For the past 15 years, when we turned on the lights at Firestorm we were using electricity generated by a Duke Energy plant on Lake Julian, south of Asheville. Prior to its retirement in 2020, that plant burned 400K tons of Appalachian coal per year, mined through a process known as mountaintop removal, making it a frequent target of environmental activists. When Duke moved to replace it with a new facility that burns fracked gas, that plan was opposed by Appalachian Voices, NC WARN, and others who argued that the environmental impact could be just as bad, or worse. (Mountaintop removal and fracking are both nightmarish, go read about them, if you haven't already!) Today less than 10% of Duke's electricity is renewable, and the company's future plans for industrial scale wind, solar, and hydro are sure to replicate the environmental racism and extractive practices on which the company built its fortunes.
It shouldn't be surprising to learn that, as anarchists, our vision for energy justice is decentralized and radically democratic! We're excited to share that our co-op is now meeting most of its electric needs through a 7.5 kW rooftop solar system installed by the good folks at Asheville Solar Company. Like other energy sources, solar has significant environmental impacts—from materials mining to end-of-life waste—but the shift to neighborhood-scale energy production, alongside a reduction in energy use through degrowth, is essential to the solarpunk future we dream of.
In case you missed it, we're officially back from winter break!
Thanks to everyone who sent us sweet messages and placed online orders over the past few weeks. We're getting back into the swing of things and working on sending out all of the books and emails you are awaiting so patiently.
We hadn't planned to go "offline" right when our collective was receiving so much coverage for the Banned Books Back! campaign, but ain't that just the way! Welcome to the new followers who stumbled across our queer little bookstore through the Washington Post and hugs to the folks who have been here since day 1. We hope to see any and all of you this weekend! Drop by and tell us about the last good book you read! 💓📖
Building on their presentation last Fall, abolitionist organizer Moss Williams is returning with another virtual event on antifascism and disability! On Sunday the 25th, Moss will weave together history and theory to explore the relationship between fascism and ableism—and how both are driving attacks on our bodily autonomy.
Register for this free event at https://firestorm.coop/events/3145-antifascism-disability-part-ii.html. Not sure if you can make the event? Sign up anyway and you'll receive a link to the recorded conversation when we post it! Moss's recorded September presentation is available from the link above.
At the end of the month, we're hosting feminist historian Angela Hume to discuss her recent book "Deep Care: The Radical Activists Who Provided Abortions, Defied the Law, and Fought to Keep Clinics Open" (AK Press). In a virtual conversation with Shout Your Abortion co-founder Amelia Bonow, Angela will share the critical, under-recognized story of the radical edge of the abortion movement and the lessons it offers for our post-Roe moment.
Ever wonder what Firestorm + Snowstorm looks like? 🔥🌨
Find out today during our regular business hours from 10 - 8! We’ll have complimentary tea and coffee available all day to help you warm up while you find your next snow day read 📚
Too cozy the leave the house? You can shop our entire inventory through the link in our bio or firestorm.coop
This benefit sticker supports our Banned Books Back! campaign to return books banned by Duval County Public Schools to kids! All proceeds go to cover postage, packaging materials, printing, and related campaign costs.
Printed by Off Color Decals on high-quality vinyl with eco-solvent inks, this kiss-cut sticker features an adorable antifascist possum illustration by Des. The removable 3" sticker is waterproof and safe for outdoor use. It is also scratch and UV fade resistant for up to 5 years of extreme cuteification of your car, laptop, or water bottle!
For over a hundred years, revolutionaries have referred to anarchism as “The Beautiful Idea”—and that appellation is the title of Portland-based artist @nobonzo's first comic book, which might itself be set a hundred years in the future. An ode to the spirit of rebellion, the story follows a Hansel and Gretel-esque pair of children who stumble across a cabin deep in the woods beyond their decaying city. But instead of a sugary trap, this house is filled with anarchist artifacts, an enduring archive of anti-authoritarian optimism.
We just passed the halfway point of our fundraising goal for Banned Books Back! Moms for Liberty, eat your hearts out! 😏
To recap, our collective received a serendipitous donation of children's books that had been removed from Florida schools as part of an ongoing effort to censor titles depicting queer joy, civil rights history, immigrant stories, and more. Right now, our collective is harboring dozens of boxes of these "dangerous" titles — but not for long. Later this month, we'll be calling on our local community to help package bundles and send these Banned Books... Back!
Thank you so much to the folks who have boosted this effort, including but not limited to Autostraddle, The Washington Post, LGBTQ Nation, so many rad bookseller buddies, and the 270+ folks who've donated. 💓
We've been sitting on something exciting... and we're finally ready to share! In 2023, our focus was on building a new home for Firestorm. Well, our next big project will launch in January, reaching far beyond our local community: with your support, we're going to send thousands of books pulled from schools and classrooms in Duval County, Florida, back to the kids they were intended for!
It's kind of a wild story! Last winter our co-op was unexpectedly entrusted with 22,500 books for grades K-5 that would otherwise have been destroyed. More than half feature queer characters or history, and many revolve around Indigenous, Black, Brown, and Asian protagonists. That's 11,000 pounds of titles that right-wing politicians and small-minded school administrators conspired to keep out of the hands of young folks in one of Florida's most racially diverse counties.
We love giving away free books, but this project is a little complex because we're committed to getting as many of the books as possible to kids in Florida, and Duval County in particular. Packaging and delivering thousands of titles across state lines will take serious resources, so today we're launching a crowdfunding campaign to support the effort. Will you help us?
Today, alongside fellow queer community groups, businesses, and individuals, we are publishing an open letter to the leadership of Blue Ridge Pride asking that they cut ties with military contractor Pratt & Whitney.
"We do not believe that Pratt & Whitney, a company profiting from the death of queer Palestinians, has any place at Pride. We do not believe that any company involved in war crimes should be welcome at Pride."
You can read the full letter at https://bit.ly/brp-open-letter. Local queer organizations wishing to endorse this letter are invited to add their names by contacting us.
Today people around the world are saying NO to business as usual with a global strike for Palestine! We'll be making space at Firestorm for folks to gather throughout the day with free coffee and tea plus solidarity activities. Join friends and neighbors from 4pm to 6pm for ceasefire postcard and letter writing. Then at 6pm, we'll be screening "Gaza Fights for Freedom," a 2019 documentary filmed during the height of the Great March Of Return, which tells the story of Gaza past and present with rare archival footage.
For the past two years, sixteen Asheville community members have endured state repression following a demonstration for the rights of unsheltered homeless neighbors. It should be worrisome that something as small as sharing food in a park could result in felony charges and a three year park ban, yet the case of the Sanctuary Camp Defendants has received relatively little attention.
If you're new to this case and would like to learn more, come to this second anniversary presentation! If you're already familiar, come for the updates and learn how you can support the defendants!
This Thursday at 5pm we're hosting a community heater build with friends from Asheville Survival Program! Copper coil alcohol heaters can be made for under $7 and will extinguish when tipped, making them much safer to use for heating a residential tent. Drop in or stay the whole time to make heaters for unhoused neighbors! Each participant will be able to contribute to as many as a dozen heaters while enjoying hot apple cider with friends.
"When I speak of liberation, it is not to foment yet another social justice project, it is an inclusive and fervent agitation against domination and exploitation of existence, for the liberation of Mother Earth is liberation of all existence."—Klee Benally
We're excited to have copies of "No Spiritual Surrender: Indigenous Anarchy in Defense of the Sacred," an essay collection by Diné artist and Indigenous Action Media founder Klee Benally. Grounded in his experiences as an agitator and media maker, informed by family histories and cultural teachings, Benally offers a searing rebuke to settler colonialism, including its progressive and Left-wing manifestations. This is a wide-ranging volume that beautifully weaves together movement history, memoir, hard-won lessons, and (anti-)political provocations!
Tonight at 7pm ET we're hosting organizer and filmmaker Marisa Holmes in conversation with media studies scholar @ntnsndr! In "Organizing Occupy Wall Street," Holmes analyzes the movement as a core organizer involved from start to finish. She reveals how #OWS organized in practice, which experiments were most successful, and what future generations can learn.
"[M]ovement history at its best: meticulous, direct, and expansive in revolutionary scope. Providing a crucial corrective to all too many reductive Occupy narratives, Holmes emphasizes the movement's context in international struggles and centers it's all-too-overlooked form as a horizontalist, richly lived radical experiment. This is the Occupy we need to remember; these are the practices we must carry forward."
—Natasha Lennard, author of "Being Numerous: Essays on Non-Fascist Life"
This Sunday at 4pm, our co-op is hosting local activists from Reject Raytheon for a photo exhibit chronicling almost three years of antimilitarist street protests and consciousness raising. Reject Raytheon began in 2020, when Buncombe County Commissioners unanimously voted to give $27 million in tax incentives to Pratt & Whitney, a subsidiary of war profiteer Raytheon / RTX.
Raytheon is the second largest aerospace weapons company in the world, known for supplying Saudi Arabia with weapons for its genocidal war in Yemen, producing components for nuclear weapons, drones, cruise missiles, and surveillance equipment for the militarized Arizona border. Subsidiary Pratt & Whitney—now hiring for its manufacturing plant in Asheville—supplies the engines used in the F-35 fighter jets being used by Israel to kill thousands of civilians in Gaza.
The 2024 Slingshot organizers have arrived! First published in 1995 as a hand-folded booklet bound with rubber bands, these annual planners are a fundraiser with a serious cult following. And while the production of Slingshots has gotten more sophisticated over the years, proceeds still support radical publishers in Berkeley!
This year, you can pick from three styles—a classic pocket version, a large spiral-bound version, or a "mutant" version that's pocket-sized with spiral binding. But no matter what version you choose, you'll get space to write your phone numbers, a contact list of radical groups around the globe, menstrual calendar, info on police repression, extra note pages, and weird cover art!
Join us and millions of others in demanding an immediate end to the slaughter in Gaza and US support for the Israeli apartheid system. This Saturday afternoon, Firestorm is closing to attend the protest in downtown Asheville that will take place at the same time as marches on Washington and across the world to stop the ongoing genocide of Palestinians. Local participants will gather at the federal building on Patton Avenue at 2pm for a speak-out, poetry, music, and ritual space.
Our co-op will reopen after 5pm with free coffee and tea for community members needing a welcoming and quiet space to connect.
This Wednesday, organizers from Block Cop City will be doing a local teach-in at our co-op! Their presentation will include information on the history of the land The Atlanta Police Foundation is attempting to build on, a history of the movement to #StopCopCity, an outline of the movement's next phase #BlockCopCity, and a short workshop to help interested folks form affinity groups and participate in the November weekend of action. We hope you'll join us!
"Aside from bringing people to Atlanta, we hope to spread skills and creativity related to mass direct action and participatory, democratic mass organizing, strengthening the prospects for other, local struggles."—Block Cop City organizers
I just ordered some books from @firestorm, and you should too!
Firestorm will be donating the net proceeds from all sales for the day to The Hebron International Resource Network (HIRN), a Palestinian-led relief organization based in the West Bank.
Halloween is almost here! Have you carved a pumpkin yet? 🎃🔪
Next weekend we're hosting an all-ages benefit for the @AtlSolFund! Grab a friend and carve a fiendish face to decorate your lair. If you're feeling ambitious, enter it in the running for best jack-o'-lantern! Prizes include two $100 gift cards to Firestorm.
This Sunday (10/15) and next Sunday (10/22), Firestorm will be donating net proceeds from ALL sales, online and in-store, to mutual aid relief efforts in Palestine.
Our hearts are heavy with grief for the dead, and our heads are spinning with rage as we watch openly genocidal rhetoric and rampant disinformation pave the way for escalated atrocities against two million Palestinians trapped in Gaza. As anarchists, we oppose oppression in all forms and resonate with the words of Chanda Prescod-Weinstein: "People have a human right to exist. States and borders do not."
We are grateful to have been connected with trusted folks able to receive funds for humanitarian relief by a Palestinian friend. The Hebron International Resource Network (HIRN) is an organization based in the West Bank that is working to house Gazan workers deported to the West Bank by Israeli forces. HIRN will be providing clothes, food and medicine to them. Donations can be made at https://www.nonviolenceinternational.net/hirn_partner.
Our virtual #ConsentMonth workshop series is kicking off this weekend! Register now to join Kitty Stryker, author of "Ask Yourself: The Consent Culture Workbook," as we discuss what a consent culture is, and how we can implement it with compassion in our day-to-day lives.
“Ms. Kitty Stryker is a true force of nature. Smart, sassy, saucy, sexy, and to-the-bone honest, hers is a voice that needs to be heard. And she has excellent shoes.”—David Henry Sterry, author of "Chicken: Self-Portrait of a Young Man for Rent"