Representatives from North American Infoshops meeting at an infoshop Gathering in Baltimore June 29-30 decided to form an Infoshop Network to help coordinate mutual aid between these autonomous collectives. Infoshop is a term used to refer to activist resource centers that often provide a reading room, access to zine and book libraries, public internet access, and space for meetings, movies, lectures and music shows. Some are run by volunteers and are non-profits while others are small businesses that contain cafes and bookstores. Each project is an independent collective, however the scores of infoshops in North America and across the globe form a loose network providing a public access point where people can find radicals and radical groups.
According to the Infoshop Network, they seek to set up “a newsletter with updates from infoshops and ideas, get a solidarity network going for infoshops and organizations in trouble with state repression, get a help hot-line for new and old infoshops looking for advice, a touring line for traveling artists and authors, and possibly even stuff like collective bargaining with distributors.”
They have set up an e-mail list, at infoshopnetwork@lists.resist.ca. Contact them at contact@infoshopnetwork.org. They are seeking to contact infoshops and get them to designate a Infoshop Network Liaison, which will do the following things:
1. Bring back information from the larger Network to their collective.
2. Bring information to the larger Network from their collective, like updates, calls for help, etc.
3. Serve as the basic contact person for the Network.
4. Get people in their collectives to be involved in working groups of the Network, especially related to their skills.