Wanted: non-digital resources of past radical movements

A callout to people with access to hard copies of non-digitized material that documents a number of radical social movements and groups to come forward.

Submitted by Juan Conatz on February 23, 2012

For a couple years now, I've been making an effort at getting previously non-digital resources of past radical movements online. Living (at the time) in Iowa and becoming involved in antiwar and anarchist groups, I tried to look back at other people's efforts and found there was little available information. As I dug a little deeper, previously unknown groups, individuals and moments in Iowa's history started popping up. Some of it was locked away in the University of Iowa's archives. Some of it was in people's attics or their basements, forgotten to most but the participants and unknown to people involved in contemporary struggles. This is unacceptable.

A lot of what I've concentrated so far on is Iowa radical history or American anarcho-syndicalist/anarcho-communist groups and activities in the 70s-80s. But there is so much more out there. Sitting in people's homes or memories, waiting to be either forgotten or rediscovered. Let's make it the latter. My aim is to type up hard copies or copies of these hard copies and put them into libcom's very large library or find a place online where they would relevant and wanted.

Here is a list of stuff I'm interested in. If you have newsletters, newspapers, leaflets, accounts, interviews, stories, articles or even know someone who might have been involved with some of the lesser known things and might want to be interviewed about their experience, please email me at: juanconatz[at]gmail.com

  • Red Wing Workers Organization, a libertarian socialist group in Des Moines in 1970s
  • New World Collective, anarchist collective in Des Moines in 1970s
  • Des Moines Black Panther Party of early 1970s
  • Ames Anarchist Group/Central Iowa Anarchists from 1970s
  • The Left: A Quarterly Review of Radical and Experimental Art, a socialist magazine that published two issues out of Davenport, Iowa in 1931.
  • Tri-City Workers’ Magazine, a socialist publication possibly out of Davenport, Iowa and possibly put out by the Socialist Party in the 1900′s
  • Anything on IWW activity in Iowa
  • Stan Weir writings not on libcom or in the book Singlejack Solidarity
  • Accounts of strikes or worker struggle at 'The Pack' in Dubuque, Iowa
  • English language material about the CNT in the 1970s-1990s
  • English language material about any of the CNT splitoffs, including the CGT, in the 1980s-2000s
  • English language material about labor struggle or anarchist groups/individuals in Puerto Rico 1900s-2000s
  • Articles from the Love & Rage Revolutionary Anarchist Federation that are not found in the AK Press book or the online archive (seemingly defunct now)
  • Material from the Midwest based Federation of Revolutionary Anarchist Collectives (FRAC) from the early 2000s
  • Material from the now defunct platformist type groups that arose in the early 2000s, such as the Northwest Anarchist Federation
  • Any Aufheben articles that are not in the libcom library
  • English language stuff on SAC
  • Articles or copies from the Industrial Worker anytime pre-2000s
  • Comments

    Jared

    12 years 9 months ago

    In reply to by libcom.org

    Submitted by Jared on February 23, 2012

    Try Josh MacPhee at interference archive: http://interferencearchive.org/ He might be able to help with some.

    Also try Julie Herrada at the Labadie Collection, Michigan: http://www.lib.umich.edu/labadie-collection Although these are anarchist archives they may have suggestions for other sources? Or might be happy for you to digitalise them (archives want too, but lack the time and resources...)

    Good luck!

    Juan Conatz

    12 years 9 months ago

    In reply to by libcom.org

    Submitted by Juan Conatz on February 23, 2012

    georgestapleton

    On the SAC, I presume you've seen this: http://swedishzine.wordpress.com/

    It was put together by a good friend of mine who used to post on here.

    Yeah, I've seen that. Thanks for reminding me, though. Hasn't been updated in a couple years, so its probably worth going through and finding stuff to put in the library before it falls into the blackhole of expired websites. That was Rowan right?

    BareFootNerd

    12 years 9 months ago

    In reply to by libcom.org

    Submitted by BareFootNerd on February 24, 2012

    Seattle has one of the Largest Zine collections in the World
    http://hugohouse.org/content/zapp

    Thanks for Writing about Issues in the Midwest!!

    Steven.

    12 years 9 months ago

    In reply to by libcom.org

    Submitted by Steven. on February 24, 2012

    Ms Indicia

    Here's some folks doing something similar: Digitization project / Anarchist Archives at UVic

    I have a bunch of old papers, zines and art posters in boxes in storage I've been meaning to dig out and get scanning, so I hope to contribute more in the spring.

    hey, that sounds great we'd really appreciate it

    altemark

    12 years 9 months ago

    In reply to by libcom.org

    Submitted by altemark on February 24, 2012

    A commendable effort!

    The SAC archival committee is continually making all publications in the SAC archives at the ARAB (Labour Movement's Archive and Catalogue) available on the web - quite a lot of material, really. But as you can see from the index of the "foreign languages" section, English publications are scant - https://www.sac.se/Om-SAC/Historik/Arkiv/Andra-språk

    I'm going to check if I can find any material put out by the SAC international committee in the 90's at home, could scan that if it is of any interest.

    syndicalist

    12 years 9 months ago

    In reply to by libcom.org

    Submitted by syndicalist on February 25, 2012

    WSA can continue to provide stuff from our archieves. We have loads of stuff and will make them available on a need-to-have basis. Since I'm doing the work, I hate to spend lots of time pulling files, going through them and xeroxing and having them sit for ages.

    Juan, when you are ready to do SAC stuff, email. We can provide english language stuff. But the SAC may have extra copies of their old english language pamphlets (on their principles and some other stuff).

    BTW, on the SAC, you might want to ask them for materials they printed for their International Syndicalist Conference of (oh, early 1990s).They produced a good quality (but poorly translated) magazine on the conference. Well worth seeing if you can get a copy. In fact, I'll email someone and ask them to see if they can help out.

    If you are doing stuff by topic, let us know. We'll pull stuff by topic and send things off.