A bookstore at the center of building a movement for revolution. People come from all over the world to find the books and the deep engagement with each other about the possibility of a different way the world could be.Read more...

March 8, Tuesday, 7pm
In Celebration of International Women's Day, Amnesty International's NYC Women's Human Rights Action Team presents
Pink Saris

A film directed by Kim Longinotto.

"If you're shy, you'll die." This is just one saying uttered by the formidable Sampat Pal Devi, leader of the Gulabi Gang (a.k.a. the "Pink Gang"), the center of this stirring film. Her base is northern India's state of Uttar Pradesh, where entrenched tradition continues to condone child marriages, dowry deaths and abuse inflicted upon wives by husbands and in-laws. The Gulabi Gang seeks to help women from the lowest caste, known as dalits or "untouchables" and assert their presence by wearing bright pink saris and make good on Sampat Pal's assertion that: "there is no higher power than a woman."

Special Guest Speaker: Gouri Sadhwani, deputy executive director for organizing, membership and campaigns at Amnesty International USA.

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March 13, Sunday, 3pm (Daylight Savings Time)
Special program on International Women's Day, featuring Sunsara Taylor, writer for Revolution newspaper

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April 11, Monday, 7pm
On the Occasion of the Publication of BAsics:
A Celebration of Revolution and the Vision of a New World
At Harlem Stage/Aaron Davis Hall
between West 133rd and 135th Street on Convent Avenue

Buy Tickets on line (tickets will be held at the door for you) or purchase tickets at Revolution Books:

$35 General Admission

$100 Premium Admission

$15 Student (w/ID), unempl'd

BAsics is a book of quotations and short essays from Bob Avakian to be released in March 2011. This event on April 11 will bring together well known musicians, authors, actors and people from the community and the youth in a major celebration of revolution and the vision of a new world.

The April 11 host committee includes Aladdin, actor and playwright; Herb Boyd, journalist and author; Elaine Brower, National Steering Committee of World Can't Wait* and anti-war military mom; Carl Dix, founding member of the Revolutionary Communist Party; Nicholas Heyward, Sr., father of Nicholas Heyward, Jr. (murdered by the NYPD in 1994), Russ Jennings, theatre producer and writer; Erin Aubry Kaplan, journalist and author; Rev. Earl Kooperkamp, St. Mary's Church, Harlem*; Mike Ladd, poet and music producer; Philip Maysles, visual artist, co-director Maysles Cinema*; Matthew Shipp, musician; Cornel West, Professor of Religion, Princeton University* and David Zeiger, film maker; in association with Revolution Books.
(* for identification purposes only)

Initial list of performers include poet Jessica Care Moore, poet and playwright reg e. gaines, musician Bill Laswell with Method of Defiance, Abiodun Oyewole from The LastPoets, and jazz musicians Matthew Shipp and William Parker. The night will also include readings of letters from prisoners responding to Avakian's words, and the ideas of revolution and bringing into being a new world. These will be interspersed with people's own reflections (from the stage or via video) of what it means to them to celebrate revolution and the vision of a new world and readings of quotes from BAsics.

Bob Avakian is a serious revolutionary leader and wide-ranging thinker. He is the leader of the Revolutionary Communist Party and a movement aiming to make revolution when the possibility opens up. He is someone, in the words of Cornel West, who "is a long distance runner in the freedom struggle against imperialism, racism and capitalism."

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Book of the Week!

This week's Book of the Week is American Uprising: The Untold Story of America's Largest Slave Revolt, by Daniel Rasmussen, published by Harper.

This study of a January 1811 slave uprising and march on New Orleans exhumes the deliberately obscured and "largest act of armed resistance against slavery in the history of the United States." Historian Rasmussen expands on scarce source material to provide a complex context for a revolt that dwarfed such better-known rebellions as Nat Turner's and Denmark Vesey's, a stealthily organized uprising of 500 armed slaves dressed in military uniforms marching on and trying to conquer New Orleans.

A hardbound 288-page, $26.99 value for only $17 at Revolution Books this week only.

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New publication
A Radical Step
Into the Future

ORDER ONLINE NOW!

In English

En español

This Constitution (Draft Proposal) is written with the future in mind. It is intended to set forth a basic model, and fundamental principles and guidelines, for the nature and functioning of a vastly different society and government than now exists: the New Socialist Republic in North America, a socialist state which would embody, institutionalize and promote radically different relations and values among people; a socialist state whose final and fundamental aim would be to achieve, together with the revolutionary struggle throughout the world, the emancipation of humanity as a whole and the opening of a whole new epoch in human history–communism–with the final abolition of all exploitative and oppressive relations among human beings and the destructive antagonistic conflicts to which these relations give rise.

Paperback, 91pp., $8.

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Now Available on DVD
"After Change You Can Believe In, Wally Shawn reads from his Essays and discusses human nature with a communist."

In January 8, 2010, almost 300 people packed into Friends Meeting House in New York City for an unusual evening. After reading his essay "The Quest for Superiority," Wally Shawn sat down for a conversation with Andy Zee. Their unscripted discussion dug into urgent questions facing humanity: Can people change and how? Is there a far better way society could be organized? Does political power inevitably lead to bad outcomes because of innate human nature? Their conversation spanned the current political moment, past socialist experiences, and future revolutionary possibility - animated by examples from art, morality, and daily life. This was followed by a provocative Q&A with the audience. Proceeds from this evening and the DVD go towards saving Revolution Books.

Now available in DVD for $15:

Hear "After 'Change You Can Believe In,'" Wally Shawn reads from his Essays and discusses human nature with a communist."

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DONATE

Become a Friend of Revolution Books today.

A Message from Andy Zee

Dear Friends,

Start the second decade of the 21st century by making a difference -- contribute to Revolution Books, or become a sustaining Friend of Revolution Books...

...read the whole letter

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Revolution Books:
Conscience and Commitment
Seeing Red, Yes — But Not Angry

BY STEPHEN WOLF, December 15, 2010
. . . Revolution Books has been a crucial part of our city since 1979 — for a while on W. 16th, then W. 19th — and now for a year and a half just east of 7th Avenue at 146 W. 26th. It is, as its publicity card mission statement expresses, "alive with a defiant spirit that refuses to accept that the horrors of today's world have to be. People come into Revolution Books from all over the world to find the books and the deep engagement with each other about the possibility of a radically different way the world could be. This is a bookstore at the center of building a movement for revolution."
Read the whole story . . .

This is the 3rd article Chelsea Now has published on Revolution Books. The bookstore has been featured frequently on WBAI radio, and is listed at YELP and other websites.

Selected press coverage of Revolution Books:
New York Times (November 4, 2010, June 25, 2009)
New York Press (February 1, 2009)
NPR-WNYC radio (October 2008)
New York Magazine (December 8, 2008)
NY Observer (October 2008)
Laura Flanders GRIT TV
Time Out (July 2008)

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On October 29, 2010, an important dialogue between Cornel West and Carl Dix was sponsored by Revolution Books

A sold-out crowd of more than 650 people at Aaron Davis Hall in Harlem, largely composed of African-Americans and youth but also other people of many nationalities and ages, turned out on October 29 for a dialogue between Cornel West and Carl Dix: "In the Age of Obama, Part II... Police Terror, Incarceration, No Jobs, Mis-education: What Future For Our Youth?" The dialogue was a fundraiser for Revolution Books and the Prisoners Revolutionary Literature Fund (PRLF).

Watch the trailor for this exciting event:

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On April 15, 2010, over 250 people came to Judson Memorial Church to hear NGŨGĨ WA THIONG'O read and discuss his new book "Dreams in a Time of War: A Childhood Memoir."

photo: Bud Korotzer

The evening was a benefit to save Revolution Books and it drew in readers of his extraordinary novels from the U.S. and African countries, including many professors and students from NYU, Hunter, New School, Baruch, Columbia, and other schools. Revolution Books still has some signed copies of his new memoir as well as an extensive collection of his novels, plays and literary criticism-- and books about his work. Video will be posted soon at revolutionbooksnyc.org.

For more on Ngũgĩ, go to http://www.ngugiwathiongo.com/
Listen here to a great interview with Ngũgĩ and Michael Slate on Pacifica radio.

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