This Sunday, a mixed-use warehouse in Oakland occupied by AK Press, 1984 Printing, and thirty tenants was struck by a three-alarm fire which killed two residents and severely damaged the building and the printing operations it housed. Two artists, Davis Letona, 27, and Daniel “Moe” Thomas, 36, died in the fire. The two presses lost stock, computers, supplies, and inventory, and have had to stop business operations for the moment. The building suffered smoke and water damage and has been red-tagged as unsafe to enter or occupy.
AK Press, an Oakland-based worker-run collective has been printing and distributing radical zines and books for 25 years. The press has put out pivotal texts on topics such as activism, anarchism, colonialism, critical theory, the prison industrial complex, state terror and social justice, including The No-Nonsense Guide to Global Surveillance by Robin Tudge, Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Davis, Feminism Without Borders by Chandra Talpade Mohanty, and Dispatches Against Displacement: Field Notes From San Francisco’s Housing Wars by James Tracy.
1984 Printing is a feminist-owned independently run offset print shop that has printed titles including So Many Mountains But This One Specifically, by Junior Clemons, It Hasn’t Stopped Being California Here, by Jordan Karnes and Girls I’ve Run Away With by Rhiannon Argo.
People interested in helping out can donate at the AK Press donation page and the 1984 donation page. There will also be a benefit on May 9 at 924 Gilman.
