Friday August 23

1pm Welcoming Table — Firestorm Books 610 Haywood Rd

1:00pm-2:00pm Veganism in Anarchy & Non-violent Direct Action in Social Justice Movements @ Firestorm Books
2:15pm-3:15pm Siwar Mayu, a river of hummingbirds @ Firestorm Books
3:30pm-4:30pm Appalachain Anti-Racism @ Firestorm Books
4:45pm-5:45pm Burn Down the American Plantation @ Firestorm Books
6pm-7pm Anarchism in Puerto Rico @ Firestorm Books

7pm-12am Pansy Fest @ Sly Grog
12am-4am Pansy Fest Dance Party @ Static Age

Saturday August 24

Tabling @ Mothlight 11-5pm

10:00am-11:45am Stop the Bleed @ Kairos
10:30am -11:30am Read Aloud for Anarchkids @ Firestorm
11:45am-1:15pm Co-ops, technology, & Existential Dread @ Firestorm

1:00pm-2:00pm Lunch Break – Potluck @ Mothlight Patio! Bring Snacks if you are able!

2:00pm-3:00pm Lucid, Passion, Love and Rage: notes from the Underground Atlanta Dance Scene @ Firestorm
2:15pm-3:45pm Self-Managed Abortion: Practical Considerations Seminar – Knoxville Abortion Doulas @ Kairos West
3:15pm-4:30pm “No One Will Be Free Unti Everyone Is Gay”: Queer and Anarchist Histories in the 20th Century United States @ Firestorm
4:45pm-5:45pm Their Statue, Our Blood: History at Hand – Maya Little @ Firestorm
6:00pm-7:00pm Pan-African Social Ecology – Modibo Kadalie @ Firestorm

7:00pm-12:00am Pansy Fest @ Sly Grog

12:00am + Pansy Fest Noise Show @ Mold House

Sunday August 25

Tabling @ Mothlight 11-5pm

10:00am-3pm Pansy Fest BIG GAY BRUNCH & LGBTQ Prisoner Letter Writing w/ Tranzmission Prison Project

10:00am-11:30am Tech Security @ Firestorm
12:00pm-1:45pm Roundtable discussion on DIY repro care @ Kairos West
11:45am-1:15pm The Radical Potential of Kitchen Medicine @ Firestorm
1:30pm-2:30pm Nationalisms @ Firestorm
2:00pm-3:30pm Meaningful Discomfort as Liberatory Practice @ Kairos West
2:45pm-3:45pm Perspectives of anarchists organizing in Rojava @ Firestorm
3:45pm-4:45pm The history and future potential of failure as a strategy of revolt @ Kairos West
4:00pm-5:30pm Building Alternative Worlds @ Firestorm
5:00pm-6:30pm Relationship Anarchy: Increasing Autonomy and Reducing Entitlement @ Kairos West

Workshop Descriptions Alphabetically

A Kissing Booth An ecstatic experiment. An invocation of Eros. An exploration of the ambiguous cartography of desire. Logistics: One at a time behind the curtain, please. Each interplay will last for approximately 10 minutes. Kissing is absolutely not required. SAT & SUN 11:00am-5:00pm @ Mothlight

Appalachain Anti-Racism I really want to have an open dialogue conversation with the Appalachian community about immediate and sustainable ways we can be in solidarity with our black and brown family. With 2020 elections coming up and especially with ICE continually breathing down our backs, I think this should be one of the things we’re really focusing on. I want to talk about what to do if you see ICE as a white person, resources, reparations, and bridging the gap between white anarchist punks and the communities that need radical white bodies to protect them. FRI 3:30pm-4:30pm @ Firestorm

Building Alternative Worlds – glo merriweather + ke’ala lopez Divesting and imagining a different world SUN 4:00pm-5:30pm @ Firestorm

Burn Down the American Plantation..Revolutionary Abolition The Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement is a political movement dedicated to freeing people from bondage and building resistance in the United States. We situate our political movement in the context of the abolitionist struggle against slavery and continue in the tradition, from Nat Turner to the Black Liberation Movement. We will be discussing these political foundations and talking in detail about our on the ground organizing within prisons, against ICE and towards an international strategy. FRI 4:45pm-5:45pm @ Firestorm

Co-ops, Technology, and Existential Dread
At a time when capitalist technologies play a pivotal role in dividing, surveilling, and targeting our communities, how can we contest our relationship to tech and develop tools to further our own liberation? Along with and in relation to physical technologies, this presentation will explore economic cooperation and structures that tap into our individual ingenuity and collective capacity for solidarity.
Nikki is a NC-based anarchist who organizes around immigration. She currently works for Mijente and has previously done worker co-operative development, particularly with immigrant women. SAT 11:45am-1:15pm @ Firestorm

The history and future potential of failure as a strategy of revolt: a talk by James T. With intersections in queer theory, disability justice and conflict resolution, there is a lot we can learn from embracing and practicing failure. This talk with overview the history of failure as a political strategy, failure as a logic embedded in restorative justice, as well how failure can be enacted in the contemporary (digital) age. Failure encompasses so much of what it means to participate in anti capitalist movements and By bringing more understanding of what failure looks like- more possibilities, and destructions, can occur. SUN 3:45pm-4:45pm @ Kairos

Their Statue, Our Blood: History at Hand I hope to survey the activism taking place in Chapel Hill. This has been cast as a movement around white supremacist monuments when the movement has strategically used the white supremacist landscape to reveal truths about the racism of the university, town, and institutions of Chapel Hill. Black, women activists have primarily led this fight forcing Chapel Hill to confront its racist past and present while actually grounding and writing in blood often coopted concepts such as “intersectionality.” Antiauthoritarian, direct action and a broad coalition of autonomous actors, many typically privileged enough to ignore racism, came together through the collective dedication to rescue imagined futures that were repressed in the university’s past. I hope to inspire others to use their own landscape to reveal truths about and take action against systems of oppression near them. SAT 4:45pm-5:45pm @ Firestorm

Lucid Passion, Love and Rage: notes from the Underground Atlanta Dance Scene The Atlanta-based underground collective No Lite is bringing dance music back to its rebellious roots by throwing wild parties in abandoned buildings.No Lite is a collective of roughly a dozen people who throw parties together in Atlanta, GA. This presentation will discuss our desired intervention in the Atlanta dance scene, what we’ve learned since our formation in 2016, and tips on how to throw your own squat party. SAT 2:00pm-3:00pm @ Firestorm

Meaningful Discomfort as Liberatory Practice A workshop for leaning into the edges of meaningful discomfort with oneself and others to support a rich inner life and increase intimacy with others. Sort of awareness exercises meets meditation meets relational group play that culminates into an act of insurgence against the disembodied culture & resistance to the reproduction of psychic violence with a mind that denies & rejects vital parts of who we are. For those into somatics (or curious about it!), people who loathe small talk (or want to break out of it!), people who get freaked out by looking other humans in the eye (or who are really into that!) and buds who tend to think way more than feel (or feel way more than think!)…for everybody, really. SUN 2:00pm-3:30pm @ Kairos

Nationalisms: No nations, no states? What does it mean for anarchists to confront nationalism in and across localities and contexts? A conversation and self-reflection around anti-imperialism, cultural identity, xenophobia, and diaspora. SUN 1:30pm-2:30pm @ Firestorm

No One Will Be Free Unti Everyone Is Gay: Queer and Anarchist Histories in the 20th Century United States “In today’s United States, where LGBTQ people legally marry, serve in the army, and take part openly in the upper ranks of corporate and political power, the days when queerness seemed a disruptive threat to established authority seem to be vanishing. Yet examining the history of homosexuality in the United States reveals a little-known story: the central significance of anarchist ideas and activists within the struggle for sexual liberation. Anarchist sex radicals offered the first public, political defenses of same-sex love in the United States, decades before the emergence of the gay liberation movement. Likewise, anti-authoritarian currents have long swirled through lesbian and gay culture, with insistence on individual freedom and autonomy alongside a fierce critique of the state common not just among activists but throughout the fabric of everyday queer life. Even after the classical anarchist movement declined in the 1920s United States, queer anarchists exercised a significant influence – not just among other political or sexual radicals, but in the cultural avant-garde of literature, poetry, and music, among public intellectuals, and within gay liberation, feminist, bisexual, and direct action movements. Exploring the hidden history of queer resistance to all forms of authority opens a window into the capacity of dissident sexuality and politics to provoke profound cultural and political change – a capacity that radical queers today, in an age of triumphant assimilation, can and should reclaim.

If you’re interested in history, radical politics, sexual liberation, LGBTQ communities, or underground and outlaw culture, this talk will appeal to you. Regardless of your current political beliefs or sexual orientation – YOU WILL BECOME A QUEER ANARCHIST BY THE END OF THIS PRESENTATION! Come out – we dare you. SAT 3:15pm-4:30pm @ Firestorm

Puerto Rico’s anarchist resistance I aim to talk about the struggles for liberation within the context of being an U.S. colony, and the resistance on colonialism and imperialism of young (queer) puertorricans. FRI 6:00pm-7:00pm @ Firestorm

Pan-African Social Ecology In the middle of the twentieth century, the civil rights, Black power, and Pan-Africanist movements forever altered the shape of human social existence as millions of people organized in a world-wide struggle for freedom that continues into the present day. In this community conversation, scholar-activist Modibo Kadalie will reflect upon his nearly six decades of participation in social freedom movements, from Atlanta’s lunch counter sit-ins, to labor organizing in Detroit, to student protests for Black studies, to anticolonial support networks for African liberation and beyond. Kadalie will offer a new way to understand history by recasting these movements as remarkably leaderless revolutions and connecting Black freedom struggles to ecological activism in the era of climate change. Kadalie calls upon present and future generations of activists to reconnect with the spirit of past revolutions and our own intuitive capacities for cooperation and directly democratic self-governance. SAT 6:00pm-7:00pm @ Firestorm

Perspectives of anarchists organizing in Rojava We hope to have a secure video conference call to be shown on a projector, wherein we can talk about our collective, the state of the revolution in rojava, armed struggle, broad self defense, internationalism, and more. Our local contact would moderate such a discussion. SUN 2:45pm-3:45pm @ Firestorm

Radical Potential of Kitchen Medicine In this class we will discuss ways that we can harness the accessibility and affordability of kitchen medicine to keep ourselves and our communities healthy. Herbalism should be available on a food stamp budget rather than marketed as a luxury item only available to those who can afford it. SAT 10:00am-11:45am @ Kairos

Read Aloud for Anarchkids The final event in Firestorm’s “Reading, Recycling, and Radicalism” summer event series, exploring ecology through books and nature crafts! For this event we’ll be reading anarchist picture books for kids ages 0 to 8. Snacks provided. SAT 10:30am-11:30am @ Firestorm

Relationship Anarchy: Increasing Autonomy and Reducing Entitlement This workshop invites participants to look at interpersonal relationships as a domain for interogating and dismantling domination and ownership culture. It serves as an introduction to applying an evaluatory anarchistic lens to relationships, especially those traditionally framed (at least nominally) as “romantic/sexual.”

This is an opportunity to discuss both basics and best practices for challenging conditioned entitlement, and supporting one another’s autonomy in caring community.

We benefit from an outline of some pratices developed by those whove spent years developing ideas about liberatory relating in community, as a jumping off point for activities and discussion in this workshop. SUN 5:00pm-6:30pm @ Kairos

Roundtable discussion on DIY reproductive care Our collective wants to invite the community to discuss ways they have provided various aspects of reproductive care for themselves in resistance to a medical industrial complex rooted in white supremacy and capitalism. We hope to share stories, exchange ideas, offer recipes and resources to one another to strengthen our collective ability to provide autonomous pelvic care. SUN 12:00pm-1:45pm @ Kairos

Self-Managed Abortion: Practical Considerations Seminar – Knoxville Abortion Doulas Discussing practical considerations in providing community-centered abortion is crucial, given the landscape of abortion access in our region. This seminar covers the legal and technical considerations that ensure community providers and clients are accessing Self-Managed Abortion resources in safe ways. Given the criminalization of SMA in our country, special attention is given toward protecting marginalized populations. All of our workshops are trans and queer friendly and suitable for those who are interested in providing, advocating, or otherwise supporting abortion access. SAT 2:15pm-3:45pm @ Kairos

Siwar Mayu, a river of hummingbirds “Siwar” and “Mayu” in the Quechua language (currently spoken by eight million people in the world) translate into hummingbird and river, respectively. This website is conceived of as a river of hummingbirds. ‘Siwar’ symbolizes the bearer of messages, the ancestors, the ones who cross borders, and is in-between, just as our project is, just as contemporary indigenous writers and artists are. FRI 2:15pm-3:15pm @ Firestorm

Stop the Bleed Review of basic techniques to control simple bleeding followed by demonstration and practice with advanced techniques for life-threatening bleeds grounded in situational awareness.

Tech Security This workshop will look at digital security culture w/r/t different threat models: fascists, the state, big data, etc. Some parts will be interactive && participants will get more w/ space phone || computer but everyone should come. SUN 10:00am-11:30am @ Firestorm

Tranzmission Letter Writing Party “Hey y’all! Come join Tranzmission Prison Project (TPP) for a letter writing party. Based in Asheville, NC, TPP is one of a growing number of LGBTQ-focused prison abolition/advocacy groups in the US. We are a volunteer-run, non-hierarchical organization, and provide free books, zines, prisoner resources, and various other means of support to incarcerated folks nation wide.

This is a great opportunity to begin a pen pal relationship or just send a one-time letter letting someone know they are not alone. Writing to folks who’ve been taken by the state is a vital act of support. Until every prison burns, until every wall of the state falls, we must show up for our siblings and comrades on the inside! We hope you’ll join us!

Veganism in Anarchy & Non-violent Direct Action in Social Justice Movements An open discussion and forum about how the plight of human and non-human animals are connected in the fight for total liberation and freedom from a state of oppression. What strategies can we use to advocate for change? How has non-violent direct action been used successfully in the past and how can we continue to use it in the future? What are our basic rights when demonstrating and protesting and how do we handle the police? FRI 1:00pm-2:00pm @ Firestorm

An overview of the schedule of events! We will release a detailed schedule of workshop & speakers in the next few days, so check back soon. Visit Pansy Fest’s Website for more information about their event!

Ad Astra Comix //Ottawa, Canada-based anarchist publishing collective, specializing in comics with social justice themes.

Asheville Prison Books // Asheville Prison Books is a volunteer-run collective which has distributed free literature to people incarcerated in the southeast since 1999.

Bee Daddy & Sons // clothing, and other hand made goods

Birds Before the Storm // zines and books and music that I make

Blue Ridge ABC // BR@BC is a collective of anarchists who believe that jails and prisons, rather than offering a solution to the harms people commit against themselves and their communities, instead make social problems worse. We are a prison abolitionist organization, which is to say we are part of a wider movement working towards an end of incarceration and the creation of alternative, transformative forms of justice in our society.

Carolina Workers Collective // Working class resistance to the state, capitalism, and white supremacy through mutual aid and community defense

Cottonmouth // Cottonmouth is a partisan clothing company that funds revolutionary projects in New Orleans.

CrimethInc. // a secret society pledged to the propagation of crimethink. It is a think tank producing inflammatory ideas and action, a sphinx posing questions fatal to the superstitions of our age.

CuddlePot Mag/Take Action Chapel Hill // Wearables and zines from an autonomous antiracist collective

Doomsday Mountain EF! // we are yet another iteration of earth first organizing here in western north carolina. we advocate for a no compromise standpoint in defense of the earth and all creatures.

Farmshire Animal Sanctuary & No Oppression // Farmshire is an animal rescue and activist organization trying to create change in the oppressive systems that makes animal rescue neccessary. We believe in intersectionality and that injustice and oppression anywhere is a threat to our mission. No Oppression co-tables with us and makes tshirts with social justice messages on them.

Green House Distro //  Green House Distro is a collective based out of the Southeast focusing on topics of anti-authoritarian, anti-civilization, post-left, vegan, individualist and drop-out (lifestyle anarchy). We call ourselves nihilist because of the impending doom of climate catastrophe caused by our current set of living arrangements – civilization. We do not see any hope with this set of living arrangements. Instead of living for the future or a better day we aim to live for NOW. Destroy that which destroys you.

Here and Now Zines // an anarchist zine distro in philadelphia

Indie Rep // queer founded small independent rep service for independent artists and artisans in baltimore

JP Press // An anarchist comics group based in New Orleans, LA
Mountain-area Abortion Doula Collective (MAD Collective) // We are an abortion doula support collective based out of Asheville, offering local support to Asheville residents as well as folks in the wider WNC and Southeast region. We aim to provide doula support for folks navigating abortions before, during and after their procedures; informational support for folks to learn all of their options; and connections with groups like the Carolina Abortion Fund to help folks receive financial support as needed. We are committed to helping people of all genders, races, and resource levels access the reproductive health care they deserve.

NC Resists the Grand Jury // Formerly organized to support resistance to a 2017 grand jury in NC, now continues to serve as a project providing events and resources around prisoner support and anti-repression education.

Noumenon Distro // Anarchist pop-up book and zine distro

The Final Straw // The Final Straw is a weekly anarchist and anti-authoritarian radio show bringing you voices and ideas from struggle around the world. Since 2010, we’ve been broadcasting from occupied Cherokee land in Southern Appalachia (Asheville, NC). We also frequently feature commentary (serious and humorous) by anarchist prisoner, Sean Swain.

The South Bend Commons // The South Bend Commons is a real-life gathering place for urban experiments in community, autonomy, and resilience in Atlanta. The SBC is born out of a decade of living and fighting together.

They/them collective // We are anarcho abolitionist collective center on the lives of BBIPOC LGBTQAI2S +

Tranzmission Prison Project // A queer- and trans-powered prison abolition organization that provides free literature and resources for incarcerated members of the LGBTQ community.

Warzone Distro // Warzone Distro is a (free) zine creating and publishing project focused on anarchy, insurrection and eco-defense.

Some of you may have noticed that Pansy Fest III is the same weekend as the bookfair, and for those of you who haven’t… it’s true!! and we are so excited! While we are completely separate events, together, we are collaborating and inviting you to come to Asheville, NC the weekend of August 23-25 to learn, share, connect, and dance with us. Here is the line-up for the musicians and artists performing over the weekend. We (ACAB) will be releasing our schedule the first week of august. Stay tuned! and check out Pansy Fest’s website for more info for the shows, their collective, and other upcoming events.

The bookfair’s promotional 2019 gear is now available! Hand designed & screen printed in Asheville, NC on 100% cotton. They are available during the bookfair and ahead of time online here!

Mark you calendars, Another Carolina Anarchist Bookfair (ACAB) is going down from August 23rd to 25th in beautiful Asheville, NC.

August 23-25, Asheville, NC will host its third annual Another Carolina Anarchist Bookfair in conjunction with the third annual Pansy Fest, a queer and trans DIY music fest showcasing LGBTQ musicians from the south. The weekend will feature free workshops, panels, talks, as well as a vendors, concerts, and meals. The Bookfair is a space for community building, learning, and resource sharing, to help strengthen regional networks of anti-authoritarian organizers. We hope that the bookfair will once again be a convergence point for learning and sharing ideas in anti-authoritarian, anti-capitalist, anti-racist, decolonial organizing. Building on the successes of the last two years, we hope to welcome hundreds of people, from the region and beyond, to participate in a weekend of events, book, zine, and pamphlet selling, concerts, and dance parties.

It has been another year of atrocities by State powers and fascists in the streets, but we have also seen in our area—and around the globe—that those committed to face these powers head on have only continued their fight, all the while inventing new modes of relationship and engagement to supplant the oppressive forms imposed on us. The work that anti-authoritarians do can get easily eclipsed, especially in the run up to a national election, where liberal candidates try to sap the energy and ideas from radical grass roots actions. In the aftermath of horrible climate disasters, this year has been indelibly marked by the impending doom of environmental collapse that comes along with the continued extraction of resources, the genocide and displacement of indigenous people and the global poor, and the legacies and histories of settler colonialism and slavery. Asheville has continued its quick march towards becoming a tourist hellhole empty of anything for the people who live here. The city becomes more and more unlivable, while more and more useless building projects get greenlighted. We are a city funded by Uber, Lyft, and AirBnb, while the city diverts its money to the police to harass the black and POC communities, evict houseless people from whatever shelters they can find, and to endlessly attract financers to make this a spectacle of a city.

On the other hand, this has been a year of building infrastructure, of strategizing to keep our fights in focus and at the center of the work against electoral inertia, of bringing more attention to decolonial and land protection actions, of continuing to oppose police and prisons and support the people on the inside who risk their well-being to do so, of heading off the endless stream of police-protected white supremacist marches, and more. There are more and more projects getting of the ground, and therefore so much more information to be shared, especially as we begin to head into hurricane season. We need our regular events to meet up and collaborate on projects, learn what works in different terrains, and discuss how to implement ideas in our areas.

We are coordinating with Pansy Fest this year, to hold simultaneous events. After a day of vending and workshops, there will be shows and parties, plus a brunch on Sunday. Pansy Fest is a group of queer and trans southerners dedicated to promoting regional LGBT DIY culture, mutual aid, and resistance. This will be their third year holding the festival, which features performers from around the country. We ask participants to understand that their spaces will prioritize the comfort and safety of queer/trans people.

The applications are currently up for vendors and presenters and will remain open until July 25th. We invite vendors of radical presses, small distros, zinemakers, and artists to sign up. We invite workshops, panels, talks, and trainings towards a liberatory horizon. To apply, please visit or website https://acab2019.noblogs.org to contact us, send an email to acab2019@riseup.net and please promote this event by following our social media or printing our flyers and handing them out in your community.

IG: ACAB.2019

FB: https://www.facebook.com/AshevilleACAB2019

Soli, ACAB 2019

Forms to sign up to vend or present at the bookfair are now open!

Vendors & Publishers

Workshops & Speakers