In the coffeehouse, you'll find delicious fair trade, organic coffee and espresso as well as a selection of vegan and vegetarian food. In the bookstore, you'll find books and periodicals on a wide range of topics, with a focus on radical politics and culture. We also offer free internet access, both through our wireless network and our public internet terminals.
If you are looking for information about 2640, the community events space we run in conjunction with St. John's United Methodist Church in Charles Village, please have a look at the 2640 website .
What better way to ring in the new year than with songs that will make the wrong-doers, power mongers, and the exploitative boss's ears ring in fear!
Rise Up Singing: The group singing songbook is over 1200 songs that will not only induce foot tapping, but also fist raising, rebel rousing, and salivation of our revolutionary glands.
So let's take some of these notes, chords, songs and use them in our remedies to cure a very sick world. And as some would say, let's make them into a mountain out of a Joe Hill!
THE RED EMMA'S HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE PART 1 : BIG TICKETS
by v/a
In this installment, we present a selection of somewhat extravagant book recommendations for the niche-reader - the kind of book you'd hesitate to buy for yourself, but would make someone you care about deeply grateful.
The Meta-Edition: Two new books with small contributions about Red Emma's/2640
by v/a
It's a great time of year if you're in the market for a book that gives you a new perspective on artistic practice. We've got two brand new titles in that would be very exciting even if they didn't contain pieces which touch on what Red Emma's and 2640 are up to.
First up is the new 2009 edition of Phonebook: A Annual Directory for Alternative Artspaces, from the good folks at Green Lantern Press. The highlight of this guide, now in its second year, is the listing of "alternative" artspaces across North America - it's unclear exactly what constitutes an "alternative" space, even to the editors, who replaced the "alternative" in the title this year with a "[ ]" on the front cover, to encourage one to fill in one's own term for these kind of sometimes ephemeral, sometimes long-standing institutions providing a base for a different kind of art. So essentially, what you get in Phonebook is a travel guide to a pretty significant slice of the artisitic underground - a handy reference to the kind of interesting gallery spaces, off-the-map cinemas, and art collectives that might take a while to find even for a city you live in. Plus there's a great series of essays, reviews and interviews spliced into the guide, including an interview about 2640 as a community art and politics space.
Next up is A GuidetoDemocracy in America, edited by Nato Thompson, and published in conjunction with an exhibit at New York's Creative Time. The design of this book is pretty amazing - especially the cover, which is the only book to our knowledge to feature an Emma Goldman madlib! Like Phonebook, Democracy in America's guiding principle is intentionally hard to get a firm grasp of - the best way to describe it might be to think of it as a provocation, blurring the boundaries between artisitic and political practice, evoking reflections and reactions to the notion of "democracy" and resulting in a kind of snapshot of the times, a synoptic view of cultural engagement in the early 21st century. Here the Red Emma's tie-in is an edited transcript of a "Town Hall meeting" with Baltimore-area activists and artists (one of 5 held around the country), in which both Red Emma's and 2640 participated, along with Camp Baltimore, Son of Nun, the Current Gallery, the Indyreader, Wide Angle Youth Media, and a whole bunch of other groups and individuals. The book is definitely worth checking out, but if you want to skip directly to a full version of the transcript, it's up on the Indyreader site - where the comments can let you join the conversation.
Anarchy...on the cheap
by john
Just in - a great selection of HALF PRICE books from our friends at AK Press, including Paul Avrich's essential Anarchist Voices : An Oral History of Anarchism in America (just $14)and his equally great The Russian Anarchists (yours for $10), plus Noam Chomsky's Radical Priorities (a great introduction to Chomsky's political vision, and a steal at $9.50), Steven Best and Anthony Nocella's extremely relevant Igniting a Revolution : Voices in Defense of Mother Earth ($11!), the indispensible Voltarine de Cleyre reader (for only $8.50!), plus BAD : The Autobiography of James Carr and Memoirs of Vidocq: Master of Crime, both from the excellent NABAT series resurrecting the chronicles of forgotten insurrection and both half off, and Raoul Vaneigem's Situationist reappraisal of Surrealism, A Cavalier History of Surrealism (a paltry $5).
The New School Occupation and Victory
From www.newschoolinexile.com:
University in Exile Occupation Wins Major Victory over University Administration in 3rd Day (3 am) !!
After more than two weeks of concerted actions on campus, students in the occupation were finally able to win significant victories in the ongoing struggle to improve the New School. Those victories include: an agreement not to press charges or impose academic punishments for students involved in the protest, the implementation of a Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) committee within the university, more autonomy and power for Student Senate to communicate with the student body, more representation on the Board of Trustees for students and faculty, and finally the creation of more student study space on campus. As of approximately 4am this morning New School and other students have left the 65 5th Avenue building and declared the occupation successful, ending this stage of the action.
Raising the stakes: Chicago workers occupy their own factory!
Workers at the Republic Windows and Doors Factory in Chicago were laid off last Friday without receiving their proper severance pay or health insurance continuation. They're taking this shabby pre-holiday surprise sitting down - inside their own factory, occupying the premises, and refusing to leave until they get what they are legally entitled to under law. There's a larger dimension to their struggle, too, one that connects this factory with the so called "bailout" which is giving away trillions of dollars to the financial sector with no relief in sight for ordinary folks and their communities: Bank of America, they were told, had refused to loan Republic the necessary funds to pay the workers rightful benefits - severance and vacation pay owed --- the same Bank of America that received and will receive a total of 25 billion in our taxpayer dollars under the bailout.
In Baltimore a new network was formed this past Sunday - The Baltimore Emergency Crisis Network - and a rally in support of the Republic workers, to take place at Bank of America's corporate location in Baltimore, has been planned for Wednesday at 1 p.m. It is URGENT that we have a visible presence in opposition to the Bailout of the banks with no funds for people at the grassroots.
Through 12/23, Red Emma's will be open for late night gift shopping a whole extra hour on Mondays through Saturdays (so until 11PM). Also special for the holidays - we've got some very cheeky and generally awesome custom-printed greeting cards - just $2 a piece, and printed in the new Red Emma's mini-print shop. Can't figure out what to get someone? We've got gift certificates, available in the store and online. And if you buy $100 or more when you come in (or if you order a $100 or more in gift certificates online), you'll get a great Red Emma's tote-bag free!
In general this holiday season (and year round), it's extremely important that if you want to see a thriving network of sustainable local businesses like Red Emma's that embody the principles you believe in and keep money in your community where it belongs rather than directly feeding the fires of disaster capitalism, you need to make sure that you help keep those businesses and projects alive with your shopping habits. It's been a bad year for independent bookstores in the Mid-Atlantic region - Baltimore has lost Lambda Rising and Karibu Books in 2008, and this month alone has seen the demise of the 73-year old Robin's Bookstore in Philadelphia as well as DC's radical bookstore, the Brian MacKenzie Infoshop. So don't take your favorite independent businesses for granted - they need your business and your support!
Join us for a night of solidarity through music to raise awareness about Israel's ongoing crimes against Gaza and the people of Palestine. The featured musical acts are:
Son of Nun
Sabreena Da Witch
Ryan Harvey
Koma Agir
Open mic for you to share your thoughts and words. The evening will be MC'd by Dave Zirin. There is a requested $10 donation at the door...if you can, please donate more! We are collecting funds at this event to contribute to the emergency relief efforts in Gaza.
Thursday Jan 8, 8PM @ 2640
Bread and Puppet Theater presents: Dirt Cheap Opera!
Bread and Puppet return to Baltimore, this time with Dirt Cheap Opera! The story of the gangster Mac the Knife and his brand new wife Polly consists of fragments stolen from the famous Brecht/Weill, "Three Penny Opera", newly mixed and freshly re-baked to suit the taste of the citizens of our divine republic which is reigned over by the Gods of Love, Money, Justice, and Revenge. Even in this truncated form, the opera presents nothing but eternal truths; truths which are as cheap as the cardboard from which the Gods as well as the main characters of the play are made, and as bright as the bright paint that painted them. The opera is one hour short and is dirt-cheap ($5 - 10 sliding scale!) and not suited for children or other innocent bystanders.
Thursday Jan 22, 7PM @ Red Emma's
tovio
Tovio was born into an Athapascan Indian village in Alaska, raised partially in rural Kenya, in an 8 story commune in Chicago, at a new age retreat center in BFE Michigan, and in a poisonous factory town close to Flint, Michigan. He has dropped out of college numerous times and has traveled extensively around the world playing shows, performing in circuses and busking. He writes songs about the fallacy of the American Dream, sea life, dinosaurs and other important topics. He is a resident artist at the Arcos Azules Gallery (http://www.arcosazules.org) in the Five Points neighborhood of Denver and is currently booking a european tour for February 2009. Accordion and tap shoes.
Friday Jan 23, 7PM @ 2640
Wafaa Bilaal presents SHOOT AN IRAQI Art, Life and Resistance Under the Gun
Iraqi-born artist Wafaa Bilal has been behind some of the most amazing critical artistic practice addressing the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. When his brother was killed at a U.S. checkpoint in 2005, he responded with "Domestic Tension," an unsettling interactive performance piece: for one month, Bilal lived alone in a prison cell-sized room in the line of fire of a remote-controlled paintball gun and a camera that connected him to internet viewers around the world. Visitors to the gallery and a virtual audience that grew by the thousands could shoot at him 24 hours a day. Bilal's experiences with this exhibit and the theory behind it are chronicled in his new book on City Lights, Shoot an Iraqi: Art, Life and Resistance Under the Gun.
Bilal's subsequent work, "Virtual Jihadi", generated even more acclaim and controversy: remaking an Al-Qaeda remake called "Night of Bush Capturing" of an American video training game, "Quest for Saddam" to express his own perspective on the war and occupation, Bilal's exhibit was censored twice in Troy, NY. Besides a reading from Shoot an Iraqi and a Q&A with Bilal, we'll be screening "Art is Not Terrorism," a short documentary about the "Virtual Jihadi" censorship story.
The event is free, donations welcome.
Contrary to our plans last year or so, Red Emma's is not at the moment actively pursuing a new location for the bookstore and cafe. Instead, at least for the time being, we are concentrating our efforts on keeping the existing space thriving, but also on the 2640 project, a partnership between Red Emma's and St. John's United Methodist Church in Charles Village, where both parties are cooperating to restore the (beautiful) building at 2640 St. Paul St. and to put this building to work as a space for social justice organizing and independent culture. Like most big projects, this is going to take a lot of money and a lot of work - if you're able to offer either, please drop us a line at 2640 [at] redemmas.org.
800 St. Paul St. * Baltimore, MD 21202 * (410) 230-0450 * info@redemmas.org
Red Emma's is open Monday through Saturday from 10AM-10PM, and Sunday from 10AM-6PM. Our weekly collective meetings are Sunday at 7PM, and are open to anyone interested in the project.
Red Emma's is part of IU 660 of the Industrial Workers of the World, one of the only unions to recognize that worker collectives can stand in solidarity with those fighting the bosses as part of one big union.
In this installment, we present a selection of somewhat extravagant book recommendations for the niche-reader - the kind of book you'd hesitate to buy for yourself, but would make someone you care about deeply grateful. 
First up is the new 2009 edition of Phonebook: A Annual Directory for Alternative Artspaces, from the good folks at Green Lantern Press. The highlight of this guide, now in its second year, is the listing of "alternative" artspaces across North America - it's unclear exactly what constitutes an "alternative" space, even to the editors, who replaced the "alternative" in the title this year with a "[ ]" on the front cover, to encourage one to fill in one's own term for these kind of sometimes ephemeral, sometimes long-standing institutions providing a base for a different kind of art. So essentially, what you get in Phonebook is a travel guide to a pretty significant slice of the artisitic underground - a handy reference to the kind of interesting gallery spaces, off-the-map cinemas, and art collectives that might take a while to find even for a city you live in. Plus there's a great series of essays, reviews and interviews spliced into the guide, including an interview about 2640 as a community art and politics space.
xhibit at New York's Creative Time. The design of this book is pretty amazing - especially the cover, which is the only book to our knowledge to feature an Emma Goldman madlib! Like Phonebook, Democracy in America's guiding principle is intentionally hard to get a firm grasp of - the best way to describe it might be to think of it as a provocation, blurring the boundaries between artisitic and political practice, evoking reflections and reactions to the notion of "democracy" and resulting in a kind of snapshot of the times, a synoptic view of cultural engagement in the early 21st century. Here the Red Emma's tie-in is an edited transcript of a "Town Hall meeting" with Baltimore-area activists and artists (one of 5 held around the country), in which both Red Emma's and 2640 participated, along with Camp Baltimore, Son of Nun, the Current Gallery, the Indyreader, Wide Angle Youth Media, and a whole bunch of other groups and individuals. The book is definitely worth checking out, but if you want to skip directly to a full version of the transcript,
