Anarchist Infoshop Celebrates Six Months

When you arrive there then you've just arrived in heaven....where the coffee is cheap but good and the people are cool and the place is a welcome stop for anyone walking around Santa Cruz and needing a place to rest without paying much.
Economic crisis? what economic crisis? Everything here is either free or cheap.
love ya Subrosa!

Shouldn't that say FAIR TRADE somewhere in there? I'd hate to think that our local a-info shop forgot that crucial part of the eco-friendly socially conscious mindset we're all migrating towards... Coffee is the second most heavily traded commodity behind good ol' oil and is the source of millions of peoples oppression. Fair trade, while not a perfect model for sure, does guarantee a set, some what fair price for the producers coffee that really can mean a big difference income wise for these producers.

Sorry, I'm sure I'm preaching to the freaking choir here, just my two cents...

More info from one of the primier fair trade associations. They do more than just coffee too!

http://www.transfairusa.org/

And a heartfelt shout out to the co-founder of the SC Coffe Roasting Company Colleen Crosby. She was one of the first people in the coffee business that began carrying and brewing fair trade coffee in her stores. A memorial foundation has been set up in her honor and it hands out scholarships to finance peoples education. RIP Colleen.

http://www.santacruzcoffee.com/sccrctest/pages/ccmemorialfund.html

And what's up with the super-imposed image attached to the article? I can practically see the background cut around Grrrrrant's head.... oh wait. You can. And last time I checked (I could be wrong) there was no cool brown paint job with the name painted above the entry. Hmmm.....

Seriously though, I LUV SuBRosa! So freakin' kool that a space like that can trive next to several other dope organizations/projects. Anti-textbook definition of community. Thank you all so much for making the space happen.

sadly the only community i seem to see there is the same dozen anarchists and a rotating cast of big mouthed mostly male bodied wingnuts. it's honestly a hard place for me to hang out even though i felt like there was a lot of potential at one point. externally, it seems to be fading in quietly alongside the rest of bourgeois, liberal downtown sc businesses, "fair trade" and all. it's located in such a strategic spot it could mean something in terms of organizing resistance, but it seems like not pissing off the liberal bike folks is more important. or, more important still, the fact that most anarchists in this country seem to be much less interested in developing revolutionary force and participating in social conflict, than in developing navel-gazing subcultural "safe spaces"/projects like infoshops and "convergences".

Translation, for those who really need it spelled out:

Hi, Im a cop and anywhere we hear "anarchist" we automatically assume "crazed bloodthirsty violent psycho cult making bombs right now for blowing up preschools". I think Im clever by trying to sound like one of you while in the same breath hiding behind anonymity and playing obvious ego games trying to incite you into random acts of criminal violence so we can raid your coffee shop and arrest everyone of you lone-wolf self-radicalized domestic terrorists (a bunch of impressive words Homeland Security has been teaching us!) because we've had you under 24hr surveillance for 6 months now and we read every word that goes in or out of your computers and landline and track txt msgs for every phone number that is logged by Trueposition as spending more than 5 mins in the last 6 months at your location, and we're getting bored now so please respond to this with some righteous outrage so that we know who to start following around town.

Oh, sorry, was that supposed to be a secret? My bad.

I've always felt that generalizations are a good way to start masturbating.

and randomly accusing anyone with anything critical to say of being a cop is better suited to maoists, or, hell, cops ("badjacketing") than anarchists.

i don't know who you think is trying to "incite criminal violence" but that's a cop-minded phrase if i've ever heard one, as is the suggesting that revolutionaries "hiding behind anonymity" should post their identities on the internet for everyone to see. like sub rosa, the internet is not a good place for these topics.

this isn't the main problem i see with it. the question is why is there so much energy in the n. american anarchist movement going into creating and supporting infoshops? and what is happening inside them and with the people organizing them? and how does it connect to making revolution? i guess more than airing my specific criticisms i'd like to have these questions gain some attention and perhaps become part of other people building their own trains of thought.

anyway, obviously, i'm not a cop. i just don't like hanging out with wingnuts that try to start crazy arguments. and i would tell you the same thing to your face if you really cared. i'd rather just not let the question of my identity complicate this, i'm sure anyone who knows me and is reading closely enough can figure it out.

anyway, infoshops... i'd like to quote a friend of mine:


Communism and anarchy can be the products of nothing but the negation of negation. That we need spaces to meet, to get organized, need not compromise any of our practices against the state-form and against capital. We are within a relationship of capital called capitalism. We are within the state-form. A moral imperative to denounce all engagements with capital is a different discourse than an ethical practice of destroying our relationships with it.

Infoshops are just bookstores. The bodies that occupy an infoshop, like the bodies that occupy everything, are what add potential to a space ordered as a bookstore. If we want bookstores and their practices, then we simply need to experiment at doing bookstores. If we don't, then we need to experiment with other techniques of territorialization.

Whether we want "total fucking destroy" or a "really democratic society," it would be foolish to examine the infoshop or the insurrection as a merely means to an ends. There is no space to experiment with freedom, ethics, community, or whatever, which must not first be seized. Thus, practices that generates oscillation between form and content--a how we want what we want--must be experimented with wildly. The spreading of revolution is not a linear process; its so-called "agent" is not a coherent subjectivity. It is rather a process of resonance and territorializiation that occurs from ruptures with capitalist time and the state-form.

it is a sweet spot. has java bob's. ants in the sugar, but the coffee is way better without sugar anyway. funky interior. friendly folks. lots of cool things to read. nice place to sit outside, in a downtown with dwindling outside places unless you have cash. and somehow open at 8am. that is no small feat. thanks to all who volunteer to keep this rocking spot open. thank you.