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Firestorm BooksWithout Bob Sheldon, there wouldn't be a Firestorm Books.
Thirty-five years ago today, Bob was assassinated at Internationalist Books in Chapel Hill, NC. It still isn't known who killed him, but the shooting took place in the shadows of the Greensboro Massacre (1979) and the Shelby gay bookstore murders (1987).
Bob was a nurse, Vietnam draft resister, textile mill union organizer, Jewish advocate for Palestinian liberation, and revolutionary bookseller. His assassination in 1991 took place at the start of the Gulf War shortly after he appeared on TV as a voice of the anti-war movement.
Following Bob's death, the Internationalist, affectionately called "I-Books" by its community, was run by an anarchist collective. For the next 25 more years (until its closure in 2016), volunteers continued and expanded Bob's vision, modeling the connection between books, ideas, current events, and political action.
Over three decades after Bob's assassination, stochastic violence by fascists and targeted killings by US government agents have become so frequent that we're lurching towards normalization. But Bob's killers failed, and today spaces across the South still operate in the legacy of I-Books. Those who oppose fascism do so at great personal risk. We know more lives will be lost in the coming year, but Bob's death shows us that the spirit of liberation cannot be killed.
Long live I-Books! Long live Bob Sheldon! His memory is a blessing ❤️🔥 (- L)
https://indyweek.com/news/legacy-bob-sheldon-founder-internationalist-books/
https://indyweek.com/archives/archives-guides/rabble-rousers/
The legacy of Bob Sheldon, founder of Internationalist Books
The Internationalist commemorates Bob Sheldon’s life, 20 years after he was murdered, Monday, Feb. 21, 7-9 p.m., with speeches from old friends and a rousing march to the site of the old store with an escort by the radical marching band Cakalak Thunder. We’ll probably never know who killed Bob Sheldon. Was it a botched […]