Friday September 28
12pm-6pm The annual Zine Bazaar in the Radical Bookfair Pavilion
The celebration features fiercely independent publishing, DIY politics, crudely drawn comics, uncompromising self-expression, and long arm staplers, with zine authors from Baltimore and beyond reading from their works and selling/trading their creations.
7pm Kate Khatib, Mike McGuire, Lester Spence, and others, We Are Many: Reflections on Movement Strategy from Occupation to Liberation
Free beer reception (Sponsored by Union Craft Brewing) at 6pm. Talk starts at 7pm.
We Are Many brings together over 50 activists and organizers for a critical look at what the Occupy movement has accomplished, and casts an eye towards where the movement might go from here. Compiled by Baltimore organizers Mike McGuire and Kate Khatib, with SteamPunk Magazine editor Margaret Killjoy, We Are Many is the first collection on the Occupy Movement written by the on-the-ground activists.
Moderated by Mike McGuire, with co-editor Kate Khatib, and contributors Lester Spence, John Duda, and Ryan Harvey
Saturday September 29
12pm Shawn Peters, The Catonsville Nine
On May 17th, 1968, a group of Catholic antiwar activists burst into a draft board in suburban Baltimore, stole hundreds of Selective Service records (which they called “death certificates”), and burned the documents in a fire fueled by homemade napalm. The bold actions of the ”Catonsville Nine” quickly became international news and captured headlines throughout the summer and fall of. In The Catonsville Nine, Shawn Francis Peters, a Catonsville native, offers the first comprehensive account of this key event in the history of American protest.
1pm China Martens, Vikki Law, Jennifer Silverman, Don’t Leave Your
Friends Behind: Concrete Ways to Support Families in Social Justice
Movements and Communities
Years in the making, this volume of essays and interviews edited by Baltimore’s very own hip mama, China Martens, author of The Future Generation, and NYC prisoner-justice organizer Victoria Law asks tough questions about what happens to parents when radical and social movements don’t make space for families. The Baltimore launch event for this hotly anticipated, deeply moving title!
2pm Dean Spade, Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of the Law
Laura Whitehorn, The War Before: The True Life Story of Becoming a Black Panther, Keeping the Faith in Prison, & Fighting for Those Left Behind
Former political prisoner and prisoner-rights advocate Laura Whitehorn joins Dean Spade, co-founder of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, for a discussion about the prison-industrial complex and the ways in which the law stacks the deck against people who don’t conform to the “norms” of society. A rare opportunity to hear these two celebrated and beloved organizers speak together!
3pm Bill Fletcher, Jr., They’re Bankrupting Us! And 20 Other Myths About Unions
From Wisconsin to Washington, DC, the claims are made: unions are responsible for budget deficits, and their members are overpaid and enjoy cushy benefits. The only way to save the American economy, pundits claim, is to weaken the labor movement, strip workers of collective bargaining rights, and champion private industry. In the Baltimore launch event for this brand-new book, labor leader Bill Fletcher Jr. makes sense of this debate as he unpacks the twenty-one myths most often cited by anti-union propagandists. Drawing on his experiences as a longtime labor activist and organizer, Fletcher traces the historical roots of these myths and provides an honest assessment of the missteps of the labor movement.
4pm Eric Laursen, The People’s Pension: The Struggle to Defend Social Security Since Reagan
Social Security is one of those topics that most people think they know about. Everyone “knows” Social Security is “going bankrupt,” that the government “raided the trust fund,” and that “it won’t be there when we retire.” But who’s doing the raiding, and what will it take to save Social Security? Eric Laursen, author of a monumental new book on the history of the fight to save Social Security, joins the Baltimore Book Festival to discuss this critical topic – with an eye towards a mutual aid-oriented solution that will delight even the most stanchly radical critics of our contemporary governmental system.
5pm Anna Anthropy, Rise of the Videogame Zinesters: How Freaks, Normals, Amateurs, Artists, Dreamers, Drop-outs, Queers, Housewives, and People Like You Are Taking Back an Art Form
Craig Saper, Intimate Bureaucracies
Cutting edge radical queer/trans videogame designer Anna Anthropy and digital media theorist and prankster Craig Saper discuss the hidden possibilities of subversion lurking beneath the everyday forms of our electronic culture.
6:30pm Josh MacPhee and Alec Icky Dunn, Signal 2: A Journal of International Political Graphics
Arts activists and Justseeds Radical Artists Cooperative members Josh MacPhee and Alec Icky Dunn present the latest in their series of books devoted to bringing attention to the radical graphic arts practices of the non-Anglophone world. A treat and a must-see for anyone excited about the communicative power of graphic arts!
7pm The Radical Bookfair Pavilion presents Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan, The Silenced Majority: Stories of Uprisings, Occupations, Resistance and Hope (Literary Salon Stage)
On U.S. tour with their new book, Democracy Now! co-founders Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan show how the work of ordinary people—the silenced majority—is pulling back the veil of corporate media and changing the world.
Sunday September 30
12pm Cindy Milstein & Erik Ruin, Paths Toward Utopia: Graphic Explorations of Everyday Anarchism
Anarchist scholar Cindy Milstein joins radical graphic artist Erik Ruin for a series of short interventions into some of the here-and-now practices that prefigure, however imperfectly, the self-organization that would be commonplace in an egalitarian society. Their new collaboration mines what we do in our daily lives for the already-existent gems of a freer future—premised on anarchistic ethics like cooperation and direct democracy. Its pages depict everything from seemingly ordinary activities like using parks as our commons to grandiose occupations of public space that construct do-it-ourselves communities, if only temporarily.
1pm Matt Kennard, Irregular Army: How the US Military Recruited Neo-Nazis, Gang Members, and Criminals to Fight the War on Terror
Since the launch of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars—now the longest wars in American history—the US military has struggled to recruit troops. It has responded, as Matt Kennard’s explosive investigative report makes clear, by opening its doors to neo-Nazis, white supremacists, gang members, criminals of all stripes, the overweight, and the mentally ill. Based on several years of reporting, Irregular Army includes extensive interviews with extremist veterans and leaders of far-right hate groups—who spoke openly of their eagerness to have their followers acquire military training for a coming domestic race war. As a report commissioned by the Department of Defense itself put it, “Effectively, the military has a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy pertaining to extremism.”
2pm Richard Wolff, Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism
Called the leading social economist in the nation by Cornel West, Richard D. Wolff, professor of economics at the New School, host of WBAI’s “Economic Update,” and prominent critic of capitalism lays out his vision for a world without bosses, in which workers run their own workplaces democratically.
3pm Rory O’Connor, Friends, Followers, and the Future: How Social Media are Changing Politics, Threatening Big Brands, and Killing Traditional Media
There’s a revolution going on, as ever-accelerating developments in digital information technologies change nearly every aspect of how we live, work, play, do business, and engage in politics. Share and share alike—the numbers say it all as billions of people worldwide flock to online media and use social networks to discover and spread news and information. How do we get our information today, and how does that shift impact big business? Award-winning journalist Rory O’Connor explains the trends and explores what tech visionaries, media makers, political advisers, and businesspeople are saying about the meteoric rise of the various social networks of friends and followers, and what they bode for our future.
5pm Robert Birt and Floyd Hayes, The Liberatory Thought of Martin Luther King Jr.: Critical Essays on the Philosopher King
The Baltimore launch for this long-awaited book of philosophical essays exploring the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Edited by Bowie State University professor Robert Birt, who will speak with contributor Floyd Hayes, coordinator of the Center for Africana Studies at Johns Hopkins University, The Philosopher King explores the significance of King’s reflections on racism, economic justice, democracy, the quest for community, and, above all, hope.