Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair 2010

From time to time problems do crop up around or in the book fair. This year an incident occurred at the event itself, in the book fair auditorium, that the organizers feel obliged to comment on. Following is a statement from the Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair Organizing Group:



The Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair organizers wish to publicly condemn the violent assault committed against author Lierre Keith at the Book Fair on Saturday, March 13. We wish to extend our apologies to her for not taking more rigorous measures to assure her safety at our event. We urge the Anarchist community and our allies to let the perpetrators of this ugly assault and their supporters know that we will not stand for this kind of violent bullying at our events or in our community.

We want to state the following for the record:

1) The three pies used to assault Ms Keith were in fact filled with red hot sauce and cayenne pepper. There was so much in the “pies” that you could smell the red pepper sauce in the area of the speaker’s podium after the attack. We had to warn speakers using the microphone after the attack to not put it too close to their mouths in order to avoid burning their lips from the residue that could not be removed from the microphone. The comrades who were present and who cleaned up the area have attested to those facts.

2) The assailants used a back door leading in from the parking area to gain entry to the auditorium stage which was above and behind the spot where Ms Keith was speaking. When the assault took place the perpetrators were standing approximately three feet above her. The blows were delivered from behind with considerable force. There is video showing the blows being delivered to Ms Keith.

If you want to provide us with more information about this attack, videos, pictures, etc., email us at abookfair [at] yahoo.com