Radical Zine Series - Volume 1 Launch

Help celebrate and launch the first four Radical Zines re-designed and re-purposed in a colloboration between Wellington Zinefest and the Freedom Shop.

When: Thursday, 10 December at 6pm

Where: at the Freedom Shop - in Opportunities for Animals, 162 Riddiford St, Newtown

We selected classic zines from our archives for a creative reimagining. With the help of donors from a Boosted campaign, four local illustrators were commissioned to reimagine these relatively simple, text-heavy zines into fully illustrated beautiful works!

The radical zine redesign project has helped make the important ideas within these zines even more accessible. We'll be selling the redesigned texts and cheaply as possible so that we can share their learnings with as many people as possible.

The four zines are:

• Are We All New Zealanders Now? by Dr Ani Mikaere, redesigned by Izzy Joy
• "The Problem With White Saviours" by Simone Kaho, redesigned by Kata Brown
• Rongoā by Emily Tuhi-Ao Bailey, redesigned by Jamie Terekia
• The Tyranny of The Clock by George Woodcock, redesigned by George Naylor

On the night, we'll have the zines available for sale.

These four zines are the first volume in this series, but there will be a second round, too! On the evening we'll announce the next four zines to be re-designed, and together with ZineFest we'll be seeking more illustrators and designers to help bring to life to more classic and new zines.

Plan B Diaries 2021

The Plan B diaries for 2021 are here! For the third year, the Freedom Shop has produced a diary highlighting dates of Aotearoa's radical (or ignored) history. 

Get yours from the shop or at Zinefest this weekend for $10 (the Freedom Shop will be there on Sunday). If you can't make it in person, send us an email and we will post one to you.

We also have a range of new tote bags for $7.

Zinefest 2020

This year's Zinefest is slightly earlier than normal - it's on the weekend of 10-11 October, 12-4pm with and accesibility hour from 11 to 12 on both days, and this time it is at the Vic Uni School of Design at 139 Vivian St. The Freedom Shop will have a stall on Sunday, 11 Oct. 

David Graeber

2020 has been full of death and grief, and one more person has died. In the first week of September, David Graeber, anarchist, author, activist, anthropologist and historian, died suddenly. 

Graeber's books included: Bullshit Jobs: A Theory, which first started off as an article in Strike! Magazine, Debt: The First 5000 Years, and Direct Action: An Ethnography, plus The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy. He was also one of the editors of Constituent Imagination: Militant Investigations, Collective Transformation. Just one quick online search reveals so many journals and articles by Graeber, inlcuding in Rolling Thunder The Shock of Victory: An Analysis of Our Unclaimed Triumphs - there are also books due to be published later this year, including one co-written with his partner 'What are Kings'. 

 

“Debt is the most efficient means ever created to take relations that are fundamentally based on violence and violent inequality and make them seem right and proper.”

"The ruling class has figured out that a happy and productive population with free time on their hands is a mortal danger."  

 

"Neoliberalism isn't an economic program - it's a political program designed to produce hopelessness and kill any future alternatives."

 

"...in our society, there seems a general rule that, the more obviously one's work benefits other people, the less one is likely to be paid for it. Again, an objective measure is hard to find, but one easy way to get a sense is to ask: what would happen were this entire class of people to simply disappear? Say what you like about nurses, garbage collectors, or mechanics, it's obvious that were they to vanish in a puff of smoke, the results would be immediate and catastrophic."

 

At the Freedom Shop we still have Possibilities ($32), Revolutions in Reverse ($25) and Constituent Imagination ($31) but a lot of his work can be found online, check out the Anarchist Library, Libcom and especially his own website: https://davidgraeber.industries/ 

 

David Graeber - "Are You an Anarchist?"

Cinema Golondrina presents: Soy Cuba

The Choclo Collective, a group of Latin American artists, film makers and other creative people, will be hosting a series of film and discussion evenings named Cinema Golondrina. There will also be art work on display and the Freedom Shop will have a stall.

 

The first film is “Soy Cuba” (I am Cuba), which is described as “a whirling, feverish dance through both the sensuous decadence of Batista's Havana and the grinding poverty and oppression of the Cuban people”. You can watch the trailer here.

Sunday, 6 September, 5pm at the Newtown Community Centre, Rintoul St.

 
This will be followed by two more films at the same time and location:
13 September: The Hour of Furnaces (Argentina 1966-1968)
20 September: When Two Worlds Collide (Peru 2006-2011)

New books have arrived

Our latest book order has arrived. Apart from a view classics like Franz Fanon's Wretched of the Earth and texts that are relevant to the BLM movement, we also have more from local publishers Bridget Williams Books and Little Island Press. Here are a few titles. 

 

 

Radical Zine Redesign

Zinefest and the Freedom Shop have teamed up to redesign a few of our zines. We are looking for designers, artists and illustrators to spruce up some text-heavy zines. And the best thing is that this work is even funded. 

Check out the details of the project here.