Want to be in community discussing radical books and having radical conversations? Well anticapitalism artists book club (AABC) was designed with you in mind!
Fill out our quick questionnaire here to help shape AABC by sharing your perspective and stay informed by providing your preferred email. If an Instagram user please follow along at @AABC_PDX as an additional way to stay in the know.
AABC is a place to gather together with fellow creative minds, critical thinkers, cultural workers, magic makers to connect on and center anticapitalism. We’ve met in person (masks required) for 2 hours every 2 weeks starting in late February through mid June. This time together has been spent discussing our chosen books and connecting with fellow book club members. Moving forward, our meetings will be used to collectively co-create art activation(s)/project(s) in response to our readings which we have $1000 in grant funds from Regional Arts and Culture Council (RACC) to go towards.
This group is free to join and for folks in Portland who identify as an artist. The Portland part is specific because we'll be meeting in various locations throughout the city (tbd, based on the groups needs). The "artist" part can mean sooo many things (lowercase "a" here is purposeful. Please don't let the label intimidate you from joining) and it's expansiveness is a beautiful aspect thats intentionally aligned with anticapitalism.
Based on AABC member votes our 1st book was “The Future is Disabled: Prophecies, Love Notes and Mourning Songs” by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha. For our 2nd AABC book we read “The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins” by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing. Our 3rd and final book was **“Let This Radicalize You” by Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba!** You can find unlimited copies of the audiobook on the libraries website and libby app.
Hi! I’m your organizer, Megan Chin (she/they), and I’m a queer mixed race mixed media visual artist based in Portland. AABC is something I dreamed up last year and I’m so excited it’s becoming a reality. Seeds were planted when I took Anticapitalism for Artists 10 week online intro to anticapitalism course back in 2022. There I expanded my understanding of what capitalism and anticapitalism looks like through rigorous reading as well as consistently sharing vibrant conversations with fellow artists across the country. Afterwards a small group of us formed a related book club meeting regularly over zoom which I am exceedingly grateful for. It's been a gift and such an impactful teacher that I wanted to organize something similar here in Portland.
Many thanks to Regional Arts and Culture Council (RACC) for awarding an Arts3C grant to support organizing AABC! The $2k in grant funds from RACC will go towards providing free and reduced priced books to participants, space for biweekly discussion as well as fund a co-created art project/activation. Also, special thanks to Elbow Room for sharing their wealth of N95 masks with us for folks in need. So looking forward to collectively building an anticapitalism artists book club with PDX folks and sharing more updates to come!