The SRRT, the Alternative Media Task Force, and the Alternative Press Center held a 40th Anniversary Celebration at ALA, Chicago, 2009. The Alternative Media Task Force would like to thank you the Alternative Press Center’s collaborative efforts that made the event possible. If your library does not subscribe to the APC’s Alternative Press Index, consider a subscription through OCLC. If you were unable to attend, you can still show your support for alternative media vendors through your purchases. If every member selected one item for your library or personal collection, it would make a difference! Thanks to the vendors for helping us celebrate 40 years.
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Participating Publishers
AREA Chicago
Founded in 2005, AREA Chicago comprises both a biannual magazine and a series of sponsored events. Its publications and events serve the double mission of researching art, education and activist practices within the city of Chicago and producing and strengthening networks among grassroots practitioners. In its first two and a half years, AREA Chicago has published five magazine issues and organized 50 events. AREA Chicago is dedicated to gathering and sharing information and histories about local social movements, political and cultural organizations. Through this practice, it seeks to create an independent network for organizations and individuals committed to social justice through cultural and educational practices within the city.
Black Swan Press / Surrealist Editions
Established in 1968, Black Swan Press is the publisher for the Surrealist Movement in the United States as well as Surrealist around the world. Publisher of the journal Arsenal: Surrealist Subversion.
Charles H. Kerr
The past couple of decades have seen further growth of the Kerr Company. Organized as a worker-owned co-operative not-for-profit education association, its rapidly expanding list features beautifully printed but reasonably priced books which bring back into print some of the best of C.L.R. James, Mary Marcy, Edward Bellamy, C.H. George, and Voltairine de Cleyre, as well as heretofore unpublished writings by T-Bone Slim, Claude McKay, Slim Brundage , and Covington Hall, and new books by H.L. Mitchell, Staughton Lynd, Warren Leming, and Carlos Cortez. Now in its 124th year, the Kerr Company is not only a living link with the most vital radical traditions of the past, but also an organic part of the today’s struggles for peace and justice in an ecologically balanced world.
Contratiempo
Originally conceived as a monthly Spanish language magazine in April 2003 by a group of Latino writers living in Chicago, Contratiempo is now a 501(c)3 tax exempt literary and publishing center. Its mission is to create opportunities in the Latino community to read, write and publish in Spanish, and to offer a space for dialogue to reflect upon issues of identity and the social environment that influence their literary, artistic and cultural expression and weave it into the fabric of American life. The group’s mission is carried out in three ways: through its flag publication, Contratiempo magazine, with each issue focusing on a particular topic of interest to US Latinos in Chicago and elsewhere, through its budding publishing house, Ediciones Vocesueltas, and through the organization of symposia, readings, creative writing workshops and discussion series, all of which uniquely engage the Spanish-speaking Latino community through artistic expression and dialogue.
Curbstone Press
Throughout its history, Curbstone’s Director and Board members have nurtured its focus on creative literature that invites readers to examine social issues, encourages a deeper understanding between cultures, and reflects a commitment to promoting human rights. Curbstone’s mission encompasses two interdependent goals: 1) publishing creative literature that promote human rights and inter-cultural understanding and 2) bringing writers and programs deep into the community to promote literacy, knowledge of many cultures, and an appreciation for literature.
Haymarket Books
Haymarket Books is a nonprofit, progressive book distributor and publisher, a project of the Center for Economic Research and Social Change. We believe that activists need to take ideas, history, and politics into the many struggles for social justice today. Learning the lessons of past victories, as well as defeats, can arm a new generation of fighters for a better world. As Karl Marx said, “The philosophers have merely interpreted the world; the point however is to change it.”
Icarus Films
Icarus Films (formerly First Run/Icarus Films) is a leading distributor of documentary films with a library of almost 900 titles. They release approximately 50 new films each year, covering controversial issues too often unseen and unheard. Their productions feature outstanding social, political and historical documentaries, as well as films related to science and technology, all which provide provocative views of a rapidly changing world.
Insight Press
Insight Press provides complimentary books to prisoners and is currently expanding their publishing capabilities to fill the need for critical and revolutionary thought that can influence the discourse in society.
In These Times
In These Times is a news magazine committed to political and economic democracy and opposed to the dominance of transnational corporations and the tyranny of marketplace values over human values. In These Times is dedicated to reporting the news with the highest journalistic standards; to informing and analyzing movements for social, environmental and economic justice; and to providing an accessible forum for debate about the policies that shape our future.
Library Juice
Library Juice is the library blog of Rory Litwin, and continues where his online serial of the same name left off in the Fall of 2005. From 1998 to late 2005, Library Juice, the web and email zine, covered topics of interest to passionate librarians, from a political Left perspective that he believes is linked to and implicit in the fundamental values of the profession in its modern form.
Media Consortium
The Media Consortium coalesced in 2006 and represents leaders in independent radio, television, and online media to address key questions affecting a democratic society such as: 1) how to increase independent journalism’s voice in broader public debates about the crucial political and social issues of our day and 2) how to navigate the current wave of profound technological change that is reshaping the media business and redefining the practice of journalism itself.
National Film Board of Canada
Their collection includes animation, documentaries, experimental films and alternative dramas. They showcase films that take a stand on issues of global importance that matter to Canadians – stories about the environment, human rights, international conflict, the arts and more. Works that push the boundaries, give a voice to the underrepresented, and build bridges between cultures.
Neighborhood Writing Alliance (NWA)
NWA provokes dialogue and promotes change by creating opportunities for adults in Chicago to write, publish, and perform works about their lives. They publish the Journal of Ordinary Thought.
The Point
The Point is a Chicago-based print journal devoted to rigorous intellectual essays on contemporary life. The journal will be published twice a year. The first issue will include essays on Facebook, the Creation Museum, David Foster Wallace, Eckhart Tolle, as well as a symposium on the question: What is Politics For?
Radical Teacher
Radical Teacher is an independent magazine for educational workers at all levels and in every kind of institution. The magazine focuses on critical teaching practice, the political economy of education, and institutional struggles.
Re/Search Publications
RE/Search grew out of Search & Destroy, “the best punk rock publication, ever. It combined art and photography with in-depth interviews and articles.” Every RE/Search book continues the Punk Rock Cultural Revolution, but strives to provide permanent inspiration to artists/cultural scientists of the future, providing careful editing, reference sections, photos, art and anthropological history.
Revolution Books
Revolution Books is dedicated to changing the whole world, to deeply understanding that the problem is the capitalist imperialist system and that a far better revolutionary world is possible. When it comes to the hardest questions, Revolution Books is on the frontline with revolutionary theory, history, science, literature, and debate. At the heart of Revolution Books is the work of Bob Avakian – his re-envisioning of revolution and communism goes beyond the best of the previous communist movement and its animating a new conversation at Revolution Books. With books, discussions, and author appearances, Revolution Books is a center of revolutionary ferment where re-envisioned communism mixes it up with many streams of progressive and radical intellectual life, and welcoming engagement with all of reality without a priori blinders.
Stop Smiling
Stop Smiling's unique editorial premise is rooted in the glory days of magazine publishing from the '60s and '70s; think: old Playboy, old Esquire, old Interview, Creem, and National Lampoon. Each issue follows a theme and consists of feature-length interviews, essays and oral histories. With a focus on preservation, Stop Smiling has published some of the last in-depth conversations with Kurt Vonnegut, Roberto Bolaño, Robert Altman, Lee Hazlewood and George Plimpton. Stop Smiling is pleased to announce that it will launch a book imprint in partnership with Melville House/Random House, with its first title out in Spring 2010.
Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center
The Independent Media Center is a grassroots organization committed to using media production and distribution as a tool for promoting social and economic justice. The IMC is not owned or funded by corporate sponsors and advertisers and we are in need of your support to sustain our efforts.