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 .
If you are looking for information about the Baltimore Free School, another project that's spun off from the Red Emma's Collective, please check out the Free School website.
Everyone's favorite lo-fi radical organizer, the Slingshot, is back in stock for 2011, available in two sizes, pocket-sized and spiral bound, and in a riotously wide range of colors. Chock full of awesomely useful information (like the ever-useful list of radical spaces and projects worldwide), hilarious and/or poignant doodles, plus plenty of room for all your appointments, meetings, notes, reflections, and more. Best of all, the proceeds from the sale keep a great free radical paper, Berkely's Slingshot, in print and in the black. The folks who boxed up the organizers out in California were thoughtful enough to pad the boxes out with tons of copies of the latest issue—which, among a lot of great articles, features a great look at the proliferation of Free Schools and Skools across the country, including our very own Baltimore Free School.
Jordan Flaherty presents Floodlines: Community and Resistance from Katrina to the Jena Six @ Red Emma's
by Jordan Flaherty
Jordan Flaherty—editor at essential radical magazine Left Turn, and award winning independent journalist who broke the story of the Jena Six—presented his brand new book Floodlines, a firsthand account of community, culture, and resistance in New Orleans. The book weaves the stories of gay rappers, Mardi Gras Indians, Arab and Latino immigrants, public housing residents, and grassroots activists in the years before and after Katrina. From post-Katrina evacuee camps to torture testimony at Angola Prison to organizing with the family members of the Jena Six, Floodlines tells the stories behind the headlines from an unforgettable time and place in history.
Jordan was joined by Manju Rajendran, an amazing community organizer and artist from North Carolina. She is one of many founding members of Ubuntu, a women-of-color and survivor-led organization ending sexual assault and creating transformative love in Durham, NC. Manju is a long-time member and former worker of Southerners On New Ground (SONG), connecting race, class, gender, and sexuality, and she volunteers as a copy editor and occasional writer for Left Turn magazine. On tour, Manju is telling the story of Vimala’s Curryblossom Cafe, her family’s restaurant experiment in creative resiliency and food justice.
Audio: The Counter-Counterinsurgency Manual
by Network of Concerned Anthropologists
As the war in Afghanistan drones on, and the armed occupation of Iraq morphs into a more politically palatable "soft occupation" relying on private mercenaries and various forms of diplomatic and economic control, one can only expect an increase in the demand for imperial anthropologists, willing to deploy their professional training in the service of American geopolitical hegemony.
With the release in 2006 of the new Counterinsurgency Field Manual (as a joint U.S. Army/U.S. Marines publication), it became painfully apparent that upper echelons of the American military were deeply interested in finding ways to harness anthropological expertise as a part of their apparatus of strategic control. The strategy outlined in the Manual was put into practice with the launch of the controversial "Human Terrain System" teams, in which anthropologists are "embedded" within the combat structure of the U.S. military, but it has also appeared in more diffuse forms, as seen in the recent revelations about the role of the US military in funding and directing research into the human geography of Oaxaca's insurgent indigenous population.
The Network of Concerned Anthropologists, which believes that such practices are not only ineffective and dangerous, but a serious breach of the ethical constraints to which an academic discipline in the social sciences must subscribe, has been one of the most important critical voices in the struggle to "unembed" anthropology, and we were exceptionally excited to have welcomed NCA members David Price, Hugh Gusterson, Andrew Bickford, and David Vine for a discussion of their collectively authored book The Counter-Counterinsurgency Manual: Or, Notes on Demilitarizing American Society.
Audio: In Utopia w/ J. C. Hallman
by J. C. Hallman
In 2005, J.C. Hallman came across a scientific paper about “Pleistocene Rewilding,” a peculiar idea from conservation biology that suggested repopulating bereft ecosystems with endangered “megafauna.” The plan sounded utterly utopian, but Hallman liked the idea as much as the scientists did—perhaps because he had grown up on a street called Utopia Road in a master-planned community in Southern California. Pleistocene Rewilding rekindled in him a longstanding fascination with utopian ideas, and he went on to spend three weeks at the world’s oldest “intentional community,” sail on the first ship where it’s possible to own “real estate,” train at the world’s largest civilian combat-school, and tour a $30 billion megacity built from scratch on an artificial island off the coast of Korea. In Utopia explores the history of utopian literature and thought in the narrative context of the real-life fruits of that history.
Raul Zibechi in Baltimore!!
Legendary Uruguayan political analyst Raul Zibechi visits Baltimore next week, on a mini-US tour to promote the release of his first book in English translation, Dispersing Power: Social Movements as Anti-State Forces, published this past Spring by AK Press. You can read John's review of the book here: http://www.redemmas.org/books/98/
Be sure to check our Zibechi's Baltimore talk, co-sponsored by AK Press and the Johns Hopkins Program in Latin American Studies!
Suma Qamaña (Good Living) as an Alternative to the Crisis of our Civilization: A Talk by Raul Zibechi
Thursday, November 4 | 6PM | in Gilman Hall 50, Johns Hopkins University | FREE!
Radical Publishing Happy Hour!
This Wednesday (October 27): Support AK Press and celebrate the latest issue of the Baltimore Indypendent Reader (The WAR Issue) at the monthly Radical Publishing Happy Hour at the AK Press/Indyreader warehouse. Address is 3500 Parkdale Avenue, 3rd Floor, Suite 3. 6-9PM, all proceeds go to support independent, radical publishing projects in Baltimore! Cocktails! Cheap books! Free newspapers! Sparkling & witty conversation!
October 31st: Youth Justice Sunday
Did you know that the state of Maryland is spending 104 million dollars to build a new detention center for youth in Baltimore City? Just a couple of blocks away from Red Emma's, the latest addition to the penal archipelago hidden away from Mt. Vernon by I-83 will be this new facility to continue warehousing and criminalizing young people (and primarily young people of color). So rather than spending this money to improve public education, or provide jobs for young people who want to work to make the city better, the state is just going to build up the machinery for incarceration.
That is, unless we stop it. On October 31st, from 4-7PM, a broad coaltion has called for a rally at the proposed location of the new prison, 600 E. Monument St. Check out the call to action and details here. See you on the streets!
Support Women's Coffee Growers Co-op in Nicaragua
Red Emma's has brought back some really great coffee that truly is revolutionary and is some of the most socially and maybe ecologically just coffee that we have ever had!
We now have back in stock coffee from Just Coffee a co-op coffee roaster and Wob shop in Madison WI, that has been going beyond mere Fair Trade to work with growers and groups that have systematic and radical change on their minds and in their actions.
Right now we are featuring a light roast by the La Fem Women's growers co-opin Nicaragua that was founded in 1996, organized to work on issues of domestic violence against women, women's health, education, and job training...as well as coffee roasting.
Sadly La Fem and their region of Nicaragua was hit hard by flooding from hurricane Mathew. - Click on the link to learn how to directly support them.
We intend to rotate our light roast coffee options with the various collectives and co-ops that Just Coffee works with, so swing on by to Red Emma's to get a hot cup (especilly as it gets colder!) and check in to see what other truly revolutinary coffee we have brewed up in the space.
Also we have a really packed month of events - so please check out our listing of upcoming happenings this month and beyond!
The solidarity stretches from the fields to the roaster all the way up to the cup.
Kolya Abramsky presents Sparking a Worldwide Energy Revolution
As the world's energy system faces a period of unprecedented change, a global struggle over who controls the sector--and for what purposes--is intensifying. The question of "green capitalism" is now unavoidable, for capitalist planners and anti-capitalist struggles alike. From all sides we hear that it's time to save the planet in order to save the economy, but in reality what lies before us is the next round of global class struggle with energy at the center, as the key means of production and subsistence. There are no easy answers in this battle for control of the world's energy system--all we can be sure of is the fact that the fight has already begun.
Join Red Emma's as we welcome energy activist and scholar Kolya Abramsky for a discussion of his new edited collection, Sparking a Worldwide Energy Revolution, new this fall from AK Press. Sparking A Worldwide Energy Revolution is not a book of sound bites. It unpacks the seemingly innocent terms "energy sector" and "energy system" by situating the current energy crisis, peak oil, and the transition to a post-petrol future within a historical understanding of the global, social, economic, political, financial, military, and ecological relations of which energy and technology are parts. The authors probe the systemic relationships between energy production and consumption and the worldwide division of labor on which capitalism itself is based--its conflicts and hierarchies, its crisis and class struggles.
Thursday Nov 11, 7PM @ Red Emma's
Ben Dangl // Dancing and Dynamite
In the past decade, grassroots social movements played major roles in electing left-leaning governments throughout Latin America, but subsequent relations between the streets and the states remain uneasy. In Dancing with Dynamite, award-winning journalist Benjamin Dangl explores the complex ways these movements have worked with, against, and independently of national governments. From dynamite-wielding miners in Bolivia to the struggles of landless farmers in Brazil and Paraguay, Dangl discusses the dance between movements and states in seven different Latin American countries. Using original research, lively prose, and extensive interviews with workers, farmers, and politicians, he suggests how Latin American social movement strategies could be applied internationally to build a better world now.
Benjamin Dangl has worked as a journalist throughout Latin America for the Guardian Unlimited, The Nation, and the NACLA Report on the Americas. He is the author of The Price of Fire: Resource Wars and Social Movements in Bolivia, and the editor of TowardFreedom.com and UpsideDownWorld.org.
Thursday Nov 18, 6PM @ Red Emma's
Iraqi Physicians Speak Out
We'll be hosting three Iraqi physicians who will speak out on the devastating health consequences of the U.S. invasion andoccupation. Join us to hear about their work and learn about the ongoing human consequences of the war. They will be joined by a U.S. veteran who co-founded the Justice for Fallujah Project.
Friday Nov 19, 7PM @ Red Emma's
Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle present "Transforming Baltimore City Schools"
Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle, a radical thinktank that's developing policy analysis to be used in the the struggle for independence and self-determination for the residents of Baltimore, has produced a powerful alternative vision of what our public city schools would look like if they were re-oriented towards social justice, economic self-sufficiency, and real education rather than quasi-carceral warehousing of African American youth. We've invited LBS to come and present the proposal in the store, as well as talk more generally about the way they see radical research, analysis, and alternative policy formulation as critical tools to implement the political goals outlined in their 11-point manifesto.
Friday Nov 26, 7PM @ Red Emma's
Tina Wald presents Railroad Man: The Legend of Lil' Jay w/ Ryan Harvey
Railroad Man, The Legend of Lil’ Jay is the story of anarchist musician Jay Litzner, from the alleys of Detroit to post-Katrina New Orleans, from California’s beaches to the batcave in Brooklyn, riding freight trains, fighting a drug addiction and touching lives along the way.
In 2006 Jay and his wife Rosie were on a train from Seattle to San Francisco when Jay fell to his death. Railroad Man is told from Rosie’s point of view and follows the young couple into box cars and coal cars, protests, parades, wedding and death. For the last two years of his life, Lil’ Jay was a regular guest in the Detroit home of author Tina Wald, who traveled to ten states and interviewed seventy people to compile his biography.
Numerous times in their travels Jay and Rosie crossed paths with musician Ryan Harvey, who joins Wald for an evening of stories and music, entertainment and inspiration. Join us!
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, except for the first Sunday of every month, which is closed to everyone except collective members.
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.
