Studies in Print Culture and the History of the Book

Books, Organizing, and Global Activism

Sherrin Frances

• Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781613767375
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

In September 2011, Occupy Wall Street activists took over New York's Zuccotti Park. Within a matter of weeks, the encampment had become a tiny model of a robust city, with its own kitchen, first aid station, childcare services—and a library of several thousand physical books. Since that time, social movements around the world, from Nuit Debout in Paris to Gezi Park in Istanbul, have built temporary libraries alongside their protests. While these libraries typically last only a few weeks at a time and all have ultimately been dismantled or destroyed, each has managed to collect, catalog, and circulate books, serving a need not being met elsewhere. Libraries amid Protest unpacks how these protest libraries—labor-intensive, temporary installations in parks and city squares, poorly protected from the weather, at odds with security forces—continue to arise. In telling the stories of these surprising and inspiring spaces through interviews and other research, Sherrin Frances confronts the complex history of American public libraries. She argues that protest libraries function as the spaces of opportunity and resistance promised, but not delivered, by American public libraries.

part one

definition of a
protest library

Chapter 1

Origins

BiblioSol, Madrid

On May 15, 2011, Spanish activists known as the “Indignados” entered a large popular city square in Madrid called Puerta del Sol and prepared to occupy the space in protest of the austerity measures taken by the national government, including deep cuts to social services and tax increases. They quickly coalesced into a micro-village with designated areas for things like sleeping, cooking, first aid, child care, and public relations. Some of the activists also wanted to make sure that the funding reductions to Spanish libraries were not forgotten among the myriad budget cuts under protest, so a few of them brought a handful of books to the occupation as a visual aid. As they would later explain on their blog, they did not intend to build a library in Acampada Sol.1

But something about that little stack of books spoke to the other activists and visitors, compelling them to donate their own books to the pile, and then more books, and then more—in fact, around two thousand more within the first week alone. In response to the growing piles of books, several activists spontaneously took on the role of “librarian” and dedicated their volunteer efforts to organizing what fast became a proper physical library with a robust general collection of reading materials.2 The library soon had a dedicated space in the square with its own tarp, its own shelving and seating, and its own reputation as a place not only to borrow books but also to linger and read, play board games, and hear performances, lectures, or music. The library would last about a month, and in that time it would name itself BiblioSol, grow a physical collection of around four thousand books, and develop a durable online community. In mid-June, less than four weeks after it began, Acampada Sol would be peacefully dismantled, all the tents, supplies, and signage cleaned up, and the library collection boxed and transported to a nearby squat for storage while everyone decided what to do next.3

BiblioSol and its sizable collection of books represents a particular type of outsider library called a protest library.4 This is a temporary physical library that emerges spontaneously within a political occupation or encampment. These occupations take place when activists and community members want to visibly resist national politics, preserve and amplify cultural histories, and emphasize unique local demands, and the development of the occupation often leads to something that resembles a miniature city with areas for first aid and child care, signage and building supplies, religious and meditative spaces, and so on. While each protest library is occupation-specific, from camp to camp around the world the libraries themselves are strikingly similar. They are all physical spaces with boundaries defined by stacks of books, shelves made of found objects, and tents or tarps. Their book collections begin with a handful of volumes and usually grow to several thousand within a few days or weeks. The collections themselves include a wide variety of general reading materials and are not restricted to political texts. Activists, many of whom have professional library training, though just as many do not, are drawn to the books and take on the persona of “librarian,” helping to define and name the library, create systems of organization and lending rules, create stamps to mark the books, and collect equipment to store, display, and protect the volumes. The libraries become dedicated spaces within the camps for conversation and activities like poetry readings, music, and chess.

BiblioSol was the first protest library of its kind and provides a springboard into addressing some of the most obvious questions: Why libraries at all when there was so much other work to be done within the occupations? Why put so much effort into an aspect of the camp that had no direct impact on the protest, something that was only obliquely related to the main purpose of the resistance activities? To address these questions, the protest library story begins with the prefigurative orientation of the Indignados and the 15-M movement.

The Indignados and 15-M

Puerta del Sol, the public city square the activists took over in Madrid, accommodates a large flow of pedestrian traffic and consumer activity. The spacious brick plaza has an irregular shape closer to a half moon than a square. It marks “kilometer 0,” the place from which Spain’s original network of roads emanate. The oldest, most imposing, and most infamous building facing the plaza is the Real Casa de Correos, built in 1768 as the Royal Post Office. The building has primarily served as a location for various legislative offices since the nineteenth century, but while Generalissimo Francisco Franco’s regime ruled the country for the middle third of the twentieth century, it was home to the Dirección General de Seguridad.5 On a visit in 2015, several Madrileños pointed out to me that the building’s basement had a long, sordid history of torture during this time. They said the period from 1957 to 1965, under the direction of Carlos Arias Navarro, whose nickname was the “Butcher of Málaga,” was especially brutal, and it was not uncommon to pass through Puerta del Sol and hear screams coming from the Casa de Correos.

Franco died in 1975 and was succeeded by Prince Juan Carlos. Under this new leader, Spain held its first elections in 1977 and began passing more democratic laws. The government’s stranglehold on culture was also loosened. Today, Franco’s dictatorial fascist government has been replaced with a constitutional monarchy. Spaniards democratically elect a congress, which chooses a prime minister to run the national government. All areas of Spain have municipal governments that manage city services and local regulations, although some regions have been granted more autonomy than others.

Franco’s legacy remains complex, however, with many officials even in the 2000s still refusing to denounce his regime. According to Almudena Escobar López, this transition reveals a “hypocrisy of the Spanish democratic ideal and the traces left by Franco’s dictatorship.” She writes that the transition away from a “repressive police state” and toward democracy “was a quiet process. It was a transition without justice, in which the perpetrators of the totalitarian regime were assimilated into the newborn constitutional monarchy. This meant that, in contrast to other countries that endured fascist regimes, such as Germany and Italy, there were no trials of former regime members and collaborators. Spaniards who suffered repression during the regime had to keep their mourning quiet within the walls of their homes.”6 A politically active student in Spain identified as “Y” interviewed by an anarchist zine called Mutiny Zine in 2013 said: “It’s very important to remember, that here in Spain we had a dictatorship that lasted for more than 35 years and only ended in 1975. Most of our parents were born when that dictatorship still existed. We’re all influenced by that. There is still a strong current of fear of, or respect for, authority, especially for people over 40.”7 While the public no longer fears speaking out against the government, many still choose their words carefully.

The grave political history of this space is notched and grooved by the flow of modern economics, providing the perfect landscape for the coming community of 15-M activists and catalyzing the other political movements around the world between 2011 and 2016 that also spawned libraries.8 As with so many public urban areas these days, consumerism has taken over the Puerta del Sol. By 2011, the Real Casa de Correos was flanked ignominiously by a Kentucky Fried Chicken on one side and an apartment building on the other. The opposing edges of the plaza are lined with souvenir shops, ticket kiosks, currency exchanges for the many tourists, flagship storefronts for cosmetics and cell phone companies, and restaurants and bars. Back in 2011, however, underneath the rapid flow of buying and spending ran a deeper current of financial hardship making the wares for sale in the Puerta del Sol out of reach for many Spaniards.

Activists flooded the square on May 15, 2011, to protest the abysmal economic state of Spain, which suffered the highest unemployment rate of all seventeen Eurozone countries. Spain’s rate of 22.8 percent was double the average unemployment rate of 10.3 percent, and a demographic breakdown reveals that among Spaniards between sixteen and twenty-four years old, the jobless rate was a breathtaking 48.6 percent. Every other young face you looked into was someone unable to find work, living with family or crashing with friends, and anxious about his or her future career opportunities. The housing industry was in crisis as well as a result of overinflated construction costs during the previous decade, an increase in subprime lending, and home repossessions that had risen by 32 percent in the previous year.9 When the government took an austerity stance and proposed severe budget cuts to resources and services, Spaniards—particularly the youth, people like “Y”—were outraged. Between twenty thousand and fifty thousand participated in the May 15 march. The march became a sit-in blocking traffic on a major road and resulting in the arrest of approximately two dozen activists.

At the end of the day, somewhere between thirty and one hundred people—angrier than ever and dissatisfied with the day’s outcome—decided to spend the night in the plaza. They had not arrived with a predetermined plan to stay. Initially they were angry, and they were marching. But soon after, the idea was hatched that they would remain there for a week, until the upcoming local and regional government elections on May 22. Once this decision was made, the number of people camping in the square grew daily, and they began to organize themselves into a small city. Acampada Sol began.

The Library

I did not learn about BiblioSol until months after the occupation was already gone from the square, and by the time I arrived in Madrid to talk with the librarians and activists, what remained of the BiblioSol book collection had been incorporated into a new social collective called Tres Peces Tres.10 It was here that I met Zeke Ochoa for the first time in person. He was one of the original activists who helped build and organize the library, and he remained deeply involved with BiblioSol for many years. He and several other BiblioSol librarians showed me the new space and guided me through the 15-M and BiblioSol archives. They have done a remarkable job of preserving the realia of their brief history. Walking into the L-shaped space, visitors are greeted at a reception desk where volunteers sell snacks before events, where it is possible to buy shirts and other items with the Tres Peces Tres logo, and where a warm welcome is provided along with the answers to any questions you might have about the calendar of events. The night I arrived, the other wing of the space had been set up for a movie night, so a large screen had been placed at one end, rows of folding chairs set out, and some of the other regular seating moved out of the way. The walls were lined with books, and a large, colorful papier-mâché shark hung from the ceiling. In the back room, extensive archives were maintained about 15-M, the Indignados, the occupation, and the histories of the other groups that had joined BiblioSol to create the collective.

Supplementing this physical archive, the library’s story had also been documented online, more or less in real time. In their blog Sin Bibliotecas No Hay Paraíso, the activists describe the work of building their physical, temporary outdoor library. The blog, whose title translates to “Without Libraries, There Is No Paradise,” paints a utopian image, proclaiming, “Our efforts were aimed at creating awareness, to open a continuous debate in a public square, to build a visible structure to work, learn, advance.”11 The pictures uploaded here and on their other related social media accounts record a vibrant space full of motivated, thoughtful, diverse people who are not just surrounded by rows of books but enveloped by them. The books provide photo backdrops. They cover tabletops. They frame faces and activities. Ad hoc shelving of boards and cinderblocks defines the perimeter of the space, and handwritten signage signifies the different categories into which the books have been organized.12 A tarp overhead keeps the bulk of the sun and rain off the weather-sensitive texts and often casts a blue shadow over the readers and the pages in their hands. In some photos the feeling is almost claustrophobic, with shelves very close to one another or towering above the photographer. In others the perspective widens, and more tarps become evident in the background behind BiblioSol, blurry, expansive, covering a large portion of the plaza in shadow. The camp extends as far as the horizon of the camera’s viewfinder.

Figure 1. Martin Zeke Ochoa working as librarian at BiblioSol, Madrid, May 2011. Courtesy of Martin Zeke Ochoa Archive.

The visual spectacle of a stack of books, even an initial small stack of three or four, generates a gravitational pull that affects people passing by. The librarians describe BiblioSol’s rapid emergence within the larger occupation in exuberant tones. “The first week of BiblioSol, the second of the camp, people kept arriving with plastic bags, shopping carts, backpacks, out of which came books and more books: 100, 200, 1000.”13 As the librarians from Occupy Wall Street joked later that year in New York, where there is a pile of books, a librarian is not far behind. As the number of donated books increases, the force of attraction becomes even stronger for some people than for others. Some librarians said they didn’t even know they had the drive to work with books until they were confronted by the piles. As the book collection grew to several thousand volumes within the first week, the space took shape and the work of formalizing the library began. A blog post conveys the breathlessness of the project: “And there were tables. And there were chairs. And we made a stamp bookplate. And armchairs. And 2000 books. And we put in a newspaper library.” While it was all very exciting, it was also rough on the volunteers, most of whom did not have any construction expertise or library experience. A librarian named Gonzalo says it was an exercise in patience as much as anything else.14

Working groups formed the organizational foundation of Acampada Sol, the larger occupation in which BiblioSol existed. Acampada Sol had been created by the still larger political occupation called the Indignados or the 15-M movement. To accommodate the rapid influx of reading materials, the volunteers requested more shelves and building supplies from Acampada Sol’s infrastructure working group. “ ‘Economy,’ ‘Art,’ ‘Immigration,’ ‘Education,’ ‘Environment,’ ‘Legal,’ ‘Thinking,’ ‘Action,’ ‘Music,’ ‘Theatre,’ ‘Spirituality.’ Every day new groups are born,” writes activist and blogger Oscar ten Houten. Working groups were assigned their own areas within the boundaries of Acampada Sol, though some, like “Extension,” reached beyond the camp, organizing assemblies and gatherings in different neighborhoods around Madrid.15 The camp even had an “Internal Coordination” group to help the other working groups collaborate and manage meeting spaces, and map...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Preface and acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part One
• Part Two
• Part Three
• Notes
• Index