakland & Baltimore. Let's give our favorite anarchist publishers a big welcome to Baltimore! 8-10PM, drinks available (free/donation).



Sunday, September 26, at the Baltimore Book Festival:

12PM: Chris Williams, Ecology and Socialism: Solutions to Capitalist Ecological Crisis

A sobering account of the economic and political transformations necessary to avoid coming environmental catastrophe.


1PM: Panel: Learning from Latin America
Jeff Conant, A Poetics of Resistance: The Revolutionary Public Relations of the Zapatista Insurgency
How do you market a revolution? An exploration of the way in which the Zapatistas captured the imagination of the world through the construction of their own narrative of resistance.
Marina Sitrin, Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina
The definitive oral history of the inspiring grassroots response to the dramatic Argentinian economic collapse earlier in the decade, which is only becoming more relevant in the current US context.


2PM: Panel: Labor legacies, labor victories
Kari Lydersen, Revolt on Goose Island: The Chicago Factory Takeover, and What it Says About the Economic Crisis
A riveting account of the workers occupation of the Republic Windows and Doors Factory.
Deborah Rudacille, Roots of Steel: Boom and Bust in an American Mill Town
A peoples history of Dundalk, Maryland, tracing the prosperity of the boom times and the ongoing impact of deindustrialization.

3PM Panel: Fighting Whiteness and Alienation from Surrealism to the Steel Mill
Penelope Rosemont, Surrealism: Black, Bown, & Beige (winner of the American Book Award!)
The last book compiled by the founder of American Surrealism before his death, co-conspirator and fellow dreamer Penelope Rosemont discusses the enduring anti-racist, anti-whiteness legacy of Surrealism.
Noel Ignatiev, A New Notion: Two works by C.L.R. James
A leading critical historian of whiteness situates the legendary Trinidadian freedom fighter and labor militant in the context of the fight against exploitation on the shopfloor. (tentative)


4PM: Panel: Rethinking resistance in the 1970s
Dan Berger, The Hidden 1970s: Histories of Radicalism
A new collection exploding the widespread myth that radical challenges to the social and political order in the United States disappeared after the 1960s.
Daniel Burton-Rose, Creating a Movement with Teeth: A Documentary History of the George Jackson Brigade
The documents and communiques from the George Jackson Brigade, an organization that launched a revolutionary armed struggle in the Pacific Northwest in the 1970s.

    The Radical Bookfair tent will be bursting at the seams with all sorts of radical publishers and booksellers, not to mention some great radical art and all sorts of local campaigns and projects. Here's who's coming:


  • Red Emma's Bookstore Coffeehouse
  • AK Press
  • PM Press
  • Justseeds Artists Cooperative
  • Microcosm Publishing
  • Haymarket Books
  • Monthly Review
  • Civilian-Soldier Alliance
  • Wooden Shoe Books
  • Indypendent Reader
  • Baltimore Industrial Workers of the World
  • Autonomedia
  • Teaching for Change

The Zine Bazaar, 12 Noon-5PM, Friday, September 24th

With zines from:



  • Pitch Black Rage Distro
  • Cracks in the Concrete Distro
  • Dina Kelberman (Important Comics)
  • Red Emma's

And readings from:



  • Jackie Wang (Loneberry, Memoirs of a Queer Hapa, On Being Hard Femme
  • Rachel & Sari (Hoax Zine)
  • China Martens (Catbird)
The Zine Bazaar, which runs from 12 Noon to 5PM on Friday September 24th, is a chance for zine-makers to share their zines (for free or for sale) without having to pay for a table (which can be exorbitant when you're selling the fruits of your labor for a buck or two, or giving it away for free!)

If you'd like to table with your zine or other suitably DIY publication, and/or would like to do a reading or workshop in the Zine Bazaar, get in touch at zines-at-redemmas.org.
  • Part of the city-wide Baltimore Book Festival, all events at the Radical Bookfair are free and open to the public. Everything will be taking place in our outdoor tent, located on the east side of the circle around the Washington Monument in Mt. Vernon Square. This is our fifth Radical Bookfair, and the third year we've done the Bookfair as a part of the Baltimore Book Festival (Past Radical Bookfairs: 2006|2007|2008|2009).
  • The Radical Bookfair is a project of Red Emma's Bookstore Coffeehouse, a worker-owned and collectively managed bookstore and coffeehouse located at 800 St. Paul St., just one block east along Madison from the north end of the Baltimore Book Festival.
  • Questions? Get in touch at bookfair@redemmas.org.