by Crimethinc. Workers' Collective
Available in 284 free installments
Owner:
You can go to karaoke bars and
sing your own words to popular
songs to get news or ideas into
unexpected environments.
Once upon a time, my favorite book was a manual on spy techniques. I yearned to find messages in bottles left in fountains or artificial lakes and rolled up scraps of paper in the cracks of brick walls.
Skip forward ten years. The night before classes began at Evergreen State College, we slipped into the classrooms and taped thought-provoking notes under tables, leaving a comer undone so the paper would graze someone's leg. We stuck some to the backs of vending machines and slipped them inside our favorite library books, reveling in the possibility that three years could pass before they were found.
What would you do if you found a secret missive? An impassioned love letter? Would you drop it immediately, or study it carefully? Would you wonder who was meant to find it? Would you know it was meant for you? Would you go to the train tracks at midnight on Friday, just to see who was there? Sometimes dreamers can't help themselves.
Paint a beautifijl mural or write out an incendiary manifesto in a secluded location, and draw maps to it in phone booths and restrooms. Go through the phone book, calling places of business and engaging the employees who answer the phone in conversations about what really matters in life. Place personal ads in the local newspaper: "Capitalism sucking the life out of you? BiWF, 27, non-monogamous, seeks lovers of life and liberty to form a revolutionary organization. Only those serious about playing need apply."
Now Scatter tl^e Seeds on tlie Wind In the lulls between tabling, fliering, and burying treasure for the curious, you can also
Dktribution, Tabling, and infoshops distribute by mailorder. Once you've amassed a wide assortment of material, compile a
214 catalog including prices or suggested donations to cover postage and production fees;
photocopy it and mail it out in packages, post it on the internet, take out advertisements in newspapers and magazines. Learn how to use the domestic "media mail" and overseas "m-bag" rates to send packages more cheaply, and memorize the wording of the postal regulations so you can quickly give any postal worker the impression that you understand the system and are abiding by it. Above all, befriend everyone at the local post office.
If you are producing your own material, send copies of everything to reviewers and other magazines, and to other distributors who might want to help spread them. Contact other pubhshers for advice on printers and distribution venues.
For long-term outreach and organizing, it really helps to have a community resource center as a focal point and staging area. Such centers are sometimes called infoshops. An infoshop can offer free literature; books, music recordings, and other material for sale; a public library and archive of books, papers, and videos; a community computer lab; a space for meetings, performances, and film showings; a calendar of public events; a "free store" in which surplus resources are shared . . . space and volunteers are the only limits.
That is, they should be the only limits. Problems with landlords, funding, and city zoning and permits usually plague an infoshop every step of the way If the financial resources can be raised somehow, it is preferable to buy a space rather than renting one, so as not to be at the mercy of a landlord; before settling on one, be sure it is in a district zoned by the city for the purposes you intend and that the neighbors are amenable to your plans. Gentrification is often an issue?it's always best that the people opening a space have a lot in common culturally and economically with the people who live around it; if this isn't the case, seek to collaborate with local groups from the beginning, and work hard to provide for local needs without being evangeHcal about it.
And Put Down Roots
You can hold skillshare workshops, trading knowledge in your areas of expertise with others outside so-called educational institutions.
Distribution, Tabling, and Infoshops 215
You can set up your own library,
making all the books and magazines
and records and videos and clothes
you and your friends already have
available for everyone, so no one has
to buy their own copies anymore.
Whenever a band comes to your town
to play, have a part of the door money
go to buying a copy of their record for
the community to share.
