Wooden Shoe Books and Records

October 9th at 6 PM!

In Let's Move the Needle, Shannon Downey, the artist and craftivist behind Badass Cross Stitch, provides a roadmap and accessible toolkit for burgeoning art activists. Filled with self-reflective activities, exercises, and prompts, along with practical stories about the work of other art activists across mediums and throughout history, Let's Move the Needle educates and empowers readers to center their art around collective action in service of political, social or community issues they are most passionate about; affirming that everyone can be a changemaker and that change-making can be generative, enjoyable, and a bit sassy!

On October 9th Shannon will be leading a conversation on her new book as well as leading a craft-based discussion so bring whatever craft you're working on and your thoughts, questions, or ideas!

2pm on Oct 5th!

No Solitary Witches: The Politics of Tarot in Radical Relationship

Tarot is popular as a personal development and spiritual tool, but when we also look at historical context and power relations, Tarot can help us to better understand how the personal, political and spiritual all inform one another in our lives. Please join Lane Smith, author of "78 Acts of Liberation: Tarot to Transform Our World;" Biany Perez, lifelong Tarot student and writer; and Sara Calverese, creator of the Turning Terrestrial Tides Tarot, for a conversation about Tarot in radical community, with a focus on relationship and interconnectedness, resisting capitalist appropriation of Tarot as a simple commodified tool.

The one and only just stopped by to sign two copies of Fight Like Hell. Kim will be back next month for an awesome event too. Can you tell we're a huge Kim Kelly fan here at the Shoe?

“Below” - https://vimeo.com/594960584

A poetic/prose film searching the depths for the answers to the darkness of a life lived carelessly. One always in the shadows. Incorporating audio,film and photography take a journey down the rabbit hole.- in English and Spanish

-Written by, filmed,photographed and English voice by Susan DiPronio ... www.pinkhangerpresents.com

-Shadow performer and Spanish voice by Salomé Cosmique - salomecosmique.com

September 29th at 6 PM!

IN DEFENSE OF COMMON LIFE: THE POLITICAL THOUGHT OF RAQUEL GUTIÉRREZ AGUILAR
Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar, Brian Whitener, translated by JD Pluecker

The essential political and theoretical work of one of Latin America’s most important contemporary theorists.

Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar is one of the foremost Latin American political thinkers. From armed Indigenous struggle in the Bolivian altiplano to the contemporary wave of feminist uprisings, Raquel Gutiérrez's life and work have spanned and spurred on some of the most important political sequences in the last forty years in Latin America.

Almost unknown in the United States, Raquel is one of the Latin American anticapitalist, antistate Left's most important contemporary theorists. She has produced important work on communal struggles and political forms and has been at the center of some of the most important political organizing in Bolivia and Mexico in the last forty years.

This volume presents an extensive interview with Raquel in which she charts her political and intellectual trajectory from her militancy in the Ejército Guerrillero Tupac-Katari, to Bolivia's famous Water and Gas wars, to the massive wave of popular feminist rebellions and organizing. Translator and writer, Brian Whitener offers two essays in translation that contain some of her central theoretical concepts, including the veto and reappropriation of communal wealth, for thinking a politics in common, and of the commons.

With the publication of In Defense of Common Life, a new audience of English-language readers can finally engage with the thought and political experience of a thinker and militant, whose contributions to social movements span an incredible political and regional breadth, and resonate deeply with current debates with the US about the conditions and practices of revolutionary change, feminism, and popular struggle.

Just some of the amazing books you can find around the shop.

A discussion with local activists and contributors to the book,
Three Way Fight: Revolutionary Politics and Antifascism

What’s the relationship between combating the far right and working for systemic change? Three way fight politics argues that the far right grows out of an oppressive capitalist order but is also in conflict with it in real ways, and that radicals need to combat both. A three way fight approach says we need sharper analysis of these different opponents so we can fight them more effectively. This discussion aims to support people in current movements and help us strategize.

In WILD FAITH, Lavin goes deep into the beliefs that motivate the Christian right, from its segregationist past to a future riddled with apocalyptic visions. Along the way, she explores what motivates anti-abortion terrorists; the Christian Patriarchy movement, with its desire to place all women under absolute male control; the twisted theology that leads to rampant child abuse; and the ways conspiracy theorists and extremist Christians influence each other to mutual political benefit

About the Author

Talia Lavin is the author of the critically acclaimed book Culture Warlords. She is a journalist who has had bylines in the New Yorker, the New Republic, the New York Times Review of Books, the Washington Post, and more. She writes a newsletter, The Sword and the Sandwich, which is featured in Best American Food and Travel Writing 2024.

Still a bookstore

Poetry event this Thursday at 2pm with Ilyssa Goldsmith!

"Letters on the Way Home" is a poetry collection about what it means to lose home both spiritually and physically, only to recover it once again, all-at-once.

EVENTS! We’ve got ‘em!

Here’s what’s currently on the books:

🖤MARCH🖤

Sat 9, 5pm - Join the Poor People’s Army to learn more about an upcoming march & action they

Mon 11, 7pm - International Women’s Day event w/ the IWG-ICT focusing on the history of the labor struggle of working women .official

Tue 12, 6:30pm - The Year of Baldwin Reading Group: In participation with the Wooden Shoe will be hosting a twice a month reading group of Baldwin’s works. No prior reading required

Wed 13, 7pm - Writers Against the War on Gaza Reading Group: Discussing “Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear” by Abu Toha

Thu 21, 7pm - Discussion with Amy Cohen, author of “Black History in the Philadelphia Landscape”

Fri 22, 8pm - Improv Comedy Show with audience participation

Sat 23, 7pm - What’s on Ya Mental: Open Mic for regeneration and healing around the Spring Equinox

Tue 26, 6:30pm - The Year of Baldwin Reading Group

Sun 24, 5pm - Informality, Anarchy and the Black Radical Tradition: a lecture based discussion on organization and strategy in the 21st century

Thu 28, 7pm - An evening with Ajay Chaudhary discussing the book “The Exhausted of the Earth“

🖤APRIL🖤

Tue 9, 6:30pm - The Year of Baldwin Reading Group

Sat 13, 1pm at IFFY BOOKS (404 S. 20th st) - Are You Anarcho-Curious? Bring your thoughts and questions to an open discussion

Sat 20, 6:30pm - Discussion with Jim Feast about his book “Karl Marx: Private Eye” about fiction and humor in radical writing

Tue 23, 6:30pm - The Year of Baldwin Reading Group

Sat 27, 3pm - Are You Anarcho-Curious? Bring your thoughts and questions to an open discussion

🖤MAY🖤

Wed 1, 7pm at Parkway Central Library (1901 Vine St) - One Book, One Philadelphia: Anarcho-Curious includes three speakers, all based in Philadelphia: Kim Kelly, author of Fight Like Hell; Andrew Lee, author of Defying Displacement; and the abolitionist educator and organizer Felicia Teter. Moderated by Wooden Shoe volunteers. This event will take place in the Skyline Room, on the 4th floor of Parkway Central Library. ASL interpretation will be provided.

Check it out!

Wooden shoe shirts AND shirts are back in stock, baby.

Y’all know we’re freaky freaks for it….uh I mean come visit and support your local infoshop

Free Covid tests, narcan, safer s*x supplies, and test strips. Can’t always guarantee we’ll have it all in when you’re here, but check it out if you stop by!

Event time! Masks required and provided!
“The city has long served as the stage for political life and popular revolt. As mass displacement alters the composition of gentrifying cities, the avenues available for social change become unsettled as well, forcing us to reimagine our strategies for building a better world. Around the world communities are pushing the struggle against forced displacement in new directions, shutting down developments and evictions and bringing cities to a halt, fighting militarized police and the most powerful companies in the world. Activists and residents in struggle—dozens of whom are interviewed by Lee to inform his work—are charting the way forward to affordable and sustainable cities run by the people who inhabit them.”

Goddamnit people, we have said it before and we will say it again: we are a bookstore.

What even is family lmao

Oops all books

1. Buy a books
2. Read a book
3. ????
4. Fully-horizontal liberationist movement

Come on out for a reading and discussion!
Masks required and provided

Masks required and provided. Sign up link in bio.

A fun night of board games, labor history, and adventure! Join us for a night of board game fun and adventure! Bring your own games or play one of ours.

Check it out, friends.

🆓🆓🆓
Next Wednesday, 1/17/2024, 6:30pm on our main floor.

Not Another Dollar, Not Another Dime! with

😷Masks required & provided😷

Stephen Gulick, National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee counselor with 25 years of resistance experience, will be presenting information on how to stop paying for war & genocide through tax resistance. With a number of unique ways to participate, all people who currently pay federal income tax are encouraged to come learn and connect.