To all friends of Solidarity Books,
Unfortunately we have some bad news: Solidarity Books is closing on
March 31st. Since opening in 2009 we’ve sold tons of radical literature,
dozens of campaign groups have utilised our meeting and storage space,
and we’ve hosted hundreds of talks, film showings, Veg Outs, and several
book launches. It’s a volunteer-run, non-hierarchically organised
effort, and we hope it has made a decent contribution to the battle of
ideas in this era of neoliberal hegemony. However after four and a half
years, the project is no longer viable for us. Our income has been
struggling to keep up with expenses for quite a while, and our core
organising group is unfortunately lacking the numbers and energy to turn
that around.
Although we can’t keep Solidarity Books open, we hope that it won’t
be long before other radicals open a space for radical books and
resistance in Cork. Such projects can count on our support, unsold
books, and whatever else we can do to help. Indeed a few of us would
love to work with new people on a new radical space project for Cork,
and anyone who’d like to start talking about such a project can forward
their email to solidaritybooks@gmail.com or our facebook page, so we can
put people in touch with each other.
As should be expected of a closing book shop, we’ll be having a
closing down sale. And as should be expected of a closing anarchist book
shop, we’ll be having a brilliant farewell party. Watch this space for
more info on them; we’re thinking about 50% off for the former, and lots
of ska music for the latter.
Solidarity Books could not have survived for so long were it not for
the countless people who supported the bookshop in multiple ways. Many
went out of their way to buy books and coffee from us, over a hundred
people at some stage did the voluntary work of covering a shop shift,
and lots of generous people donated us books, couches, and even mugs for
tea. To all of them, we’d like to say a heartfelt thank you.
In this world of structured commodified social relations, solidarity
is forcefully restricted to the family and “the nation” (i.e. showing
solidarity with the nation’s elite). We hope in our books and in
providing space for Occupy Cork, the Campaign Against the Household and
Water Taxes, Cork Women’s Right to Choose, Anti-Deportation Ireland and
many other groups resisting the insane logic of capitalism, that we have
played a part in expanding the scope for human freedom, in building a
world based on a solidarity among equals. It may have only been a few
drops in an ocean, but, as Adam Ewing reminds us, an ocean is just a
multitude of drops.
The Solidarity Books collective, March 2014.
