BookAction_issue1-2

Book-Café
The Barricade
Voorstraat 71
3512 AK, Utrecht
Sun 16:00-23:00
http://acu.nl
barricade@acu.nl
Issue 1 Book-Café The Barricade
Libraries Bookshops Practices People Spaces
UTRECHT, DECEMBER 2017
ABOUT BOOK/ACTION
Book/Action is a research project which seeks
to highlight the hidden values and practices
surrounding alternative library spaces and
bookshops. By delving into people, places and
practices, it aims to address their educational
and cultural value, exploring questions of how
the library or bookshop is used as a political
tool for self-organizing, community-building
and empowerment.
An Interview with Luigi
Interview
Can you explain the meaning behind
the name Book-Café The Barricade?
LUIGI: The first thing that comes to mind was
what is involved when you say, ‘let’s go to the
barricade’. That's already a sign of protest. We
thought, at least when we decided on it, we liked
the way the ‘barricade’ contrasted with the name
‘book-café’ which is in a way, a bit hipster. That
was already a way of showing that we are not just
a normal library or a normal café.
Another thing we liked to evoke and which is
part of the logo - of the barricade – it’s this form of
protest that was started in Italy around 2011 and it
was called the book bloc. Basically, these students
were going on demonstrations where they often
ended up in fights with the police. They used the
shields as protective fronts and on these shields,
they wrote names of books. So, then you had the
logo and this picture and the police attacking the
books and we liked this idea of what it evoked. So,
books are important tools for protest. These were
two things that came together.
What is your role in the project?
I started this project with other people. In the
beginning, there were three. Now, it’s always a
fluctuating number, with some who are active and
others who are not so active. At the moment, we
are starting to introduce new people to manage
the library but that started recently. Now we are
with eight in total but it’s always a difficult process
between trying to make all the things fit together
– running the library, organizing events, running
the group as a community and trying to attract
new people to help. It’s always a lot of different
things.
For me personally, I have tried to be active in all
of this. But I’ve also been splitting myself with
helping the kitchen group that goes along with the
library. It’s my involvement but it’s also the
involvement of other people. It goes from dumpster
diving to cooking, to contacting political
groups to organize talks, to look for new zines and
new books we might want to order, to reminding
people to return books and all these day-to-day
tasks which are necessary to run the library.
How did you initially source the
books?
Most of the books which are in the collection come
from another library which was traveling around
between squats. Some of the books come from
Nijmegen, other books come from a squat in
Utrecht but got evicted five or six years ago and
they had been staying unused in a parking lot
somewhere in the north of the Netherlands. When
we heard about this, we decided to take the books
and restart it for use in a library. When we
brought the books here, we found ourselves with
around 2000 books that belonged to the previous
collection, and a number of other archival material
- old zines and magazines which had been
collected by people active in the squatting movement
for maybe 15 years or more. There are even
books which are not for loan - books from the 19th
century.
It was very overwhelming to start with a library
because basically, we started from two contrasting
points - by having no experience as librarians and
by finding ourselves with a collection of 2000
books we had no idea what they were about. So,
we spent the summer going through all the books
and trying to categorize them, understand what
they were about. Out of these 2000 books we
selected around 500 or 600 for this permanent
collection and the other ones are still in our
archive.
The library appears to be many things
- it expresses an attitude of asserting
agency, autonomy and reclaiming
public space. How do you conceptualize
the library?
I think a very important thing for the library is
how it started. It was started by people who were
already active in this space. We felt at the time
that the space was not as political as it should be.
Two years ago, this wall was empty and there
were no books here whatsoever. Also, there
were very little political events so it was a
stagnant phase for political activity. When we
asked ourselves, how can we change this, we
thought that a library would be a good way to
start. It was reclaiming space by already having
this every day even when we are not open as a
library. When people look around and they only
see beer bottles and when people look around
and they see books that are about anarchism or
other political books they get a different impression.
So, that was the main start of the library to
us - to use books and the library as a way to make
this whole space more political.
You’ve staged platforms for collective
thinking through lectures - say, the
lecture by the anti-militarist collective
Xupoluto Tagma. Can you talk about
the practical aspects of inviting these
guests over and the hospitality you
provide for them?
The Barricade library first caught my attention during my first visit to Utrecht. Strolling
aimlessly through Voorstraat, I caught out a stack of political zines and books from the
corner of my eye. Naturally, my body responded to this. Moments later upon entering
ACU, I found myself at the bar - with a zine in one hand and a beer in the other.
A starting point my interview with Luigi was trying to identify what actions have emerged
from the library. But it was quickly pointed out to me that itʼs hard to pinpoint at what
exact moment the library produced what action, because they are in themselves catalytic
of a fluid network of converging bodies - whose agencies, values and experiences
interweave to collectively shape the library. Luigi acknowledged this by talking about his
past experience volunteering for a soup kitchen in Copenhagen - similarly equipped with
a library. While these actions may not always have immediate consequences, they can
inadvertently set off a chain reaction of actions here and there, quietly giving profound
meaning in our lives.
Looking across the array of curated titles, zines and ephemera laid out at its usual place,
the table reveals a rich network of social relations and actions. It is a living, breathing
library, albeit a messy one. But it is a ʻgrowing organismʼ in the sense that it exists at the
heart of a community who are using the library as a way to enact new ways of being
together - rebuilding social relationships based on the currencies of solidarity and trust.
The library itself does not ask for a deposit for loaning a book. Rather, it puts its trust in
each member of the community (So, remember: donʻt forget to return your books!).
The table is also representative of the kind of politics which the Barricade engages in.
When the Barricade celebrated their first anniversary this year, a friend of the collective
made badges for the library and similarly, the stickers were brought in one day by another
member of the community and it has since become a feature of the library. It is these
kinds of small gestures - reflective of the networks of support and mutual trust, that provide
the beating heart of the library.
So, next time youʼre in Utrecht, letʼs meet at the Barricade.
Usually, we try to contact groups who are active
in the area because it’s easier to organize. In the
case of the talk by Xupoluto Tagma on Greek
militarism, it was a bit different because we were
contacted by the person involved. He was passing
by Utrecht and he heard about us, and he wanted
to talk about his actions and he identified us as a
place to give that talk. Then of course, we tried
to arrange for him to come. I found that it was
very nice to be contacted by another group
because you feel more legitimized as a political
place when this happens.
In general, it’s about trying to identify groups
that we think are important and that are moving
in a direction which we really appreciate. But it’s
always a bit harder to try to arrange a constant
stream of events, especially when you have
another job and you’re trying to spend your free
time arranging this. The things which you want
to do and the things which you have to do pile up
and you kind of struggle between surviving as a
library and trying to organize events which is
always something that takes more effort.
Usually, we try to use the donations that people
give us at our dinners on Sundays to pay the costs
for speakers. If they are coming from Amsterdam
or someplace else, we try to repay the costs and
give them some extra refund. In this case for
example, I hosted him (the speaker from Xupoluto
Tagma) at my place because he needed a place
to stay. It’s always a very nice thing when you are
hosting people from political actions because you
get a chance to talk next to the talk event itself
that you are maybe too busy organizing and
you’re not completely enjoying it. This also
changes the type of relationship you have so it’s
not like a contractor that calls you. It brings it to
a more personal level which is kind of important
for these kind of places and actions.
Do you collaborate with other
projects?
I wouldn’t say that we ‘collaborate’ in a way that's
helping these projects with what we do, but yes.
When we order zines (from the PaperJam Collective,
for example), we speak to them and we
support them through the donations. When we
order books, we try to order books from Fort Van
Sjakoo itself. While our projects have a different
end use, we are related and they kind of converge
in the end. So, if Fort van Sjakoo sells books, we
can use them to acquire new books, and if Paper
Jam Collective are printing zines and making all
these works then we can definitely use it to put
here.
Especially the zines, I think it's a different way
‘THE LIBRARY IS A GROWING ORGANISM’
On Rebuilding Social Relationships Through Do-It-Together Libraries
By Yoshiko Teraoka
to access political information than books. When
we discussed last time how we want to move
forward as a space with let’s say, information
sharing, or information gaining, we try to divide
it into two levels. Zines, or political thought are
more accessible to people that are coming here
just for the dinner. But they’re checking the zines
and they’ll say, ‘well, this is interesting’. It’s
much easier to take a zine than to loan a book
because a book might be heavier or longer and
people might also feel more scared. Loaning a big
book takes a lot of commitment. While, if you’re
not so sure about your political ideas, a zine is a
kind of an exploratory tool so it’s much more
accessible that way. We find that the zines are
very useful, they’re going out a lot more.
Is that something you’re conscious of
– making activist spaces more accessible?
I feel like this space is, at least to me, like the
good and bad of it is that this space is open with
a lot of different initiatives. It's definitely much
more accessible for every kind of audience that is
not just identifying as activist. In a way, the same
thing works for the dinner. The dinner is political
in a number of ways – you’re using a space for
collective dinner that doesn’t require people to
pay money, you’re saving food waste and you’re
also attracting people to a political space without
having some kind of heavy connotation that you
might feel pressure in getting into. Making
anarchist politics as accessible as it can be
without crossing a certain threshold or being
arrogant in a way – that’s definitely important.
Libraries are by nature, intrinsically
linked to education. Having gone
through the traditional education
system yourself, what ideas have you
formulated through this project- with
regard to education and making a
safe space for learning?
Education easily becomes a hierarchical process,
there is a person that knows more who is going to
show you the way and decide what you’re going to
read, what you’re going to study and give you a
framework in which you need to think. With
regard to how we try to escape this through the
library is…I mean of course, there are things you
cannot escape. You need to have a selection of
books because you cannot possibly have all the
books that might interest everybody. But this is a
thing I care a lot about, because I know of other
anarchist libraries that are quite strict on the kind
of books they want to have - books which are
clearly anarchist.While here, we are not doing
that. We believe that any kind of political book has
something to say, it doesn’t have to necessarily
enter an anarchist framework of politics. We have
Marxist books and feminist books which people
might relate more to a certain liberal way of
making politics or books on parliamentary politics
which are still in our collection because we see the
library as a tool for self-learning. It is not an
anarchist way of running the library, deciding that
all the books you need to read are in an anarchist
framework. That’s my view and it’s also a view
shared by other people in the group.
Do anarchist principles inform the
internal structure of the group? How
do you try to maintain horizontality?
That’s for sure. That is one of the basic things and
ACU as a space is organized horizontally. Of
course, there is a difference when you say, ‘we are
a non-hierarchical group’ and trying to make the
space or group horizontal. But that is a more
complicated topic. It’s definitely a struggle that
remains, so we try to make information accessible
to everybody and try not to patronize people that
are getting involved. That’s definitely always in
our minds when we deal with certain things. And
when this behavior happens, it’s much more easily
spotted in our small library group because we pay
more attention to these problems.
Do you envision this as a long-term
project?
Well, I would be very surprised if we managed to
stay open for forty years like Fort van Sjakoo, I
think that’s an incredible achievement. I’m not
sure about seeing this as a long-term project.
What I’d like personally is, to know that it will go
on, even if I and the other people who started it
leave this project. That for now would be the
biggest long-term project.
-So, it’s very much dependent on
community support and having
volunteers actively involved?
Yes, that is still something, especially in the last
month when we started talking to external volunteers,
people who were coming to the space even if
they were not actively involved in the library. They
felt the same kind of necessity or feelings about
how this project was important. Those are very
good things to feel, to know that you’re not alone
in what you’re doing because sometimes you’re
too busy doing all the running necessary and
sometimes you don’t even realize all the people
who are around. There’s a lot of people who have
been supporting us – people behind the bar and
everyone coming to the dinner. Their donations
are not mandatory, it’s something that we state
before serving, that dinner is free and donations
will support the library. Yet still, we manage to
gather quite a meaningful amount of donations
and that makes our life a lot more easier – being
able to acquire books and inviting speakers and
sustaining daily expenses.
Luigi is one of the founding members of
Book-Café The Barricade.
Book-Café The Barricade is a volunteer-run
public library with a focus on anarchism and
leftist politics. Becoming a member and
borrowing books is free.
Acknowledgements Thank you to Luigi and
members of the Barricade Library for allowing me
to share your experiences.
Next Issue: An interview with Jeroen from Fort Van
Sjakoo, who helps supply books for the Barricade
Library and was invited to a talk event held by the
Barricade to mark their one year anniversary.
Book/Action is a research project initiated by
Yoshiko Teraoka. For enquiries, please email
yoshi.teraoka@gmail.com

VOORSTRAAT 71, 3512 AK UTRECHT
BOOK-CAFÉ THE BARRICADE IS A VOLUNTEER-RUN PUBLIC LIBRARY LOCATED
INSIDE ACU - A POLITICAL-CULTURAL CENTRE IN UTRECHT. WITH A FOCUS ON
ANARCHISM AND LEFTIST POLITICS, THE PERMANENT COLLECTION HOUSES
TOPICS RANGING FROM FEMINISM, MARXISM, DECOLONIALISM, ENVIRONMEN-
TALISM, VEGANISM, SQUATTING TO DIY CULTURE. ON SUNDAYS, THE LIBRARY
SERVES AS A PLATFORM FOR VARIOUS ACTIVITIES - FROM WORKSHOPS TO
DISCUSSIONS, LECTURES ON CURRENT POLITICAL ISSUES, FOLLOWED BY A
VEGAN DINNER OFFERED BY THE BARRICOONS KITCHEN - AN UTRECHT-BASED
ANTIFOOD WASTE COLLECTIVE INSPIRED BY RACCOONS.

Het Fort van Sjakoo
Jodenbreestraat 24 1011 NK, Amsterdam
Mon-Fri 11:00-18:00, Sat 11:00-17:00
http://www.sjakoo.nl info@sjakoo.nl
(+31) 020- 625 89 79
Issue 2 Het Fort Van Sjakoo
Libraries Bookshops Practices People Spaces
AMSTERDAM, JANUARY 2018
ABOUT BOOK/ACTION
Book/Action is a research project which seeks to highlight
the hidden values and practices surrounding alternative
library spaces and bookshops. By delving into people, places
and practices, it aims to address their educational and
cultural value, exploring questions of how the library or
bookshop is used as a political tool for self-organizing,
community-building and empowerment.
An Interview with Jeroen
Het Fort Van Sjakoo
RADICAL BOOKSHOPS are a rarity these days. Itʼs
particularly rare to come across an anarchist
bookshop that enacts (or at least, attempts to) the
very same principles it seeks to realize, without
compromise. One such example is Het Fort Van
Sjakoo, a not-for-profit and collectively run
bookshop located in Amsterdam. The collective -
with the help and support of their community, have
been resiliently shaping their own economy and
politics in the heart of the city for forty years.
For some, the Fort is a remnant of the past - a time
when political activism was still going strong on in
the streets of Amsterdam. But to avoid romanticizing
the past, which can often negate what we can learn
from it, letʼs briefly stop to think about what itʼs
doing today - not only in continuing to play a central
role in the dissemination of radical and libertarian
ideas, but how anarchist values of mutual-aid,
reciprocity, common responsibility and cooperation
are manifested in their praxis. This alone can help
articulate what it might mean today to lead an
ʻanti-capitalistʼ life. While capitalism likes to feed us
the narrative that there is ʻno alternativeʼ, platforms
like Fort van Sjakoo that experiment with self-management
point to possibilities, that is with the participation
and vision of everyone. For the anarcho-curious,
perhaps we can begin to get a tangible glimpse
of what this ʻalternativeʼ might look and feel like
through the support and daily use of such
bookshops.
Itʼs impossible to provide a picture of their economic
practice and organizational structure without first
touching upon on their unique history. Volunteer
Jeroen took me through an illuminating tour of the
bookshop - from their origins, to their various
struggles over the years, and what the bookshop
stands for today.
Interview
What is your role in the bookshop?
JEROEN: I do a lot of different things here. Because I
find the function of our bookshop important, I’ve
worked here for a very long time. I’ve worked here the
longest out of all the people here-
-30 years, right?
Almost. I’ve worked here from December ’89 so that’s
28 years, I think. So, that creates a lot of experience. My
main focus is always to try to share all the knowledge
and the responsibilities with fellow volunteers. I don’t
really want to have a position that people think that I
have more to say or that I would be more important,
because I work here longer than they do. Maybe I do a
lot, but everybody has the same say in the collective -
which doesn’t mean that all the people do as much as
some others.
Through all the years of working here, there has
always been like a core of people – 3 to 5 people who do
a lot of stuff, whereas the collective has always been
ranging from 9 to 15 persons. These 3-5 people do
various things which are necessary for the shop:
bookkeeping, reordering of sold material, IT-matters
and organizing events. A group of people who take on
less responsibilities limit their work to keeping the
shop open. That has always been a kind of friction, or a
thing that sometimes creates disappointment. When
new people come into the collective as a volunteer, we
always try to motivate them in taking on responsibilities
because we are open to everything and to sharing.
It’s up to the people who volunteer to put their interest
into the work they do here -to really participate and to
add content to the shop. Part of the things that we
discuss during the meetings is the picking of the new
titles. There’s the core people who almost always come
to the bi-weekly meetings, but there’s quite a few
volunteers who come once in a while or some never
show up. That’s what we try – to share, take responsibility
and do suggestions for stuff that we can distribute
here which we think is important for people to
know about.
Specifically, about my role – I do a bit of everything,
let’s say. But, what I like most is looking for new books.
Because I, as one of the few people here - who speaks
five languages (Spanish, French, German, Dutch and
English), select a lot of publications in Spanish, French
or German. I always try to follow fellow bookshops and
publishers in other countries, to check which new
books have been published and trying to get them here
if they are relevant or interesting.
I’m trying to understand the political and
cultural landscape here in the Netherlands.
Where does a radical bookshop
like the Fort situate itself within the local
community? And, what does it mean for
this bookshop to occupy this street?
The bookshop was started in October ’77 but this house
was already squatted in ’75. In this neighborhood, the
municipality had plans to erase most of the living
spaces and make a big motorway through this part of
the inner city - lined by hotels and office buildings.
Also, there was the project of the construction of the
metro. There was a
lot of resistance in
Amsterdam against
those plans to
eradicate the old
n e i g h b o r -
hoods,especially in
this neighborhood
which is called
Nieuwmarkt
(named after the
market which is
further in the
direction of the
central station).
There was a lot of
squatting in the
early 70s already,
the municipal
government had
planked a lot of old houses they wanted to demolish
and squatters moved in and that was more or less the
early days of the squatter movement. The Nieuwmarkt
area was one of the first places where this started to
flourish. There were hundreds of squats in the area
and in the end, it has been partly won, partly lost. The
metro has been built, but the motorway stops at the
end of our street. It was planned to go straight to the
central station, but nowadays it suddenly turns to the
right and goes into the tunnel to the north of Amsterdam.
What was also won was that this whole area has
not been filled with office buildings. But social
housing has come back, although in the last decade
there’s a new tendency for the housing corporations to
sell off quite a high percentage of the social housing
which are older and use that money to act as state
developers which is not really what their business
should be. They should facilitate social housing and
not luxury apartments.
In 1977, some people in the neighborhood who were
active in the activist scene had a lot of contacts with
like-minded groups in Paris, London, Denmark,
Berlin etc. They were exchanging information about
common issues like city destruction and resistance in
squatting. They thought, ‘we should do something
with all the information’ and give that a platform
where people can find stuff from abroad and other
places in the Netherlands. So, a small group was
formed and in October ‘77, they started the bookshop
here in the squat. It has been run by volunteers since
the beginning. We’ve never had paid members of the
collective, which was a principle choice of us.
At the end of the 80s, a lot of squats were legalized in
Amsterdam and so, the people who lived upstairs and
those who ran the bookshop started to pay a relatively
low rent to a housing corporation, which in those days
was still run by the municipal government.
In 2002, the housing corporation had been privatized
and like most, they started to raise the rents of all the
business spaces they had in their possession. So they
sent us a letter, proposing a rent raise of 900 percent
and we thought, ‘we’re not accepting that.’ There was
a big fuss and we tried to get in touch with them but
they didn’t want to talk with us. We, together with
supporters staged various actions. There was an
occupation of their offices, their managing director
was pied, one of their buildings was paintbombed from
top to bottom. Then, they had a court case against us
(not because of the actions but because of the rent
dispute). In the end, they didn’t get the 900 percent
rent raise that they were hoping to get. But, the judge
decided that ‘only’ 400 percent was acceptable, which
we still thought was unacceptable.
Almost a year passed until that verdict. We thought,
‘how are we going to do this?’. We didn’t have any
guarantee because normally with a business space, you
sign a renting contract for 5 years and after that, the
landlord can establish a new rent for a new period of 5
years. If they say the estate value of the business space
has risen, then they are ‘obliged’ to raise the rent. So,
if we would have signed a renting contract for another
5 years, we would get this whole shit again. So, we
thought, ‘how can we get out of this mouse trap
situation?’- that every 5 years we would have like, a
sword hanging above our heads. We said, ‘we want to
buy the place,’ if they come up with an acceptable
price. In the end, they offered us the place for 70
percent of the (then) supposed market value, which
was around 200,000 euros. We had one year to collect
the money which we finally managed to do, with a lot
of support from private people and legalized squats
which had savings accounts for the maintenance of
their building and they had some left-over money for
the support of our cause. There were a lot of people
who knew us from the past who spent 50-100 euros or
more. We also sold bonds (in Dutch called an
‘obligatie’) which is a piece of paper that says: ‘we owe
you 50 euros’. These pieces of paper have a number
and after 5 years, we start picking out ending numbers
and then people with for example bonds with numbers
ending on ‘5’ would get their money back. And so, we
had from the 200 in total 225,000 euros that we had to
pay. We had like 90,000 in gifts and the rest was in
interest-free loans, which was really amazing. We didn’t
have to use a bank whatsoever. We never thought that it
was going to be such a success – that we could buy the
place without having to pay a lot of interest to a bank or
whatever shit institution. So, that gives a bit of an idea
of the support that we have had in those days because a
lot of them were older activists as well from the late 70s
and 80s that spent a lot of money in gifts. If this would
happen today, I don’t know if we would manage again to
raise all that money because the former activists from
the late 70s and 80s have become much older, their
connection with us has for most become something
from quite some time ago and some have died. However,
we managed it in 2003 and at the moment, we try to be
a platform for people in horizontal movements.
Sometimes, we collaborate with places here in town or
in other towns, like bookshops - these stores or distros
we try to help. Some new people come in from time to
time, sometimes in waves, like two years ago with all the
student protests. There were a lot of students coming in,
who had never seen the shop but because some of the
students in the movement were more ‘radical’, and they
told people, ‘if you’re interested in radical ideas, you
should have a look here, they have a really nice and
inspiring collection’.
Can you talk about some of these
collaborations with other initiatives?
We sell zines by Paper Jam Collective which are always
for sale for a donation price. They also do a lot of
printing work for us lately. In the past, we always had a
section with all kinds of pamphlets and we used to
import them from all kinds of places but from time to
time they turned out very expensive. So, what we did
was try and find PDF files of those pamphlets and then
we started to do the copying ourselves. If we couldn’t
find a PDF we just kept an original and reproduced it.
That we did for a long time ourselves, and Paper Jam
offered us that if we have printing work they would be
glad to do that. So lately, they are really stocking our
shop. Because it’s a lot of work, you have to go to a
printing shop and you have to stay there 3-4 hours at the
photocopying machine, changing the sheets every time,
and making the covers, and then afterwards you have to
take them back, fold them and staple them. It’s really a
lot of work. So, we’re very happy that they now do that
for us.
We also collaborate with Boekhandel Rosa in Groningen
- one of the older radical bookshops which still
remain together with us. They are very small - they
mainly do secondhand books and they have a small
section for new books. Since 20 years ago, we have been
making a jointly published catalogue with them 3 or 4
times a year. We take care of the new books section.
There’s a secondhand section which is themed differently
with each issue and Rosa puts in their selection. They
order most of the non-Dutch new books through us
because we do quite a lot of direct importing ourselves.
Opstand in The Hague orders sometimes through us
and the same accounts for the Anarchist Group in
Nijmegen. We always offer fellow bookstores or distros,
‘if you want to order stuff, you can order through us’ and
we will order it with one of our own orders and they‘ll
get it with almost the same discount as what we get. We
have to get a small compensation for the shipping costs
etc. That way, we try to expand the amount of places
where people can get their stuff, because we think it’s a
pity that there are so few places left where people can
find their radical revolutionary information.
The bookshop, as I understand, is a
meeting point for various people such the
activist community. Can you talk about
how the bookshop functions?
In different ways it’s a meeting place. It’s a place for
coincidental meetings of people who are just visiting the
bookshop and who meet each other – like people from
abroad and people from the Netherlands. Sometimes,
people from an anarchist group abroad and somebody
from an anarchist group or another initiative from
Amsterdam meet. We always have some maps of the city
with alternative spaces, and we try to show people where
they can find like-minded people and activists. Sometimes,
we organize meetings which can be a presentation
of a new book or it can be a theoretical discussion.
About two years ago, we had a theoretical discussion on
Anarchism and Revolution by Gabriel Kuhn, an Austrian
anarchist writer based in Sweden. We thought maybe
10 people would show up but 45 people turned up. On
the other hand, sometimes we have a book presentation
and we think, ‘this is really interesting!’ and only five
people show up. It’s really unpredictable how much
attention things attract.
People from abroad who are traveling and staying a
couple of days in Amsterdam – for example, to visit the
International Institute of Social History, they
sometimes like to do an event in Amsterdam and we try
to organize something, either here or in the Anarchist
Library. We organize things together sometimes.
A lot of people who are new to the city and want to
know something more about what is going on in town
- drop in here, to have a chat and hear about places and
things that are going on, for possibilities to become
active in some kind of way.
What is Fort van Sjakoo’s collective
vision?
It’s because we are a group of such different individuals
with such different backgrounds, I can’t really give one
description. We want to be a platform for all kinds of
anti-authoritarian, horizontally-organized movements,
ideas, people, to question authority, to question
myths from our own movement that have been created
through the time, be critical about our own ideas, and
that's why we’re always trying to find new material
from people criticizing previous thoughts or ideas.
What is your personal vision?
I try to give as much to the shop, the work that I do
here and all the other volunteers is to get people
motivated to do something, to change this world…
maybe I sound like an old sod *laugh*.
If I compare it to thirty years ago, there was a very
thriving activist community in the Netherlands. There
was a lot of direct action and it has almost vanished.
Nowadays, it’s on a very small scale, it’s almost invisible.
I would really like to see that flourish again and
that people have some critical conscience.
I earn my living with a job four days a week at a
university bookshop. If I look around and see what
young people are concerned about: they are not
concerned about anything apart from their own egos,
or their smartphones and their screen community.
Even issues that are related to the university community
and how things are being run over there, they are
not interested at all, except for a very small minority
who wants to question things and who wants to change
things. I’m a bit pessimistic about that, but that
motivates me even more to keep on working here and
to try to give people new ideas and a handhold to
change society in a radical and revolutionary way.
Jeroen is an active volunteer at het Fort van
Sjakoo, a non-commercial and collectively run
bookshop with a focus on critical and insurgent
literature.
Published Titles
Every once in a while, Fort van Sjakoo publishes
their own books through profits generated from
the bookshop. In an attempt to illuminate some of
the ways in which the bookshop plays an active
role in supporting the local community, I asked
Jeroen to write about their published titles.
Wat niet mag kan nog steeds
Kraakhandleiding 2015/2016
Author: Anonymous
Year: 2015
This book is a manual for how to prepare a
squatting action in the Netherlands. It tells about
the practical side: searching an empty space, checking
whether it’s really empty, who the owner is,
building plans, how to prepare the squatting action
itself etc. As squatting has been illegal since 2010,
the book tells your legal rights and the possible
risks you run. Furthermore, it tells about security,
barricading the house, good locks, legal support
from squatters’ advice collectives and legal aid
from a lawyer.
Anarchisme breekt door in de kunst
Kunst en anarchisme in Nederland tussen 1880-1930
Author: Andrea Galova
Year: 2012
Andrea (a volunteer at Fort van Sjakoo) wrote her
masters thesis on the interaction between graphical
artists and the anarchist movement in the
period between 1880-1930. She describes the early
years of Dutch anarchism until the start of World
War Two, and the role which graphical artists
played in its propaganda and publishing. Presented
in this thesis are the works of following artists: Chris
Lebeau, Herman J. Schuurman, Luc Kisjes, JJ
Voskuil, Meile Oldeboerrigter, Nico de Haas and
more. She also tries to analyze the visual language
and recurring patterns and symbolism illustrated
with original material from the period.
Met Emmer En Kwast
Veertig Jaar Nederlandse Actieaffiches 1965-2005
Author: Eric Duivenvoorden
Year: 2005
Eric, a former squatter and sociologist, describes
the trends in poster-making in the Dutch radical
social movements from 1965 to 2005. He selected
various posters from the archives of the International
Institute of Social History and categorized them
according to theme. He describes trends in layout,
text-use, trending issues through the passage of
time. The book includes a CD-ROM with high-resolution
scans of 7500 posters.
-Text written by Jeroen
Acknowledgements Thank you to Jeroen (and members of
Het Fort van Sjakoo) for your time and allowing me to share
your unique history and experiences.
Next Issue: An interview with Robin, a former history teacher
who is volunteering at het Fort van Sjakoo.
Book/Action is a research project initiated by Yoshiko Teraoka.
For enquiries, please email yoshi.teraoka@gmail.com

JODENBREESTRAAT 24 1011 NK AMSTERDAM