The Radical Bookfair is over, and after having been so happy about the stall organisation, the committment deflated with the further proceedings of the bookfair, hampered by the incredibly good weather we had for a change here in Scotland, with most of the group members disappearing to the beach or to holidays.
Which basically left me and two other accidentially present friends to pick up all the stuff and carry it back to the local infoshop. Including television, table and a papmachee head of – aeh- probably Tony Blair, but could have been Bush either, and about 1 kg of some greek filled wineleaves or something and bread and butter, and an incredibly heavy lot of leaflets, posters, merchandise.
I also cycled so that was definitely my work-out for the day.
And that still leaves me a bit angry, that some people don’t seem to carry through their projects sometimes, but give up in the middle and don’t even ask anybody else for help. I really do love the song on the German solidarity CD with the line “I organise in groups for a high efficiency”, of course, a line which would probably never pop up in any other country in a song by and for revolutionary movements, but it would be nice if it would, sometimes.
This year, I got two books, keeping in mind I still haven’t read the ones I got last year, I went for the history of the IWW in comic format and for a collection of short stories, journalistic reports from the 19th century up to today. I was also very intrigued by the US centric book “Who owns the media?” with the astonishing price of £20, and also the new 2005 book about “Project Censored”, also about £20, a collection of the most censored news reports over several years, but it has a good presence on the internet.
There is also a campaign “Take back the media” about bringing light to media ownership, here is their website.
I went to some of the book presentations and discussions and recorded some of these on audio, especially in regards, that many writers prepare incredibly good summaries of their books and researches, giving away their knowledge to the audience and then discuss it.
Anyways, the first days everything was fine and alright, but on Saturday more people asked questions trying to prevent me from doing audio recordings, but mainly not of themselves, but on behalf of others, mainly in my opinion this were people involved in some sort of socialist party type of thing at first, thoug I did not record any of these, as they tend not to transfer much knowledge, but basically just rant along with the aim of subscribing more and more people to their frontgroups or party or similar.
The big disappointment was on Sunday, when my favourite author objected to his talk going up on Indymedia – even in parts.
Just can’t and couldn’t understand it really, though of course it would be more polite of asking people before they actually start speaking, but I am usually always later and last minute and so just swished into the room.
Most people here in Britain seem also to think asking uncomfortable questions would be a sign of dislike, but in Germany, that is more seen usually as a sign of engagement and real intrest, and of stimulating interesting debate.
Anyways we made a kind of compromise that I could use some of it in an article written down in some kind of journalistic way.