Emergency declarations, ending birthright citizenship, Laken Riley, far right sheriffs, and proven patterns of community resistance... Our conversation last Sunday with author Jessica Pishko and activist Dulce Morales covers it all! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYNy-ECaoHQ
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Our bookstore is no stranger to unwanted government attention; we’ve been threatened by city officials, visited by the FBI, and surveilled by police. Historically, the investigation and prosecution of activists has aimed to disrupt our movements for change, sow fear and isolation among participants, break intergenerational bonds, and criminalize struggles for freedom. But we can overcome these attacks through principled action and uncompromising solidarity.
Firestorm has made the following commitments:
• We will minimize non-required collection and storage of information about customers, authors, event participants, and others who engage with our co-op.
• We will resist, and publicly disclose, any attempt to obtain such information when it exists.
• We will decline to answer questions from police and government agents.
• We will fight any court or government subpoena, process, or demand for records, testimony, or evidence.
• We will support those in our community who face state repression, regardless of “guilt” or “innocence.”
• We will retain legal counsel to defend our freedom to not cooperate with the State.
We know that these actions cannot guarantee safety for our members or community, but to cooperate in the face of our own repression, or the repression of others, would be a profoundly unsafe betrayal. Noncooperation is both the ethical and strategic position for those who want to build a new world, but must contend with the old one.
Find our entire statement, including linked references, at https://firestorm.coop/noncooperation.html.
[#]FreedomToRead #StateRepression #CoopsNotCops #Anarchism #FeministBookstore #FirestormCoop
📸: Daniel Barlow
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Next weekend Firestorm is delighted to be hosting former political prisoner Henri Feola for a short reading and discussion of their recently published zine, "The Veil Between Worlds is Plexiglass."
Henri's work focuses on his experience as an incarcerated forest defender, intertwining the personal and the political. This conversation will explore abolition, jail support and solidarity, and the role of art and personal narrative in revolution.
Learn more and find copies of "The Veil Between Worlds is Plexiglass" at https://firestorm.coop/events/3316-the-veil-between-worlds-is-plexiglass.html.
[#]DefendTheForest #Zinestagram #Abolitionism #FreeThemAll #PoliticalPrisoners #FeministBookstore #FirestormCoop (- L)
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The Asheville Anarchist Rad Fair is being postponed due to weather, but we're still on for indoor activities tomorrow!
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If you participated in our disaster reading group, or want to jump in on the next iteration, join us tonight at 6:30pm! We'll be discussing "A Critical Framework for Just Recovery" (a ~20min read), but you don't have to finish it to join in! https://movementgeneration.org/transition-is-inevitable-justice-is-not-a-critical-framework-for-just-recovery/
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Stick around afterwards for an event on resistance to mass deportations with author Jessica Pishko and CIMA at 4pm, then our co-op will host a screening of "Fell in Love with Fire," a documentary about Chile's 2019 popular uprising, at 6:30pm.
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New administration, same regime! Asheville is home to longstanding anarchist organizing, because regardless of who's at the top, the whole system is rotten. On Sunday, January 19th—one day before Trump's inauguration—we'll join dozens of cities across the US where communities are organizing festivals of resistance to prepare for escalating attacks by both the State and the far Right.
The Asheville Anarchist Rad Fair (AARF!) invites community members to learn more about local grassroots projects focused on abolition, mutual aid, and collective liberation. Pick up free literature, ask hard questions, make new friends, get involved, start your FBI file on a fun note! There will be treats for dogs and their humans! 🦴
This is an outdoor event at 1022 Haywood Rd and will be postponed to the following week (1/26) if it's below 45 degrees or raining. Dress warm, wear a mask, and bring your pup!
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Español abajo
County sheriffs will be key to Donald Trump's promise of "mass deportations." Alongside community activists from CIMA, Jessica Pishko, author of The Highest Law in the Land, explains the roles of these elected officials, how they work with white supremacist and anti-immigrant groups, and how communities can resist.
This event will be livestreamed on our YouTube channel (no registration required). Simultaneous interpretation will be provided for in-person participants.
Alguaciles y policías de el condado van a ser la clave para la promesa de “deportaciones masivas” que hizo Donald Trump. Junto a activistas comunitarios de CIMA, Jessica Pishko, autora The Highest Law in the Land (“La ley más alta del país”) explicará las funciones de estos funcionarios electos, como trabajan con grupos de supremacistas blancos y antiinmigrantes, y como pueden resistir las comunidades.
Este evento sera transmitido en vivo en nuestro canal de YouTube (no es necesario registrarse). Se proporcionará interpretación simultánea para los participantes en persona.
[#]ImmigrantRights #ImmigrantsWelcome #NoBorders #StopHB10 #ChingaLaMigra #FeministBookstore #FirestormCoop
(- L)
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If you are looking to deepen your political and spiritual practices in 2025, join the new community-led Sacred Anarchy Book Club to meet like-minded folks and explore the roles that magic, animism, and spirituality play in our movements for liberation.
Why are some ideas hidden, suppressed by the state? How do we harness these ideas for both personal transformation & collective liberation? Discuss these questions and more in this monthly space. No prior reading is required for this introductory session. The first book discussed will be "Occult Features of Anarchism: With Attention to the Conspiracy of Kings and the Conspiracy of the Peoples."
Pick up a copy at https://firestorm.coop/products/12487-occult-features-of-anarchism.html and use the promo code BOOKCLUB10 to save 10% at checkout.
[#]BookClub #OccultFeaturesOfAnarchism #QueerBookstore #CoopsNotCops #AbolitionNow #FeministBookstore #FirestormCoop (-Esmé)
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Last chance to get cozy at the bookstore this weekend before we close for a mini winter break next week! ❄️
Asheville is experiencing a cold front AKA ideal book browsing weather. Hang out, have a cup of tea, and disappear into the pages of your first 2025 read. We're open today and tomorrow from 3-7pm. We'll be closed January 6 - 9 to do our own hibernating. Never fear, we will be back with extended hours next weekend!
[#]QueerBookstore #CoopsNotCops #FeministBookstore #FirestormCoop (-Esmé)
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Last chance to sign up for Saturday's Rattling the Cages talk! Creators Eric King, Sara Falconer, and Josh Davidson will be talking about creating this oral history project, the importance of inside-outside collaboration, and how replicating these oral histories is something you can do, too. https://firestorm.coop/events/3304-rattling-the-cages-how-we-did-it-and-how-you-can-too.html
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Our friends at PODER Emma are an under-celebrated success story in the cooperative movement! This article from @GEO_Collective is a great read and builds on interviews with members of both their team and ours.
https://geo.coop/articles/grassroots-disaster-relief-asheville
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I tore through this book the way the house tears into the Maxwell family: ferociously. If you've read a book by Rivers Solomon you know how their pose has a way of getting its teeth in you, and "Model Home" is no different. Join us on January 25th to peel back the wallpaper and dissect memory, inherited trauma, and the mother archetype in horror.
Use promo code YIKES to save 10% when you purchase your copy at https://firestorm.coop/products/22042-model-home.html.
[#]BookClub #QueerHorror #QueerBookstore #FeministBookstore #FirestormCoop (-Esmé)
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Our local bail fund would love to get everyone out for New Years, but since they don't have those resources, they thought the next best thing would be to put $1 on everyone's commissary account so they can at least call home to their loved ones. Join in tomorrow at 3pm! https://firestorm.coop/events/3320-asheville-community-bail-funds-1-for-the-1st.html
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New year, no prisons, no closets, no borders! ⛓️💥 https://nycabc.wordpress.com/2024/11/24/nye_call_2024/ #Asheville #PrisonAbolition #FreeThemAll #FTTP
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In 2024 our co-op collaborated on nine incredible events with Eric King and Josh Davidson, co-editors of "Rattling the Cages: Oral Histories of North American Political Prisoners!" Next Saturday, Eric and Josh will be joined by Rattling the Cages co-creator Sara Falconer to share how they started this oral history project, the importance of inside-outside collaboration, and how replicating these oral histories is something you can do, too. Sarah and Josh will additionally talk about a quarter century of creating the Certain Days calendar, building relationships with political prisoners, and why our support matters!
Learn more about this event and sign up for free at https://firestorm.coop/events/3304-rattling-the-cages-how-we-did-it-and-how-you-can-too.html. Not sure you can make it? Register anyway and we'll send you a recording of the conversation to stream at your convenience.
[#]Abolition #PrisonAbolition #MassIncarceration #PrisonIndustrialComplex #FeministBookstore #PoliticalPrisoners #FirestormCoop (- L)
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Need to send a last minute holiday present or end of year thank-you? Our co-op delivers gift cards by email! https://firestorm.coop/gift-cards.html 🎁💨
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In "They Will Beat the Memory Out of Us," author Peter Gelderloos argues that a failure to learn from, and remember, our history is a primary impediment to liberatory movements. "Many of us have come to expect that each new generation will grow up unaware of the struggles that preceded them, having to make all the same mistakes and to learn similar versions of the same lessons. But what if it doesn’t have to be that way?"
Radical history-keeping is one of the interventions that a bookspace like Firestorm participates in, and this year our community read a multitude of movement histories, revolutionary memoirs, and collected reflections. We didn't just read—past and present members of our collective also contributed to the work of documenting our shared experiences, as in "Books Through Bars" and "Constellations of Care," two new collections created by and for movement participants. In other cases, we gathered together with neighbors to read and discuss, a practice of collective digestion exemplified by the six weeks we spent with Solnit's "A Paradise Built In Hell" after Hurricane Helene (a backlist title that sold faster than we could replace it for months, resulting in widespread book sharing and the unmonetized circulation of photocopied chapters).
Of course, we were also reading novels! Despite some misconceptions, Firestorm is principally a collective of fiction readers, with tastes that skew toward the delightful and unsophisticated. And while our community sometimes surpasses us, we saw a continuing surge of interest in horror, with many of our best sellers bridging the terror of the supernatural and the horror of existing on the margins of capitalist and colonial states. Finally, we'd be remiss not to shout out Margaret Killjoy's "The Sapling Cage," a witchy YA novel that sold four times more copies than any title at our store, in a few short months becoming our second bestselling novel of all time 🤯
Find our complete list of 2024 Bestsellers & Collective Picks at https://firestorm.coop/lists/2024-bestsellers-collective-picks.
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If you attended any sessions of our disaster reading group over the last two months, please join us tonight (12/16) at 7pm for a discussion about what comes next! (vegan / gf potluck contribution optional)
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