So what, exactly, is an anarchist?
The Brazilian Sisters, an art group, made a display at New York’s Anarchist Book Fair.
There are almost as many definitions and interpretations as there are adherents. There are, for example, anarcho-syndicalists, anarcho-communists, and eco-anarchists. Then there are the anarcho-primitivists in Oregon, who deplore technology and therefore have at least one glaring difference with a group of New York anarchists, who run a volunteer computer lab at ABC No Rio, a community center on the Lower East Side.
But anarchists have never hidden their disagreements, and some of those competing ideas were proudly displayed as the Anarchist Book Fair got under way Saturday at the Judson Memorial Church, on Washington Square South.
A composition by John Cage was playing. A black and red flag hung from a wall facing rows of card tables covered with books, pamphlets, zines and T-shirts. Issues of The Catholic Worker were stacked near copies of a London newspaper called Class War, and the Institute for Anarchist Studies in Washington shared a table with Black Sheep Books of Montpelier, Vt., which describes itself as a “workers collective” that specializes in used books.
About a thousand people showed up, including visitors from Berkeley, Calif., Baltimore, São Paulo, Brazil, and Quebec.
One of the organizers, Jenna Freedman, 40, a librarian from the East Village, said that she and others began planning the fair, which they said was the first of its kind in New York, motivated partly by a desire to bring together strands of anarchism from afar.
“It’s invigorating to bounce ideas off of people and form new alliances,” she said. “People are hungry for extended family and extended community,” Ms. Freedman said, glancing at the steps leading into the church, where crowds were eating plates of vegetarian food and gathering to smoke cigarettes.
“For us,” she added. “This is like Thanksgiving.”
Among the events taking place Saturday were tactical protest lessons gleaned from an Italian anarchist group (known for demonstrating while dressed all in white and wearing body armor made of foam padding or inflated inner tubes) and a feminist round table called “What Would Emma Do?” — a reference to Emma Goldman, who, among many other things, published the journal Mother Earth and led opposition to the draft during World War I.
During a forum called “Remembering Spain, Remembering Heroes,” an 88-year-old man named George Sossenko described how he had left his home in France at 16 to join anarchists in Spain battling fascist forces led by Francisco Franco.
On a wide balcony overlooking the book tables, volunteer baby sitters watched small children. And in an old basement basketball court filled with folding chairs, a few dozen people were participating in the panel discussion “Anarchism and its Aspirations.”
Some of the many conversations that took place inside the church on Saturday had an element of soul-searching: What does it mean to be an anarchist today? And how can anarchists achieve their aims?
Critics, from the late 19th century to the early 21st century, have condemned them as a disorganized mob of nihilists bent on creating chaos. But many anarchists see themselves more as revolutionary idealists seeking to make society more humane by replacing authority with autonomy.
Despite the diversity, there are a few main tenets shared by nearly all anarchists, including opposition to the sort of authority embodied by the state, capitalism and organized religion. Rather than looking to leaders for direction, they say, communities should make decisions based on the common good.
That vision is not likely to be implemented on a wide scale anytime soon, so for now many anarchists must find other ways to act on their beliefs.
Take, for instance, Chuck Reinhardt, 64, whose business card lists him as “Teacher, Balkan Volunteer, Smoke Jumper, Deadhead, Legal Observer, World Traveler & Last of the Big-Time Spenders,” and who was hanging out Saturday at a table that displayed an array of antiwar buttons.
Mr. Reinhardt, who taught history in New Jersey public schools before retiring, now teaches part time in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where nationalism and ethnic and religious divisions led to war in the 1990’s.
“I teach that all groups can coexist,” he said. “What I’m teaching is anarchism.”
If there is one subject that haunts all anarchists, it is the view of them as dangerous criminals. That perception has strengthened since 1999, when anarchists started clashing regularly with police during economic summits in cities including Seattle and Genoa, sometimes breaking windows and committing other acts of vandalism.
Eric Laursen, 46, a freelance writer from Harlem who organized protests during the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York, said that the majority of anarchists do not skirmish with police or damage property. But he said he would not criticize anyone who did so while standing up for a just cause.
“Anarchists don’t believe property is, or should be, the ultimate value of society,” he said. “Private property is not more important than human life, and it is not more important than individual freedom.”
