RTP-area local music and culture

[internationalistbooks AT lists.ibiblio.org]

Hey everyone! Andrew Pearson (manager of IBooks from 1998-2000) sent  
us this email about a piece he wrote about Bob Sheldon for the Indy.  
Unfortunately it didn't make it into the paper, but I wanted to share  
it with everyone. Also is a link to a pretty awesome event listing for  
Bob Sheldon Day on the Indy website! Hope to see everyone at the  
celebration this coming up Monday February 21 at 7 at I-Books!

-Laurin




IBooks crew,

Got your message the other day - I did send all sorts of info to the Indy,
and they do have a calendar item for the Bob Sheldon commemoration next
week (link below).  They asked me to submit a First Person article last
week which I've pasted below, but it looks like they ended up using some
pieces about the revolution in Egypt instead.  Sadly I'll be in Colorado on
Monday and thus unable to attend the event, but I've spread the word to
folks I know who have been IBooks supporters over the years, and I'm trying
to dig up some old photos and items to send your way.  Feel free to use the
piece I wrote or quote excerpts if useful :)  - Andrew Pearson, Manager
98-00.

http://www.indyweek.com/indyweek/bob-sheldon-day/Event?oid=2008543


Bob Sheldon, the Internationalist
By Andrew Pearson

We’ll probably never know who killed Bob Sheldon.  Was it a botched
robbery, a politically motivated killer, or a government paid agent who
shot Sheldon in the head on the evening of February 21st, 1991, as he
closed up the Internationalist Bookstore in Chapel Hill?  Perhaps no one
but the killer will ever know.

The rock band Sonic Youth sang of Sheldon in their song called “Chapel
Hill”: "Back in the days when the battles raged, and we thought it was
nothing, a bookstore man meets the CIA, and we know."  Sheldon was
memorialized in an Indigo Girls song "Jonas and Ezekiel”, multiple news
articles, activist writings and documentary films.  But the greatest
memorial to him is the Internationalist Bookstore and Community Center,
still active 30 years after Sheldon founded the center for political
activism and radical literature.

I managed the bookstore after completing my undergraduate education at
UNC-CH from 1998-2000, and I know many of the managers, volunteers, board
members and supporters from throughout the years.  It’s hard not to write
about the internationalist and it not being part love letter, part memoir
– it helped me become an entrepreneur, an organizer, and a scholar, and
it has helped inspire the political identity and life paths of many more.

Sheldon was killed on Thursday Feb. 21, 1991, 34 days into aerial combat in
the First Gulf War. The previous month, he was on the evening news talking
about resisting the draft during the Vietnam War and the coming Gulf War.
Sheldon moved to Chapel Hill from Colorado in the mid-1970s, worked as a
nurse for the UNC infirmary, and became a fixture on campus, tabling for
the Revolutionary Communist Party, sometimes sporting a red beret. Over
time, Sheldon’s own politics evolved and changed (how can you not develop
a complex world view when stocking books on dozens of different political
perspectives?), becoming more active in the Green Party and even voting for
the occasional liberal Democrat.

In 1981, Sheldon started the Internationalist as a reading on Henderson
Street, and in 1984, moved to a bigger space on Rosemary Street.  After his
death, the volunteers and eventually some paid staff who stepped in to keep
the store alive moved into the space that harbors the Internationalist
today, at 405 West Franklin St.

The Internationalist commemorates Bob Sheldon’s life, 20 years after he
was murdered, on Monday February 21st from 7-9 pm, with speeches from old
friends and a rousing march to the site of the old store with an escort by
the radical marching band, Cakalak Thunder.

Sheldon’s legacy is an active resistance in the face of state abuse of
power. We had at least one undercover agent try to copy our computer files
and volunteer lists as the Internationalist helped organize buses of
activists to Washington DC for the World Bank protests in April, 2000.  It
was there that a number of Chapel Hill activists were illegally arrested,
cuffed and left sitting on police buses during a march protected by the
First Amendment, and just recently, received word of a verdict in their
favor in a $13.7 million class-action settlement.  Who says activism
doesn’t pay?

Sheldon left Chapel Hill with an idea incubator, wrapped in collective
process, and supported by an ever-evolving and unique merger of retail
business and community organization.  For many activists, it is a first
exposure to inventory management, returns policies, cash flow and
financing.  And it is a constant experiment in cooperative management and
community building.  There was a time when the bookstore nearly closed its
doors after UNC’s Student Stores cracked down on professors who were
ordering textbooks through Internationalist first to help generate student
business and traffic.  But in the same spirit which kept the store open
after Sheldon’s death, volunteers raised over $10,000 from community
members, transitioned the store to a 501c3 nonprofit, and giving the store
another 10 years of life.

Sheldon was part of a tapestry of counter-culture, alternative politics,
and independent thinking which is continually renewed.  When I first
encountered the internationalist as an undergrad, it was a home for
communities of older activists who cut their teeth in the 1980s on
anti-Apartheid and Central American solidarity work, plus a younger
generation of activists organizing Food Not Bombs – free community soup
kitchens.  And from the meetings of like (and unlike) minds at regular Food
Not Bombs gatherings, and the camaraderie formed in small kitchens and
bubbling stews, emerged the Mallette Street punk house and many other
households that manifested cooperative politics in our everyday lives.

There were countless ‘zines, “Reclaim the Streets” parties
reminiscent of 1970s street theatre, and giant puppet shows inspired by and
part of the growing global justice movement, which hit the presses in
November, 1999 with the battle of Seattle against the World Trade
Organization.  The Internationalist harbored NC Indymedia, part of a surge
of grassroots media activism as the internet took off.  Folks from the
Internationalist community helped form the Weaver Community Housing
Association, joining a growing coop housing movement in Carrboro. During
the Iraq War, Internationalist was a hub for organizing, a source of
alternative news, and a beacon of progressive light.  Recently the
Internationalist has supported a prison books collective, a transgender
discussion group, and a board game night.

Sheldon showed us the vital value of a space for literature and authors
whose works push the boundaries of political and cultural understanding.
The Internationalist has sold hundreds of copies of Howard Zinn’s “The
People’s History of the United States”, filled an auditorium for Leslie
Feinberg’s reading from “Transgender Warrior”, and exposed the
fallacy of global free trade with Kevin Danaher’s teach-in from his book
“Corporations are gonna get your Mama”.  Countless local authors,
artists and activists have found their audiences and customers on the
shelves of this little establishment, from local ‘zines like “Cuke &
Sew” to the prolific writings from the CrimethInc collective.

Bob Sheldon left us with a piece of infrastructure that accelerates the
pace of social movement organizing and the capacity for impact,
particularly in times of urgency and social upheaval.  It was a natural
anchor throughout many struggles – a place for the public to buy bus
tickets to go to growing anti-war protests in DC; a space to hold press
conferences after activists returned beaten and abused at the Republican
National Convention protests; a venue to support budding new organizations,
welcome traveling activists, and inspire collective action. It is a space
for anarchists, climate change activists, and queer youth alike to organize
from.

Sheldon gave us a public space, a unique, participatory dimension of civic
life where those with an energy for social change can find consistency,
conversation, and community.  And Sheldon laid the seeds of that space with
his open personality, a loving heart, and a deep thirst for political
debate, learning, and activism.  Without the experience of Sheldon the man,
I doubt that the community would have come up with the same essence of the
Internationalist which lives on today.

And just what is an Internationalist? Why a name that had more relevance
during the labor movements in the early 1900s than activism in the 2000s?
I think it captures the spirit of something grand – an aspiration for a
global solidarity of many peoples, working from many political experiences
and ideological legacies, moving forward a vision of justice, ecology, and
economy too expansive for one book, too important for one spokesperson.
Sheldon was an Internationalist, and in carrying on that name for one of
the Triangle’s few remaining new and used independent bookstores, he left
us a constant reminder of a powerful idea.

Internationalism advocates economic and political cooperation among
nations, and direct mutual aid among people across borders.
Internationalists find inspiration in the anti-fascist socialist, communist
and anarchist volunteers who traveled to Spain from 53 different countries
to fight Franco and the fascists in the Spanish Civil War between 1936 and
1939.  Today, with the recent example of nonviolent revolution in Egypt
against Mubarak’s 30 year reign, the concept of international solidarity
between peoples, and often in conflict with the governments that claim to
represent them, may find renewed inspiration, and fuel another decade of
relevance and success for Internationalist Books and Community Center.



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