Kaupapa

The Freedom Shop is a not-for-profit anarchist bookshop and info-centre with the aim to spread radical information and support DIY anarchist culture.

 

We have our origins in the anarchist group CEC (Committee for the Establishment of Civilisation). The CEC had been around since the early 1990s and had produced a number of booklets and would sell them at local stalls and via catalogue. Some CEC members were keen on having a physical shop and in 1995 noticed that the Freedom Shop in upper Cuba St, run by NORML (the National Organisation for the Reform of Marijuana Laws), was hardly ever open and had spare space. An arrangement was reached and on May 1, 1995 members of CEC started up Anarchist Books in the NORML space. We've inhabited several spaces since, including for many years having a corner at Opportunity  for Animals in Newtown - and now we're next door to the Op Shop in a space at the front of Book Haven, a second-hand book shop

 

If you want to find out more about the story of the Freedom Shop, you can read a brief history we wrote for our 20th birthday party in 2020.

 

 

The shop is run by a collective of volunteers who are dedicated to non-hierarchical consensus-based decision-making.

We are fighting for a world free of oppression and coercion. We believe in acting in a manner consistent with our ideals. Therefore, the collective and the shop must be free of domination and discrimination, including (but not limited to) racism, sexism, homophobia, physical violence and harassment of any kind.

We agree with the hallmarks of People's Global Action:

1. A very clear rejection of capitalism, imperialism and feudalism: all trade agreements, institutions and governments that promote destructive globalisation.
2. We reject all forms and systems of domination and discrimination, including (but not limited to) patriarchy, racism and religious fundamentalism of all creeds. We embrace the full dignity of all human beings.
3. A confrontational attitude, since we do not think that lobbying can have a major impact in such biased and undemocratic organisations, in which transnational capital is the only real policy-maker.
4. A call to direct action and civil disobedience, support for social movements' struggles, advocating forms of resistance which maximise respect for life and oppressed peoples' rights, as well as the construction of local alternatives to global capitalism.
5. An organised philosophy based on decentralisation and autonomy.