Wooden Shoe Temporarily Closing

  • March 18, 2020 1:46 am

from Instagram

The Wooden Shoe is temporarily closing due to growing public health concerns in the midst of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. As anarchists we assert that in times of crisis people have the capability of taking voluntary action, both collectively and individually, to mitigate the risks posed by an outbreak such as this. We understand it is imperative to slow the spread of contagion to lessen the chance of the catastrophically unprepared healthcare system becoming overwhelmed. It is in the spirit of these concerns that we make this decision. However, we are also aware that state and government forces are more than willing to exploit crises by abusing tools like quarantines and other states of exception. This often comes at the expense of the most vulnerable, especially those detained and imprisoned in overcrowded jails, prisons, and concentration camps. We will continue to monitor the situation closely and critically and encourage all to do the same. We apologize to all of those in the community who rely on this space.

Wooden Shoe Events Update

  • March 13, 2020 8:00 pm

from Facebook


Dear friends of the Wooden Shoe,In the past week, we have had a number of event cancellations due to coronavirus-related concerns. We will keep you posted when these are rescheduled. In the meantime, we do a have a few events coming up in the next week at the Shoe. See below for more info.

Also, please check out this local mutual aid resource: Neighbors Helping Neighbors: Philly Mutual Aid for folks Affected by COVID-19: https://docs.google.com/…/1FAIpQLScfKlHLhLMEyXyLFN…/viewform

Love and rage,
The Wooden Shoe collective

* * *
Sunday March 15th, 7 pm
Live show & reading with That Bastard, Lexi Spino, OK Mistakes, & Jane-Rebecca Cannarella

A gathering of emotional misfits and anarchists just wanting to have some fun while sharing some words and music

That Bastard aka Tony Strouse aka degenerate from York, Pa. Musician, punk, rambler, ready to scream and scrap. Don’t feed him after midnight

Lexi Spino is a poet from York, PA currently on tour for her newest book release The Electra Complex. She writes on mental illness and suicidal tendencies to bring awareness and help connect to others who may be struggling with the same.

OK Mistakes is an Acoustic folk pop duo originally from York PA and now one half lives in Philly. They sing about love, death, and not much else.

Jane-Rebecca Cannarella is a writer living in Philadelphia. She is the author of the flash fiction collection Better Bones and the poetry chapbook Marrow (both Thirty West Publishing House). She is also the editor for HOOT Review and Meow Meow Pow Pow Lit. She enjoys cats and playing the piano and cats who play the piano.

Thursday March 19th, 7 pm
The Story Hole: Planting Seeds

Take a break from all the hand-washing and get ‘em dirty with us at The Story Hole: Planting Seeds starring Vernon Payne and Katherine Williams! Join us to hear and share stories of new ideas, perspectives, journeys, and plans taking root…or rotting in the pot. Open mic spots will be available.

Vernon Payne is a comedian and storyteller from Brooklyn, NY. He got his start in Albany, NY in 2009 and has gone on to perform at the Emerging Artist Festival “Teenage Love” and “Hilariously Mediocre,” Union Hall, Under St Marks Theater, The Duplex, New York Comedy Club, The Duplex, and other Venues along the east coast. He has also written comic strips for “Spaz Comics.” Vernon’s brand of comedy is set to make you think about the word we live in while laughing at the same time. You can find him on social media as cool_ass_ vern.

Katherine Williams is a Philly-based storyteller, stand-up comic, and writer. She is a two-time winner of the Moth’s StorySlam. She has performed in festivals all over the country, including the Boston Comedy Festival, Bridgetown Comedy Festival, Laughing Skull Comedy Festival and Philly’s Phunniest. She was a finalist in the 2014 Ladies of Laughter competition and She-Devil Comedy Festival. Notable NYC productions include Williams’ full-length play My Dead Mother is Funnier Than You, which got a shout-out on Bravo’s Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen and two solo shows: Call Me (selected for Midtown International Theatre Festival and Plus One Solo Show Festival) and sold-out hit of the New York International Fringe Festival, SHIKSAPPEAL: Getting the Chosen to Choose Me, which garnered a mention in the New York Times and New York Post. Her work has been reviewed by Show Business Weekly, The Jewish Daily Forward, and nytheatre.com. TV appearances include AXS TV’s Gotham Comedy Live and online credits include Morgan Spurlock’s series Failure Club and BADMomLife, in which Williams discusses life as a new mom.

The Story Hole is Philly’s shameless monthly storytelling event blending curated and open mic spots. It’s a free show: free to get in, free to say what you want (except bigotry). Come, dump your stuff, and let shit go.

Send questions and pitches to thestoryhole215@gmail.com. Now accepting pitches for April 22 “Oops” and May 21 TBD.

Hosted by Moth-champion and Risk! podcast alum, Vara Cooper. For more about Vara, visit varacooper.com

Friday March 20th, 7 pm
Reading w/ Kirwyn Sutherland & Caleb “The Negro Artist” Rainey

Kirwyn Sutherland is the author of Jump Ship, published by Thread Makes Blanket Press in 2019. He is a Clinical Research Professional and poet who makes poems centering the black experience in America. He is a Watering Hole fellow and has attended workshops/residencies at Cave Canem, Winter Tangerine, Poets House, Philadelphia Sculpture Gym, and Pearlstein Art Gallery at Drexel University. Kirwyn’s work has been published in American Poetry Review, Blueshift Journal, APIARY Magazine, The Wanderer and elsewhere. Kirwyn has served as Editor of Lists/Book Reviewer for WusGood magazine and poetry editor for APIARY Magazine. Kirwyn is currently teaching Spoken Word/Poetry Performance at the University of the Arts.

Caleb “The Negro Artist” Rainey is an Iowa based spoken word poet that has performed in multiple cities in over half a dozen states, including Chicago and New York City. He is a winner of the Des Moines Poetry Slam, the Iowa City Poetry Slam, and finalist for the UNESCO City of Literature Global Slam – Iowa City. Caleb is the author of two books, Look, Black Boy, and Heart Notes along with publications in Best Emerging Writers in Iowa 2019, the Little Village, and Black Art; Real Stories.

* * *
For updates and more info: http://woodenshoebooks.com/calendar.html

Reflections on Black Bloc, White Riot Today

  • February 23, 2020 10:46 pm

from Facebook

Author AK Thompson in conversation with Kim Kelly

This year marks the tenth anniversary of AK Thompson’s classic book Black Bloc, White Riot. Join AK Thompson and Kim Kelly for a lively discussion to consider what has changed—and what hasn’t—since the book was first released. How have street-level political confrontations evolved in the Trump era, and what can we learn from our past? Come find out on March 1st!

AK Thompson got kicked out of high school for publishing an underground newspaper called The Agitator and has been an activist and social theorist ever since. Currently a Professor of Social Movements and Social Change at Ithaca College, his publications include Sociology for Changing the World: Social Movements/Social Research (2006),Black Bloc, White Riot: Anti-Globalization and the Genealogy of Dissent (2010), Keywords for Radicals: The Contested Vocabulary of Late-Capitalist Struggle (2016), Spontaneous Combustion: The Eros Effect and Global Revolution (2017), and, most recently, Premonitions: Selected Essays on the Culture of Revolt (2018). Between 2005 and 2012, he served on the Editorial Committee of Upping the Anti: A Journal of Theory and Action.

Kim Kelly is a freelance writer and organizer based in Philadelphia. She is currently the labor columnist for Teen Vogue, and her writings on labor, politics, and culture have appeared in the New Republic, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Guardian, Pacific Standard, and many others. She is a proud member of and councilperson for the Writers Guild of America, East, and has been active in multiple organizing and contract campaigns (including serving as a worker-organizer for the VICE Union) since 2015.

[March 1 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM at Wooden Shoe Books and Records 704 South St]

Touch the Sky: Stories, Subversions, & Complexities of Ferguson

  • January 4, 2020 1:13 am

from Facebook

A new video collage reflecting on the raw moments of the 2014 Ferguson riots. A film for the wild ones, the anarchists, and the dreamers…

More info: https://touchthesky.noblogs.org/

110 minutes followed by a short discussion

[January 11th 7-9PM at Wooden Shoe Books 704 South St]

Deceiving the Sky: Collective Experiments in Strategic Thinking

  • November 27, 2019 1:24 pm

Submission

-book tour-

Emerging from a study group on strategy, Deceiving the Sky is a collectively produced book, resource and study guide. While the word “strategy” can evoke hierarchy, centralization and a satellite’s-eye view of the world, we feel it is necessary to strengthen our own strategic reflexes. We believe that strategy can be a lens, an orientation to the world that understands existence as a shifting array of forces, capacities and intentions. Deceiving the Sky is an attempt to build a new language that we can share, to develop our collective capacity for strategic thinking, to become more powerful together.

Dec. 4th at 7:30pm
Wooden Shoe Books
704 South St

State Violence and Crowd Control in France

  • November 11, 2019 11:54 pm

from Facebook

Presentation by the French collective Desarmons-les!

The collective “Let’s disarm them!” was founded in 2012 by anarchist activists who for several years faced state violence and were directly affected by the use of grenades and rubber bullets. Invested in major radical anti-capitalist and ecological struggles between 2011 and 2015 (anti-nuclear and against “useless big construction projects”), the collective met other groups opposed to police violence, street medics, but also many victims, mutilated or close to people killed by the police.

At the end of 2014, “Let’s disarm them!” participated in the building of a national network of mutilated people, the “Assembly of the Wounded”. The state of emergency decreed at the end of 2015 after the attacks of Charlie Hebdo and Bataclan fundamentally transformed the French society and the militarization of the public space accelerated between 2015 and 2018, together with a sharp rise of the far right. Members of the collectives were under house arrest and on numerous occasions prohibited from demonstrating, arrested and brought to justice. The revolts against the labor reform and those of the Yellow Vests between 2016 and 2019 were harshly repressed. Many people have been injured, mutilated and imprisoned.

A member of the collective is organizing an infotour on the East Coast of the United States in November 2019. He proposes to describe the workings of state violence and the evolution of policing in France, from a historical and radical perspective.

[November 18 7PM at 704 South St]

Black Anarchism and the Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement

  • September 6, 2019 12:33 pm

from Facebook

A discussion focusing on Black anarchism highlighting the work of Kuwasi Balagoon and Russell Maroon Shoatz. What does Black anarchism mean in the 21st century? Why is it important? Where does Black anarchism fit into our current movement work today? What is the connection between abolitionist politics and the politics of Black anarchy? How does the Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement fall into this?
[September 13th at 7 pm at Wooden Shoe 704 South St]

Trouble screening: Land and Freedom

  • August 26, 2019 9:53 pm

from Facebook

Trouble 21 looks at anti-colonial struggles in Turtle Island and Palestine

From the genocidal aftermath of Columbus’ accidental “discovery” of the New World, to the ever-deeper encroachments of Israeli settlements into the West Bank — five hundred years of European colonialism has cast a long shadow over this world. Colonization, in its supreme arrogance, carved up the globe according to the imperial logic of accumulation, imposing artificial borders on foreign lands and seeking to subjugate restive native populations through religious indoctrination and force of arms. But despite their military superiority, ideological warfare and constant recourse to savage brutality, colonial regimes have consistently failed to crush the will of colonized people to fight back. And the reason for this is simple. Occupation breeds resistance.

Anarchists, especially those of us who have never experienced the sharp edge of colonization, have much to learn from those waging this resistance. We also have a principled imperative to align ourselves with those facing acute forms of state violence and dispossession. To this end, this episode of Trouble draws on two examples of contemporary anti-colonial struggle – those waged by the Palestinians and the Mohawks of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy against their respective oppressors, the Israeli and Canadian settler-colonial states, in hopes of drawing out lessons and increasing our capacity for producing meaningful solidarity.

[August 28 from 7:00 PM – 8:30 PM at Wooden Shoe Books and Records 704 South St]

Wooden Shoe A Selection Of Upcoming Events

  • August 17, 2019 2:32 am

from Facebook

Sunday August 18th, 2-3 pm
Divest Philly from the War Machine Coalition meeting
https://www.facebook.com/events/349679095923272/

Tuesday August 27th, 7 pm
Them Fatale showcase & open mic
https://www.facebook.com/events/1121465428061819/

Wednesday September 4th, 7 pm
Heineken in Africa: A Multinational Unleashed
A book discussion with author Olivier van Beemen at the Wooden Shoe https://www.facebook.com/events/496410970929437/

*Followed by an after party at Tattooed Mom during their 10-11 pm happy hour ???? https://www.tattooedmomphilly.com/event/heineken-africa-wooden-shoe-party/

Friday September 13th, 7 pm
Discussion of Black Anarchism and the Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement
https://www.facebook.com/events/416005049014957/

Wednesday September 18th, 7 pm
The Battle for the Mountain of the Kurds: Self-Determination and Ethnic Cleansing in the Afrin Region of Rojava
Discussion with PM Press author Thomas Schmidinger
https://www.facebook.com/events/380651969300713/

Thursday September 19th, 8-9 pm
The Rhubarbs Present: The Never Ending Veggie Tale
https://www.facebook.com/events/348847092657536/

Saturday September 21st, 7 pm
One People’s Project Philly Fundraiser
Join the subject of the feature film “Skin” and the star of the documentary “Alt- Right Age of Rage” and One People’s Project founder Daryle Lamont Jenkins
https://www.facebook.com/events/558428338021870/

* * *

Anarchism and Education w/ Mark Bray & Rob Haworth

  • July 24, 2019 10:49 am

from Facebook

On October 13, 1909, Francisco Ferrer, the notorious Catalan anarchist educator and founder of the Modern School, was executed by firing squad. The Spanish government accused him of masterminding the Tragic Week rebellion, while the transnational movement that emerged in his defense argued that he was simply the founder of the groundbreaking Modern School of Barcelona. Was Ferrer a ferocious revolutionary, an ardently nonviolent pedagogue, or something else entirely?

Anarchist Education and the Modern School is the first historical reader to gather together Ferrer’s writings on rationalist education, revolutionary violence, and the general strike (most translated into English for the first time) and put them into conversation with the letters, speeches, and articles of his comrades, collaborators, and critics to show that the truth about the founder of the Modern School was far more complex than most of his friends or enemies realized. Francisco Ferrer navigated a tempestuous world of anarchist assassins, radical republican conspirators, anticlerical rioters, and freethinking educators to establish the legendary Escuela Moderna and the Modern School movement that his martyrdom propelled around the globe.

[July 31 from 7 PM – 9 PM at Wooden Shoe Books 704 South St]

Occult Features of Anarchism w/ author Erica Lagalisse

  • April 18, 2019 1:30 am

from Facebook

In the nineteenth century anarchists were accused of conspiracy by governments afraid of revolution, but in the current century various “conspiracy theories” suggest that anarchists are controlled by government itself. The Illuminati were a network of intellectuals who argued for self-government and against private property, yet the public is now often told that they were (and are) the very group that controls governments and defends private property around the world. Intervening in such misinformation, Lagalisse works with primary and secondary sources in multiple languages to set straight the history of the Left and illustrate the actual relationship between revolutionism, pantheistic occult philosophy, and the clandestine fraternity.

Exploring hidden correspondences between anarchism, Renaissance magic, and New Age movements, Lagalisse also advances critical scholarship regarding leftist attachments to secular politics. Inspired by anthropological fieldwork within today’s anarchist movements, her essay challenges anarchist atheism insofar as it poses practical challenges for coalition politics in today’s world.

Studying anarchism as a historical object, Occult Features of Anarchism also shows how the development of leftist theory and practice within clandestine masculine public spheres continues to inform contemporary anarchist understandings of the “political,” in which men’s oppression by the state becomes the prototype for power in general. Readers behold how gender and religion become privatized in radical counterculture, a historical process intimately linked to the privatization of gender and religion by the modern nation-state.

[April 25 at 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM at Wooden Shoe Books and Records 704 South St]

Screening of Quiet Storm: Technology & Social Control

  • March 28, 2019 12:49 am

from Instagram

We’ll be screening the latest Trouble episode from @sub.media Tuesday April 2nd at 8pm. It’s titled, “Quiet Storm: Technology & Social Control”

[Wooden Shoe Books 704 South St]

Liaisons presents: In the Name of the People

  • February 28, 2019 11:47 pm

from Facebook

Please join us for a discussion and presentation with Liaisons on their recent book “In the Name of the People”. Authors from Japan, Mexico, Montreal, and New York will be present to discuss the global populist surge.

The upheaval and polarizations caused by populist movements around the world indicates above all the urgency to develop global revolutionary perspectives, and to make the necessary connections to understand and act in the present. Liaisons is a collective of authors from America, France, Italy, Japan, Korea, Lebanon, Mexico, Quebec, Russia, and Spain.

More than a collective, less than a world, Liaisons is an inclination, a tangent, a crossroads of confrontations, links, and encounters. Liaisons does not study the movement of others as an external object (movement history), nor does it project principles of revolution in the context of pure theory (intellectual history). Instead, Liaisons assembles analyses and theorizations directly from the ongoing struggles of affiliated groups, based in different parts of the planet and seeking a common ground. Liaisons has formed through long-term friendships and, in ensemble, its discourses shed light on a horizon of living-in-struggle. The works of Liaisons are not embodiments of a shared doctrine, but rather research on the interconnectivity among singular problems and aspirations, to facilitate a planetary reverberation of militant autonomy. The works are to expand along with the permeation of the collective, and metamorphose amidst the fluctuating situation of the world.

http://www.commonnotions.org/liaisons
https://www.facebook.com/liaisonshq
https://twitter.com/liaisonshq
https://www.instagram.com/liaisons_hq/

[March 7 from 7:00PM to 9:00PM at Wooden Shoe Books 704 South St]

Silvia Federici book launch & discussion

  • December 5, 2018 1:47 pm

from Facebook

Join us for a book launch and discussion on Silvia Federici’s two new books Witches, Witch-Hunting, and Women & Re-enchanting the World

Witches, Witch-Hunting, and Women is feminist call to arms providing new ways of understanding the methods in which women resist victimization and offers a reminder that reconstructing the memory of the past is crucial for the struggles of the present.

Re-enchanting the World: Feminism and the Politics of the Commons centers on women and reproductive work as crucial to both economic survival and the construction of a world free from the hierarchies and divisions of capital.

Silvia Federici is a feminist writer, teacher, and militant. In 1972 she was cofounder of the International Feminist Collective that launched the Wages for Housework campaign internationally. Her previous books include Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation and Revolution at Point Zero. She is a professor emerita at Hofstra University, where she was a social science professor. She worked as a teacher in Nigeria for many years and was also the cofounder of the Committee for Academic Freedom for Africa. Her newest books are Witches, Witch-Hunting, and Women and Re-enchanting the World: Feminism and the Politics of the Commons, both published by PM Press in 2018.

[December 12 from 7PM to 9PM at Wooden Shoe Books and Records 704 South St]

Conspiracy To Riot film screening

  • November 5, 2018 12:59 pm

from Facebook

On January 20th, 2017, Donald Trump was sworn in as the 45th President of the United States of America. Following his inaugural address, as the upper echelons of the American political establishment mingled on the National Mall, several blocks away, a riot was breaking out. A black bloc several hundred strong was wreaking havoc on the streets. The bloc was part of the anti-capitalist and anti-fascist march, one component of a broader day of protests organized under the umbrella #DisruptJ20. Armed with spray paint, crowbars and rocks, this mob smashed windows, clashed with police and redecorated a limo that would eventually be put to the torch. The police repression was swift. Amidst the haze of pepper spray and flashbangs, over two hundred protesters were kettled, and arrested by DC’s Metro Police.

So began one of the most important political trials in recent history. In an effort to set a chilling precedent for anti-Trump resistance, the US Department of Justice charged over 200 people with eight separate felony charges, threatening them with upwards of 80 years in prison. In her crusade to paint the J20 black bloc as one giant conspiracy to riot, federal Prosecutor Jennifer Kerkhoff filed warrants to seize people’s digital data, and entered into an alliance with discredited far-right media outfits peddling doctored evidence. Faced with this repressive array of state power, J20 defendants responded with unflinching solidarity, setting a new standard for political defense in the age of Trump. This is their story.

More info at: https://sub.media/c/trouble/

[November 8 from 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM at Wooden Shoe Books and Records 704 South St]