Workers Solidarity Movement

The 10th DABF took place on 25th April in the new locations of the Generator the Cobblestone and Block T around Smithfield square. Saturday saw us host a day of talks and workshops emerging out of a range of struggles and new movements with book and organisation stalls in the Generator.

Our Facebook event for DABF 2015

Over the years, Dublin’s working class has organised to fight landlords, developers and politicians in search of decent housing and well-being for all. This panel at the 9th Dublin anarchist bookfair considered how some of these earlier campaigns and direct actions can inform today’s struggles.

Dublin Housing Action: Past, Present and Future - Anarchist bookfair 2014 audio by Workers Solidarity on Mixcloud

Selma James lead off a discussion on sex work at the Dublin Anarchist Bookfair alongside, sex worker Jenny O, and Wendy Lyon who blogs at Feminist Ire

There is then a 30 minute discussion with the audience around anarchism, sex work and feminism.

Sex Work as Work: A Conversation with Selma James at the Dublin Anarchist Bookfair by Workers Solidarity on Mixcloud

A space at which people involved in a variety of struggles explained them and sought solidarity. There were three talks, Vegan Information Project , Stop NATO in Cymru and the International Organisation for a Participatory Society (IOPS). 

Nelly Cuadros a community activist from the central department of Tolima, Colombia shared with the Dublin Anarchist Bookfair her stories of resistance, and lessons on uniting against injustice. Women play a central role in these communities and, in spite of discrimination as both peasants and women, are emerging as important social leaders for this pivotal time.

This talk was part of Latin American Solidarity Week. As a last minute addition to the program Leah also spoke about the struggle against Fracking in Ireland

Just how good are the mass media at keeping the rabble in line? This panel from the 2014 Dublin Anarchist Bookfair explores the media’s complicity with the rich and powerful and what we can do about it.

A Media panel on Manufacturing Consent at the Dublin Anarchist Bookfair 2014 by Workers Solidarity on Mixcloud

This is the archive page of the 9th Dublin Anarchist bookfair, you will find video and audio from the bookfair below.  For details of the latest bookfair see www.wsm.ie/bookfair

DABF 2014 as at Liberty Hall  Saturday 12th of April   

Between Bookfairs we recommend you join the  Dublin Radical Events from the WSM group so you get invitations as soon as plans are finalised

Before and during the bookfair we encouraged people to tweet to #DABF

The weekend started Friday night with a film screening before the main event in Liberty Hall on Saturday, an afters party / fundraiser in The Flowing Tide Saturday night and then rolling though to Sunday afternoon for a Cycling tour around Dublin. 

Friday 11th in Seomra Spraoi at 7.30 - 'Broken Song' screening
About the film - "GI, Costello and Willa Lee are street poets, hip-hop artists, rappers and song-writers from Dublin’s Northside. Through their words and music they have found a way of expressing themselves and inspiring others to achieve the same." 

The main event of the weekend saw 20-30 organisations with stalls & information stands downstairs in Liberty Hall while upstairs and  in the Flowing Tide three streams of meetings & workshops will run throughout the day. 

A Dublin anarchist bookfair meeting at which two speakers - Milton Sánchez Cubas (President of the Celendin Interinstitutional Platform (PIC), a network of 40 grassroots organisations from Celendin Department of Cajamarca, Peru) and Aida Julieta Quinones Torres (a member of the Environmental Committee for the Defense of Life which monitors the socio-environmental impact of the La Colosa mine, in the department of Tolima, Colombia) –looked at the impact on their communities of exploitation by mega-extractive multinational corporation and explained how they organize to face this threat

The talk on the Campaign Against Home and Water Taxes (CAHWT) at the Anarchist Bookfair 2013 in the Main Hall was relatively sombre in tone to say the least.  The echoing clamour of the Main Hall only served to highlight the strange impasse which the campaign has found itself in of late. The assembled survivors could have fitted easily into Room 2, which was packed to capacity by speakers on issues which would seemingly be less of a political immediacy.

Guest review by Ciara

If you are not familiar with the infamous Come Here to Me blog then you should really have a look at it or the book and join thousands of other readers finding out about social history in Dublin. There are over 2,000 stories on the site addressing many different facets of everyday life and culture in Dublin from forgotten lanes, to overlooked monuments through to stories about the Gards, the eating habits of Dubs, and clubbing in the 50's and everything in between. The site has won a number of awards over the years and two of the authors spoke at the Dublin Anarchist Bookfair to a crowd of academics, librarians, archivists and many interested members of the general public.