By Albo Jeavons
The following views are those of the individual contributors and are not necessarily reflective of the Wooden Shoe Collective
Accounting for the Cause
By Jini Kades
Coffee in one hand, calculator in the other, I try and gain focus, staring at the rows and columns of numbers glowing out at me from the QuickBooks screen. I swivel in my chair as I copy and paste formatted cells into Excel. Though eerily similar to what I might find myself doing Monday – Friday at my cubicle out in the burbs, it’s a Sunday afternoon and I’m behind the counter at – you guessed it – everyone’s favorite Philly-based anarchist bookstore collective. I’m surrounded by the rudimentaries of the trade: old riot folk flyers-turned-scrap-paper, an old yogurt container full of free Mazzoni Center condoms, and vegan-gluten-free-fair-trade-organic chocolate bars. Maneuvering around the web of wires draped across the floor connecting the decades-old collection tangle of phone, computer, and music equipment, I perform the glorious monthly task bestowed upon me by the Wooden Shoe collective: pay and record the store’s sales tax.
How radical do I feel at this moment, as I sign over an ACH deposit to the PA Department of Revenue? Not very. But that’s OK. I’ll make up for it by throwing in my two cents later at the weekly meeting, perhaps in a discussion of how to best support friends and staffers jailed during direct actions, whether we should sell an interesting book by an author with questionable ethics, or how to best approach conflict mediation amongst our own members. These questions are debated as we strive to uphold the consensus process and our principles of anti-racism, anti-sexism, and so forth. But this is all after I give a budget reportback. And after someone on the Tech committee reports on a new Info Shop Keeper (ISK) interface we can use to streamline our inventory system. Then, perhaps after a spirit-lifting/blood-boiling, yet intellectually stimulating political debate, we might argue the finer points of selling gift certificates this holiday season.
When I started staffing at the Shoe about two years ago, a year after moving to Philadelphia, I was stoked to be a part of a new community that seemed tight-knit and plugged into the outside Philly world in a way I’d been yearning for. In exchange for volunteering a few hours a week, or just a couple times a month, I had the chance to make new friends and be among the first to know about concerts and speaking events, and be at the forefront of local political movements!
When I decided after a few months that I wanted to stick with it in a real way and give back more time in exchange for stronger connections to the Wooden Shoe community, it was time to join a “committee,” the small groups that make decisions about different facets of the Shoe. There’s no vertical structure of management; instead, the Wooden Shoe forms small committees that take initiatives within their spheres. These committees bring any big decisions to the collective for horizontal, consensual decision-making. Did I want to be on the events committee? Find awesome speakers, musicians, poets, and authors, to share their talents at the Shoe? Maybe the book ordering committee, where I could spend my time reading up on the latest works published by contemporary thinkers in philosophy, politics, economics, and gender studies? Or maybe even the music ordering committee, where I could track down the latest albums by radical hip-hop, punk, or folk artists, and learn how to stock a store with these masterpieces?
While these options appealed to me, a plea from one of my sponsors (who ease your way into becoming a member of the collective) to join the then two-person finance committee, and to share whatever math skills I had gleaned from my very liberal-artsy economics degree, won me over. Has the budgeting and bill-paying and QuickBooks deciphering been exhilarating? Not so much. However, like much of the behind-the-scenes work at any successful venture, it’s a necessary evil, and I feel pretty great about my part in it. The now five-person, Super Magnanimous Finance Committee (new title bestowed, as of now, by my declaration), has all the Shoe’s fiscal tasks delegated among us. We are on top of our game. Though the process of divvying up those responsibilities has mutated many times over the years, it’s awe-inspiring to me that, 35 years later, the Wooden Shoe collective is still a financially stable, fully independent and consensus-based non-profit that continues to provide alternative media to the knowledge-hungry public (the 99%, if you will). Though not glamorous, what I do is an important part of the finance committee’s work, and just as essential as that of the menial tasks carried out by other committees. What amazes me most is how well it all comes together and that the collective efforts of the Shoe’s volunteers keep that neon sign glowing on South Street. (When we remember to turn it on, that is.)
Countless people have come and gone in the Shoe’s history, each making their own distinct mark, whether it was notably visible to the public or not. The Wooden Shoe is a testament to all the hard, under-the-radar work that people have put in over the years. Sure, people do boring shit all the time for a corporation or systemically entrenched organization, but how often does that work add up to something a person can proudly put their name to, where in between mundane tasks you can actually get your voice heard? In order to bring about materials and events that help inspire political, cultural, and social movements, everyone’s got to do the monotonous, everyday tasks once in a while. Sometimes that takes the shape of the paying the monthly sales tax. I’ll take it.