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Hundreds attend Dublin 2009 anarchist bookfair

category dublin | anti-capitalism | news report author Sunday March 08, 2009 21:22author by Andrewauthor email 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
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.

Related Link: http://www.wsm.ie/bookfair

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The platform at the fighting the capitalist crisis meeting
The platform at the fighting the capitalist crisis meeting



People reactions to the 2009 Dublin anarchist bookfair
audio People reactions to the 2009 Dublin anarchist bookfair 10.79 Mb

Comments (16 of 16)

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author by conorpublication date Sun Mar 08, 2009 21:32author address author phone

it was a good day. everything was great from the stalls to the workshops to the speeches! Seomra Spraoi was good too. Thanks to all for setting it up.

author by Dubliner - Irish man society publication date Sun Mar 08, 2009 22:10author address author phone

Hope you made a few bob in the process , well done people .

author by aileenpublication date Sun Mar 08, 2009 22:48author email aaocarroll at gmail dot comauthor address author phone

Photos from the Bookfair

Martha Ackelsberg speaking about Mujeres Libres
Martha Ackelsberg speaking about Mujeres Libres

Ashanti Alston "all power to the people"
Ashanti Alston "all power to the people"

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author by aileenpublication date Sun Mar 08, 2009 22:51author address author phone

couple more photos

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bookfairreaders.jpg

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author by Diarmuidpublication date Mon Mar 09, 2009 06:07author address author phone

The venue was spacious if a bit airless downstairs and good variety of stalls. I attended one talk which was interesting and people told me that the ex-Panther speaker's talk was very good. I had a headcold and some fever but was glad I dragged myself out. Well done to all concerned in the organisation and running of the event.

author by Aaronpublication date Mon Mar 09, 2009 10:35author address author phone

Im not an anarchist and ive never seen indymedia. Ive never really thought about capitalism and all that but the bookfair was good and im glad i feel my eyes are pen now. im 16 and no one my age talks about this stuff. I used to think anarchists were crazy. I cant believe they are so different

author by Tiredpublication date Mon Mar 09, 2009 11:55author address author phone

Fair dues to everyone on this,it was fantastic
First time I ever went and i really felt a lot of sense was being spoken
Hopefully the economic downturn will help people wake up a little

author by Andrew - WSMpublication date Mon Mar 09, 2009 12:21author email wsm_ireland at yahoo dot comauthor address author phone

This is the audio recording of one of the first morning meetings at the bookfair 'Left Unity? What sort of Left should we be trying to build?' Which was a debate between the WSM & ISN. There are contributions from the floor from "People before Profit' and the 'International Bolshevik Tedency'.

Audio is one hour and five minutes in duration.



Debate on Left Unity between ISN & WSM at 2009 Dublin Anarchist bookfair
audio Debate on Left Unity between ISN & WSM at 2009 Dublin Anarchist bookfair 18.98 Mb

Related Link: http://www.wsm.ie/public_newswire/theleft
author by Andrewpublication date Mon Mar 09, 2009 16:08author address author phone

This is an audio recording of the '‘Organising The Fightback’' meeting at the 2009 Dublin anarchist bookfair. There were three speakers at the meeting, Gregor Kerr a WSM (and INTO) member, an Executive member of the Civil and Public Services Union (CPSU) and a representative of the Free Education for Everyone (FEE) Campaign.



Organising the Fightback meeting at Dublin anarchist bookfair 2009
audio Organising the Fightback meeting at Dublin anarchist bookfair 2009 17.24 Mb

author by Andrewpublication date Tue Mar 10, 2009 11:28author email wsm_ireland at yahoo dot comauthor address author phone

This audio is of the session organised by the Irish Palestinian Solidarity Campaign. The speaker is Nidal Saadeh, a leftist Palestinian activist from Bethlehem in the West Bank.

Note - this was recorded with my back up equipment which isn't as good as my main recorder. The first minute or so of the audio is very indistinct but it improves after that.



Palestine & womens rights discussion at 2009 Anarchist Bookfair
audio Palestine & womens rights discussion at 2009 Anarchist Bookfair 15.56 Mb

Related Link: http://www.anarkismo.net/newswire/mashriqarabiairaq
author by Andrewpublication date Tue Mar 10, 2009 14:59author address author phone

Ashanti Alston is a former member of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army member told us about his experiences, the lessons he draws from them and what he thought of revolutionary politics in Ireland.

Note - indymedia has a 20mb file size limit which means that the only way I could get this file up was to reduce the sampling rate to 32bit, most of the others here are 40 but really they should be at least 48.



Ashanti Alston at the Dublin Anarchist Bookfair 2009
audio Ashanti Alston at the Dublin Anarchist Bookfair 2009 16.64 Mb

Related Link: http://anarchism.pageabode.com/andrewnflood/interview-black-panther-anarchist-ashanti-alston-ireland
author by Ultan - Nonepublication date Wed Mar 11, 2009 08:43author address author phone

The bookfair was great, so congratulations to everybody involved. The range of books was excellent and the stalls had lots of titles that would otherwise have been quite hard to locate in Dublin or anywhere else in Ireland. This was my first visit to the annual anarchist bookfair and I'll be back again as it is an important political, literary and cultural event in this country.

Comhgheardais daoibh!

author by Andrewpublication date Wed Mar 11, 2009 13:45author email wsm_ireland at yahoo dot comauthor address author phone

Martha is a US anarchist feminist and author of the classic anarchist text 'Free women of Spain'. In her talk at the bookfair she discusses the movement of revolutionary anarchist women that arose during the Spanish revolution of 1936.



Martha Ackelsburg at the 2009 Dublin anarchist bookfair
audio Martha Ackelsburg at the 2009 Dublin anarchist bookfair 19.61 Mb

Related Link: http://www.wsm.ie/public_newswire/gender
author by Andrewpublication date Wed Mar 11, 2009 16:49author address author phone

This is the last of the audio recordings from the 2009 Dublin anarchist bookfair and it is the 'What is anarchism' session. Two sessions were not recorded, the one on social centres as the workshop technique used for not sutable for audio recording and the one on sexual health as it would have had too big an effect on the questions people felt able to ask.

This 'What is anarchism' session was recorded using my backup gear, this along with the fact that it happened in a cordened off area of the bar meant the audio is unclear at times and in editing I had to remove a couple of contributions which could not be understood above the background noise,



What is Anarchism at the Anarchist Bookfair 2009
audio What is Anarchism at the Anarchist Bookfair 2009 18.93 Mb

author by SCmediacooppublication date Fri Mar 20, 2009 12:18author address author phone

Ashanti Alston, ex Black Panther and Black Liberation Army, at the invitation of the Workers Solidarity Movement, visited Ireland for the Anarchist Bookfair in Liberty Hall, Dublin on 7th march, talks of the significance of his trip to this country - this sturuggle, and of figuring out the way forward.

Caption: Video Id: BTKDCIlo-2Q& Type: Youtube Video
Embedded video Youtube Video


author by Andrewpublication date Wed Mar 25, 2009 16:38author address author phone

The first posting of the audio of the Ashanti posting above had to be compressed to 32bps because of the then existing limitaons on the size of audio files. Indymedia.ie has upped the limit and as 32bps means the introduction of a lot of compression artifact noise I'm reposting a 56kbs version which will be a lot better. I've also attempted to correctly link in the video someone tried to post above

Note to editors - the low quality version should probably be left in place as I suspect there are a fair few links elsewhere pointing at it



Ashanti Alston at the 2009 Dublin Anarchist Bookfair - HQ ver
audio Ashanti Alston at the 2009 Dublin Anarchist Bookfair - HQ ver 29.12 Mb

Caption: Video Id: BTKDCIlo-2Q Type: Youtube Video
Embedded video Youtube Video



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