From June 28 to 30, 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 1, 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 1, 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!
