As part of an ongoing series of short Question and Answer sessions with fellow Anarchists who are organising in their local community, today we’re talking to a member of the Houston Anarchist Bookfair, the current iteration which has been going since 2023, primarily organised by members of Space City Anarchist Organization.
Thank you all for taking the time out to answer some questions, let’s crack on with a biggy. It’s been 40 odd years since the first Anarchist Bookfair of the modern era and over the years we’ve seen massive changes to what Bookfairs look like and who attends them, so I’m curious what you see as the main role of an Anarchist bookfair today?
I think there isn’t a specific role that the anarchist bookfair fills in; rather, it provides potential for a lot of different things. The biggest advantage of the anarchist bookfair serves as a space of encounter for anarchists/anti-authoritarians in the region to be exposed to radical projects that exist in the area. It is also a good networking opportunity for projects from beyond the book fair’s host area to connect with other anarchist projects in the region. Here in Houston, I think the anarchist bookfair particularly serves as an important project, as open radical events (other than protests) much less anarchist events are rare. It also serves as a statement to the resilience of the anarchist scene in Texas, especially after Prairieland and the 2017 fascist attack on the Houston Anarchist Bookfair.
What happened in 2017, how did the community respond in the immediate moment and in the following years? Presumably the previous collective ended? Why did y’all feel it so important to pick it back up again in 2023?
Well, in 2017, fascists attempted to disrupt the Houston Anarchist Bookfair. They tried to enter the building where the bookfair was located, but they failed and settled for chanting outside briefly before leaving. This was before my time, and yeah, we largely have no connection to the previous crew that put it on. We decided to pick it up back in 2023 because of our (SCAO’s) initial momentum. We simply wanted to do it, and we did it.
There are many Anarchisms as they say and yet somehow, especially online, our spaces can feel like a sub-cultural bubble. What political and cultural gaps do you think Bookfairs help fill that online spaces and other events cannot? To what degree to you try and involve anarchists from across the spectrum, where does this become a struggle and are there any hardlines?
I think Bookfairs are an accessible place for people to interact with anarchists and anarchist ideology. Online spaces can be troublesome in the sense that while you have access to more resources, there is often little incentive to act in good faith. A physical space to interact with people often helps promote good-faith conversations.
Typically, as far as I am aware, most Bookfairs put out a call for tablers, who then receive applications from many different anarchist groups, ranging to something more formal like an anarchist federation to an insurrectionary zine distro group. The Houston Anarchist Bookfair typically doesn’t discriminate against groups that wish to table, unless they are particularly problematic or explicitly electoralist/statist. If there is a project that we are particularly fond of, some of which aren’t explicitly anarchist (say for example, a Palestine Solidarity Group) we explicitly invite them.
Do you think liberals are capturing Anarchism? What responsibility (if any) do event organisers have to maintain a specific perspective?
While I don’t think “liberals” are capturing anarchism, I do think that sometimes people fall into the whole electoralism trap especially in “high stakes” elections. In my opinion, it’s a personal decision at best. I do think that we should gatekeep our spaces, but not for people who have the right opinions, rather people who are committed to doing action and to help build the conditions for other people to take actions.
I’m generally not a fan of electoralist/establishment orgs trying to table at the Houston Anarchist Bookfair, and have refused electoralists who have attempted to circulate petitions at a bookfair. From my perspective which is built on a specific context where authoritarians and liberals are keen to scrub anarchists from the narrative as much as possible, it’s always been important to have a specifically anarchist space, which is one of the major reasons why SCAO exists in the first place.
How does the HAB collective organise itself, are you all in the same organisation or from various groups? How are decisions made, do you practice a broad horizontal approach with everyone chipping in or are there individuals/work groups taking on (self) assigned tasks?
So, our newer anarchist bookfair is pretty much organized by the local anarchist federation – Space City Anarchists. We invite as many people from our collective as possible to participate, and we do a decent job of dividing up the labor. We put out a series of roles that need to be filled and people sign up for them. However, there are some folks that are like “put me wherever!” and some of the organizers point them towards roles that need to be filled. It’s completely voluntary. We usually delegate decisions regarding specifics like security to a security working group, and medic team, etc. In recent years, we’ve invited other groups to help out with security, etc. and hopefully moving forward it won’t be totally organized by SCAO/SCAF.
What responsibilities, sure as child care, security and wellbeing support do you take on? why and how do you go about it?
I generally take on a “jack of all trades sort of role.” I help out wherever people need me (other than super specialized stuff). I tend to prioritize security roles or communication because that’s what I’m most familiar with. I think that sometimes the bookfair runs into the similar problem most anarchist organizing runs into, where its a few people doing the same work. However, this year, this bookfair felt very much self managed. I look forward to seeing how this develops, especially as we prioritize the bookfair becoming more and more community run.
What brought you towards organising an Anarchist/Radical bookfair and what keeps you committed? Has organising these events changed your perspective?
I think that for the first one, we were just capable of doing an anarchist bookfair, and some of us were taking about doing it, and we decided to do it. After the first one, we were like, “Wow! We should do this again!”, and at this point it feels like tradition. We have a lot of fun organizing these events despite its stresses, and that’s what keeps us motivated. Honestly, if we had the capacity, we would do these convergences way more often!
There are lots of constraints put on anyone organising events these days, how do you tackle these issues such a cost, resourcing and even just finding a suitable space in the first place?
Despite my critiques I have of anarchist organizing (well, organizing in general in Houston), SCAO is very competent at community organizing, and fundraising. Some of our roots are in the punk scenes and our intentional work in these subcultures results in a reputation that allows for venues to pretty much offer their space for free. I think generally, the most expensive part of the Houston Anarchist Bookfair is our food cost, given that we operate at a loss and it takes a decent amount of money to feed people.
However, from our organizing experience in food distros, we’re pretty competent in cutting down food costs. We have an Open Collective fund set aside for bookfair, and whatever we can’t make up in resources we already have, we can pay for miscellaneous items without having to break the bank.
What do you and your collective feel is still lacking, where can you improve and what challenges are you taking on ahead of your next event?
As I’ve mentioned before, I think we could be better at democratizing bookfair planning and pushing forward community ownership. Definitely could be better at engaging/propagandizing the bookfair, but we’re slowly improving on that front. In the future, I think we’re looking to have the bookfair happen over the course of a couple of days or generally have more activities for people to do, perhaps creating a temporary third space as well.
On a personal level, what has been your favourite moment(s) of organising these events?
Oh man, I have so many!
At the first bookfair, when I was pulling a security shift out in the open sun, 90 degrees outside, on the verge of heat exhaustion, this homeless dude pulls up and strikes up a conversation with me, asking me what we were doing. I don’t really remember what the content of the conversation was, it being several years ago, but I remember it being pretty engaging. After a while, he leaves and I continue to do security, but later he pulls up with a burger from Burger King and a room temperature Busch Light, which honestly made my day.
Beyond that, my favourite moments are always whenever I get to hang out with other radicals from out to town, sometimes we invite them to hang out with us. I remember that we invited a comrade from Dallas to go clubbing with us the night before bookfair and we ended up having to find him because he disappeared into thin air! Luckily he was safe and sound, but that was definitely an eventful night.
And of course, the bookfair after-parties are always great, whether it’s comrades splitting off doing their own thing or everyone meeting up at a bar afterwards, it’s a great way to end a bookfair.
Is it Bookfair or Book Fair?
I use bookfair, but honestly who cares?