COMING SOON...
THE FIFTH ANNUAL CALGARY ANARCHIST BOOKFAIR:
Yes, here, there and everywhere anarchists are getting together to celebrate their growing influence. Yes, even in Cowtown, a place you might think would be the most inhospitable. Yet, for 5 years running now Calgary has hosted an anarchist bookfair as spring is sprunging in. This year will be no different:
WHEN: Friday, April 25, Saturday, April 26 and Sunday, April 27
WHERE: Calgary Old "Y" Centre
HOW MUCH: All events and food are free.
INFO: http://bookfair.anarchistservices.ca
Featuring workshops on such things as promotion, pirates, counter-surveillance, consensus decision making and "talking to liberals". The full schedule will be up at the website after April 1.
The organizers "promise" that the "free vegan food" won't be the usual stomach-turning slop associated with that phrase. We'll just have to see.
There will also be a slate of movies including 'The Forest for the Trees', 'Polly II-Plan for a Revolution', 'Haiti; We Must Kill the Bandits', and 'Unrepentant: Kevin Annet & Canada's Genocide". Plus more to be announced.
Further details available at the bookfair's website. For other inquiries or for arranging to table contact the organizers at anarchistbookfair@linuxmail.org
And while you're at it don't forget to pencil in Winnipeg's upcoming bookfair, to be held here in "wunnerful Winnipeg" from Thursday May 8 to Sunday May 11. See our archives for February for more details.
3 comments:
Free vegan food? Hohoho... Do you get chucked out if you bring a ham sandwich? Soy is to my taste buds as a bullet is to my forehead ( except the latter is painless and over quickly).
Well Molly is no great fan of this stuff either. From a purely aesthetic viewpoint I tend to avoid it. The wife, who has a great cooking hobby and is much more informed on the matter of food than I could ever be, is even more extreme on this matter than I am. I also have to admit that the whole concept of "ideological food" makes me feel creepy, and that it is very much a North American "perversion". In North America people tend to treat their food as either "medicine" or "fashion statement". The way that a certain way of eating has become de rigeur amongst anarchist circles in the continent where I live is MERELY a magnification of the popular culture in which anarchism here has developed. The ONLY other countries in the world where food is treated similarily (to my knowledge) are Germany and England. NEITHER has ever been famous for its "great cuisine".
The "vegan fad" is TOTALLY seperate from the "slow food" movement across the "civilized world" that Molly has discussed before. The "slow food" movement holds to a hedonistic view of the world that is much closer to what anarchism (and non-Leninist socialism for that matter) has traditionally held. "Slow" is preferable NOT just because its consumption has political repercussions but ALSO(and mainly) because it is inherantly more pleasurable. Pleasure is NOT a bad thing !!!!
The project to make eating a mere political act WITHOUT paying any attention to "pleasure" is part and parcel of the "historical debris" that our present anarchism has inherited from the failed "new movements" of the 60s and 70s. In its own way it is EVEN MORE BIZARRE than the politically correct attempt to proscribe "proper ways of fucking", and some of the weirdness that has come out of that quarter is truly mind-boggling.
All that being said, let's give the organizers the benefit of the doubt. If they say they can do it right, well let's see. I'd feel a little more confident if all their cooks were from India(where ideological/religious food is a millenia long tradition), but still... My own feeling around this is the same as if I went to a Jewish or Muslim event and ate kosher or halal food. Yeah, it should be "so-what". The ONLY creepiness comes from the fact that there is some vague(or often less than vague)implication of ethical superiority amongst the adherants of "veganism" that is so juvenile that few Jews or Muslims would ever push the matter. To them it is more custom than "ethical billboard". NEON ethical billboard in some cases.
Now that alone is enough to turn your stomach.
just so folks know...
yes it will be likely that there will not really be much by the way of meat provided for free at the bookfair.
and no you wont get chucked out if you bring in a ham sandwich. can i have some?
we (I'm one of the many organizers)just wanted to create meals for the largest amount of people. ie. folks who eat meat can eat veg. but folks that eat veg. can't eat meat... besides this food will be super tasty (and pleasureful). sushi, cookies, casserole, or chili anyone? we are working very hard to ensure that the food has from local producers as much as possible. factory farms suck and are super harmful.
so while the free food wont have meat in it... we'll live. hell i'll probably eat better their than usual. also, there are many vegans who do come to Anarchist stuff in town. Adhering to the community's ethical or socio-economic considerations in the matter is important. As are the lives of non-human animals...
I for example do identify as an Anarchist in many ways. yet, am not a vegan by any means, *bites into (fill in the blank animal)*... so yea give us "the benefit of the doubt"...
i don't fully know what you mean by slow food... sometimes i feel like many people don't have that as an option though. granted it's not ideal by any means. but when i work, go to school and organize in the community it's hard. i wouldn't fault someone, especially a person who does not have all the advantages in life that i unduely enjoy (you know being "white", "male", "middle class", "able", "canadian", etc. ), for resigning themselves to eating "faster" food. no i don't mean Macdonalds.
anyways. i hope that y'all can make it. there's a pizza by the slice exactly 60 steps outside of the building, 2 pubs with food within stones throw, and an Ethiopian restaurant/food store on the block.
cheers,
philip
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