Workers Solidarity Movement

Early in the morning the crew arrive from the Occupy Cork camp to do their dish washing in the back kitchen of Solidarity Books. At 12 o'clock the days first volunteer arrives to open the bookshop and by lunch time the campers are back for the lunchtime wash up.  By evening the bookshop is closed but will invariably re open by 8 for a meeting or organising group, maybe a movie showing or a talk, the Climate Campers doing their vegan cafe or it could be the Couchsurfers for their meet up, maybe the Campaign Against the HouseHold Tax for an organising meeting or just a crew to paste posters onto corriboard.

Solidarity Books 43 Douglas Street is a thriving centre for active campaigning and all that goes on around it. I volunteer for a half day each week as do many others, it is a vital resource to many campaigning groups and a key piece of the Occupy Cork infrastructure. We help things happen and facilitate those organising for a better world. Though Solidarity Books is run by the Cork branch of the WSM it is appreciated by many people beyond the anarchist strand of politics.  Today taking over for the evening shift today I noticed a wee note of thanks from Friends of the Earth who had been in on Sunday to use the meeting room. I remember the awful drudge of looking for meeting space during the Celtic Tiger era when space after space disappeared.  Now we have something we can rely on.

But all this takes a little bit of money, not a lot as we are non profit so everything we earn from room bookings and the shop is ploughed back in. So if you are passing drop in buy a new book or a secondhand one, a bag of Zapatista Coffee or a magazine or even throw us a donation, every little helps.