Jura is open again! + Dope is Death Screening, ancom discussion groups, radical podcasts & more...

Dear Friends and Comrades,

Things have been pretty busy at Jura the last few months! We re-opened the shop in July, and are currently open on Saturdays from 12 to 5. We’re hoping to expand our opening hours soon, but our priority is still the health and safety of our community and collective members. In the meantime we’re still offering mail order via email. Keep an eye on our social media pages to see our book recommendations.

Jura fund-raising merch
We’re still selling Jura Books tote bags to raise funds for maintenance on the shop. We’re also stocking face masks in anarcho-communist colours, so you can slow down covid transmission and confuse facial recognition algorithms.

Upcoming Events

Film screening: Dope is Death November 5 7pm Palace Chauvel Cinema.
In 1973, Dr. Mutulu Shakur, along with fellow Black Panthers and the Young Lords, combined community health with radical politics to create the first acupuncture detoxification program in America. This form of radical harm reduction was a revolutionary act toward the government programs that transfixed the lives of black and brown communities throughout the South Bronx.
Online discussion group: Fortnightly discussion group on the current crisis, hosted by Anarchism Communism and Class Struggle.
Online crafternoon: September 27 2pm.
Craft demonstrations and open discussion, hosted by Monster Mouse Studios.

Radical Listening

Lockdown has led to some excellent new podcasts by local radicals. We’ve been enjoying Pride in Protest – The Podcast, which explores the intersection of queer and trans liberation, decolonisation, social justice and pop culture; and this as-yet-unnamed Western Sydney ‘political geekery’ podcast. People’s History of Australia also has two new episodes, one on the 1971 Springbok tour, and one on Nick Origlass.

Sydney Anarcho-Communists
There’s a new Sydney-based libertarian socialist group who host a weekly discussion group on Wednesday nights. They recently published their first bulletin, which includes thoughts on anarchism, federalism, revolutionary strategy, and more.

Rest in Power

Milanese anarchist, author, and publisher Paolo Finzi died on July 20. Finzi was a founder and long-time editor of monthly magazine A-Rivista Anarchica. He was a central figure of the Italian anarchist movement for more than 50 years. Centro Studi Libertari wrote this in tribute to one of their founders “A friend and comrade through many battles, a master of anarchism and ethics, dialogue and debate, a brilliant, intelligent, sensitive and kind man who taught us to doubt and reflect, to listen and respect in a deep and profound way.”

We were saddened to hear about Stuart Christie’s death on August 15 this year. Christie was a prolific anarchist organiser, writer, and publisher. The Kate Sharpley Library published this moving eulogy: “Committed to anarchism and publishing, Christie appeared at many bookfairs and film festivals, but scorned any suggestion he had come to ‘lead’ anyone anywhere.”

David Graeber – anarchist anthropologist and author of Debt, Bullshit Jobs, and Direct Action: An Ethnography – died in hospital in Venice on September 2. Jura collective member Sid wrote that “He has so much more to gift us, and we won't know what these gifts were until we meet an unexplainable, a gap, a something that we puzzle about but cannot fill.”