The Big Idea Bookstore
Your friendly neighborhood radical bookstore!
Events
Interested in booking an event at The Big Idea? We love readings, film screenings, workshops, lectures, reading/discussion groups, art openings, release parties, and more! Booking is easy: Simply contact Brick, our Events Coordinator, at thebigidea+events@gmail.com.
Upcoming Events
Click here to see the Events Calendar.
Radical Artist of the Month Series
February–March:
Dali Bugati http://www.dalibugati.com
Linshuttr http://www.linshuttr.com
NAF Keen http://www.nafkeen.tumblr.com
Wednesdays: YOGA by donation. 9–10 p.m.
Squatting and Social Centers in Europe and the United States
Tuesday, Feb. 21 @ 8–10 p.m.
Join us at The Big Idea Cooperative Bookstore for a panel discussion with Gianni Piazza, Hannah Dobbz, and Dan Nowhere on squatting and social centers in Europe and the United States. How do the squatting movements in each context compare? Where do "social centers" fit in? What legal and cultural constraints dictate the course of fledgling movements in the United States?
Gianni Piazza (Italy) – Founding member of SQEK (SQuatting Europe Kollective), an open transnational network of researchers and activists who represent a diversity of disciplines and fields of interest seeking to understand the issues associated with squats and social centers across Europe, and to produce knowledge about this movement as a public resource, especially for squatters and activists.
Hannah Dobbz (Pittsburgh) – Director of Shelter: A Squatumentary [Kill Normal: 2008] and author of Nine-Tenths of the Law: Property and Resistance in the United States [AK Press: Fall 2012].
Dan J. Nowhere (Pittsburgh) – A 30 year-old, unskilled punk who has been squatting in Pittsburgh for 1523 days.
Cooperatives 101 Workshop by Caroline Savery, cooperative business development consultant with Keystone Development Center
Thursday, Feb. 23 @ 7–9 p.m.
Feeling glum about the recession? P.O.'ed at the impact corporate greed has had on your local economy? Frustrated by the job market? Wondering how you can apply your talents to meet the needs of yourself and your neighbors? Are you an entrepreneur who wants to improve your community? Are you curious about how co-ops work? Come learn all about cooperatives—what they are, how they work, and why they offer a promising alternative to "business as usual!"
Join us at The Big Idea Cooperative Bookstore on February 23 at 7 p.m. as Caroline Savery, cooperative business development consultant with Keystone Development Center, presents a Cooperatives 101 Workshop (worker-owned, housing, more). Free food provided!
Hosted by IYC POC (International Year of Cooperatives Pittsburgh Organizing Committee).
A Lecture with Hill District Community Organizer Carl Redwood, Sr.
Saturday, Feb. 25 @ 3 p.m.
Carl Redwood, Sr., has worked to organize Hill District youth and adults for over 30 years through Hill City, the Center Avenue YMCA, The Neighborhood Youth Corps, Pittsburgh Public Schools, the Hill District Consensus Group, the One Hill Community Benefits Agreement Coalition, and Hill House. Longtime community activist in Pittsburgh, Redwood teaches courses at the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Social Work and lectures on principles of community organizing.
A Discussion Course on Cooperatives
Thursdays, March 1–April 19 @ 7–9 p.m.
This eight-week Discussion Course on Cooperatives is a group-education tool for people who would like to become familiar with cooperative economics, history, and philosophy. The Course is designed as a tool for Outreach to Co-op Members, to be used to facilitate greater participation in the Co-op community. The discussion format is centered around carefully selected readings made accessible through a concisely planned anthology. The short readings and lively interpersonal discussions make it the ideal learning environment for busy people who would like to maximize their educational experience. Free food will be provided
The class is limited to six participants, so please contact thebigidea+events@gmail.com to reserve your seat and course readings!
http://www.cgin.coop/discussioncourse
This series is hosted by IYC POC (International Year of Cooperatives Pittsburgh Organizing Committee) and sponsored in part by the East End Food Co-op.
Every other Friday at 7 p.m.: $2 movie night (free popcorn!)
Friday, February 10 – (double feature!) Afro-Punk + Against the Odds: The Artists of the Harlem Renaissance
Afro-Punk, a sixty-six minute documentary, explores race identity within the punk scene. More than your everyday, Behind the Music or typical "black history month" documentary this film tackles the hard questions, such as issues of loneliness, exile, inter-racial dating and black power. We follow the lives of four people who have dedicated themselves to the punk rock lifestyle. They find themselves in conflicting situations, living the dual life of a person of color in a mostly white community. The style of the documentary inter-cuts interviews from scores of black punk rockers from all over the nation with scenes from our four protagonists' lives. They come from different regions, generations, genders, and sexual preferences but their stories are amazingly similar. Afro-Punk features performances by Bad Brains, Tamar Kali, Cipher, and Ten Grand. It also contains exclusive interviews by members of Fishbone, 247- spyz, Dead Kennedys, Candiria, Orange 9mm and TV on the Radio to name a few. Bonus features include deleted scenes, additional interviews, a 15-minute interview with the Director, and more live performances.
Against the Odds: The Artists of the Harlem Renaissance
Against the Odds: The Artists of the Harlem Renaissance tells the little-known story of African-American artists working during the 1920s and 1930s. More than just an art history lesson, the video tells the struggle of the American black population trying to redefine itself. After the 1919 race riots, the then-newly formed National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) wanted to show American blacks as a creative, intelligent group willing and able to make a positive contribution to society. To counter the racial stereotype of black Americans in the 1920s, the NAACP and the Urban League set about the task of training blacks in the visual and performing arts. One person offering assistance in this endeavor was William E. Harmon, who in 1922 established a foundation that exhibited artists and provided opportunities for performers to hold plays and concerts.
Friday, February 24 – Wristcutters: A Love Story
Friday, March 9 – Harlan County, USA
Harlan County, USA is an Oscar-winning 1976 documentary film covering the "Brookside Strike," an effort of 180 coal miners and their wives against the Duke Power Company-owned Eastover Coal Company's Brookside Mine and Prep Plant in Harlan County, Kentucky, in 1973. Director Barbara Kopple has long been an advocate of workers' rights.
Friday, March 23 – A League of Their Own
A League of Their Own is a 1992 American comedy-drama film that tells a fictionalized account of the real-life All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL). Directed by Penny Marshall, the film stars Geena Davis, Lori Petty, Tom Hanks, Madonna, and Rosie O'Donnell.
Friday, April 13 – Sacco & Vanzetti
Filmmaker Peter Miller explores the crimes, trial, and execution of notorious 20th-century anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti in a documentary that highlights just how this landmark case came to symbolize the injustice and intolerance experienced by immigrants longing to pursue their dreams in the land of the free. It was 1920 when Italian immigrant anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti were accused of murder in Massachusetts. Seven years later, when the jurors delivered their final verdict in a notoriously prejudiced trial, both men were condemned to death despite massive protests both in the U.S. and abroad. Eight decades later, as America continues to wrestle with issues of civil rights, immigrant liberties, and dissent, the case of Sacco and Vanzetti continues to resonate.
>