Hundreds attend Dublin 2009 anarchist bookfair

dublin | anti-capitalism | news report

Sunday March 08, 2009 21:22

by Andrew

wsm_ireland at yahoo dot com

In the region of 1,000 people attended the Dublin 2009 Anarchist bookfair at Liberty Hall on Saturday. From the time doors opened at 10.30 to 6pm a constant stream of people came into the venue to browse the books, listen to the speakers or to take part in workshops and discussions.

Seomra Spraoi workshop

Some 60 people had attended the screening of ‘An Anarchists Story’ the previous evening in the Seomra Spraoi social centre. After the bookfair had ended over 150 attended a post bookfair meal and party at Seomra Spraoi.

The audio file below was recorded at the Seomra Spraoi social after the bookfair, in it over a dozen people give their impressions of the day. Keynote speakers included former Black Panther Ashanti Alston and noted academic and US feminist Martha Ackelsburg, the author of 'Free Women of Spain.' There were 10 meetings / workshops on during the day, during the coming week we will be making available audio (and later video) recordings of many of these meetings. The largest, the address of Ashanti Alston had in the region of 250 people present in the room for what was a very inspirational speech.

Other meetings and workshops were smaller, from a dozen or so for the early morning slots to in the region of 150 for Martha Ackelsburg.

At lunchtime today many of the bookfair partipants took part of the feminist walking tour of the north inner city organised by RAG, Choise Ireland and Lashback.