Reading matters. Organise! 93 & Sparrows’ Nest digital library update

Dear comrades, hoping you are well. Couple of bits of news to keep in touch.

Sparrows’ Nest library and archive just finished another round of sorting, cataloguing and digitising with a list of 87 new items on website (just under 2GB of additional data). Direct link
https://thesparrowsnest.org.uk/index.php/14-news-and-events/225-new-additions-to-the-digital-library-december-2020-part-2 The Nest thanks everyone for all support and interest in its work and will be taking a break for a couple of weeks, before diving back into the boxes in the new year, but will keep an eye on emails, so if you need anything, don’t hesitate to get in touch (see contact tab on website).

From the Anarchist Federation a lovely new 88 page issue of our magazine Organise! #93 is now available for purchase or free PDF download and a screen-reader page turning version is here: https://organisemagazine.org.uk/2020/11/17/organise-93/ The best way to support Organise! and get print copies (full colour & glossy) is via https://www.patreon.com/Organise and single print issues can be obtained from AK Press https://www.akuk.com/ – order this issue or search on Organise! or Anarchist Federation for back issues.

London Anarchist Bookfair – virtually

Quite late notice but you can find out about the online Anarchist Bookfair happening this weekend here:

https://anarchistbookfair.london

There are live programmes:

https://anarchistbookfair.london/events

To watch and participate in the live event use Twitch:

https://www.twitch.tv/londonbookfair

This is an open channel but to ask questions during the talks you either need to download the Twitch app on a mobile phone/tablet or create a Twitch account on a computer.

Great talk from Belarus ABC this evening about the uprising. There is a full programme for Sunday starting at 9.30am with tips on how to publish a magazine like Organise! from its current editor.

Pages from the Blasted Past

Get a dose of 10+ years ago on t’internet by visiting the newly archived website of AF-North, the Anarchist Federation in Manchester and the North-West as it was then. From here you can find the contemporary (as in equally old) websites of the Anarchist Federation and the International of Anarchist Federations in all their static HTML glory, before all this database-driven malarkey and social media. Here also you may feel the impulse to click nav-bar links and visit the pages of Solidarity, Subversion and Wildcat from even further back.

For a slightly less musty aroma, at least in terms of web technology, visit Notts Save Our Services and No Borders Nottingham legacy sites which still have a lot to say about the state of the world in 2020.

Internet Archive project helps raise the profile of Nottingham’s Sparrows’ Nest library

Just a couple of weeks ago The Sparrows’ Nest library and archive here in Nottingham was contacted by a volunteer working for archive.org (a long-standing ‘all of the web’ archive which is also known as the Wayback Machine) to create a mirror of our material.

The results are very impressive indeed, so do take a look: https://archive.org/details/sparrowsnestlibrary

The Internet Archive is a non-profit international project.

Black Lives Matter

Nottingham Black Lives Matter are doing an excellent job of countering institutional and structural racism with the Forest demo and march through Radford towards the city centre on Sunday afternoon. It should be remembered though that in 2016 the Highways Act was shamefully used to convict 4 BLM activists in Nottingham after a lock-on to tram lines outside the Theatre Royal (they were ordered to pay £155 each in court costs). Back then, the August 2016 day of action across the UK coincided with the fifth anniversary of the police shooting of Mark Duggan, which had led to the summer 2011 riots – which, by the way, were dealt with by an all-night court initiative of the then Director of Public Prosecutions but now Labour Party leader, Keir Starmer!

So it’s not very long ago that local and national authorities prosecuted people taking necessary direct action against racist killings. Hopefully they will find it a lot harder to do so in the future as the movement grows larger and stronger. This said, Nottingham Post reported on Tuesday that cops were looking at video footage to try and identify someone responsible for the minor graffiti (spraying of Black Lives Matter) on the Council House at the end of the demo, even though other BLM activists chose to clean it off later while local policitians, council and police alike had been falling over themselves to support the demonstration or commend the protesters. As this was on council property presumably the same figures could decide to drop this attempt to criminalise protest. We’ll need to see what happens and take support action if anyone is arrested.