Whatever happened to Boxcar Books? Leftist, Radical, and Progressive Bookstores
To start my research for this project, I went around asking all of the ‘bookish’ people around me (an incredibly easy task when one works three libraries) what they knew about all of the bookstores in Bloomington. There was our beloved Morgenstern’s, of course, but another one kept popping up: Boxcar Books. Its second and final location was on 6th street, right next to the Runcible Spoon. I’d walked past that white, boarded-up house a number of times and had never thought much of it, but at one point it was a thriving nonprofit bookstore operating in conjunction with Pages to Prisoners, a charity organization that mails reading material to incarcerated people free of charge. Boxcar closed its doors permanently in late 2017, leaving a closing statement that mysteriously alluded to a number of factors eventually leading to their closing.
Since the closing happened only seven years ago, I was able to go back and search through old Reddit posts to gauge the community’s reaction to the news. Firstly though, I’d like to note that the overly negative tone should be taken with a grain of salt; in my experience, online spaces dedicated to locales, be it a Nextdoor group for a neighborhood or a subreddit for a city, are filled to the brim with people who enjoy complaining. The few people I spoke to in real life who remembered visiting Boxcar spoke of its passing with sadness.
On Reddit, however, the overall consensus was mostly negative. One long comment blamed leftists’ penchant for infighting for the store’s ultimate failure to find a cheaper place to rent. Another expressed frustration that the store was volunteer-run and therefore unable to provide real employment to anyone in the city who desperately needed work. There were a few troll comments that were clearly in poor faith, one saying they were “half tempted to shoplift something in the store” for the name of communism, but other negative comments clearly came from disgruntled customers. As mentioned earlier, the store was located right next door to a popular brunch restaurant, the Runcible Spoon (as an aside, my search brought me to a Bloomington-specific satire website run by a “Kirk Woodlawn” that made me chuckle scrolling through Google). It seems there was occasionally conflict between the patrons of the restaurant and the bookstore, as well as perceived missed sales opportunities on the bookstore’s part. One comment suggests that the store’s willingness to allow unhoused patrons to shelter in the store drew away potential customers who were waiting to dine at the restaurant. Over and over, I saw that the store’s policy of welcoming homeless patrons was the biggest complaint people had towards the store (excluding the generic anti-leftist comments criticizing the store for being openly political).
Even the more scholarly sources note the amount of stress placed on the store by some of the homeless population as a key factor in their ultimate closing. Kimberly Kinder’s book The Radical Bookstore: Counterspace for Social Movements was published a few years after Boxcar closed, but she still mentions it a few times. When the city police became stricter about enforcing rules against unhoused people camping in public spaces, scores of them went to Boxcar with no where else to go. Boxcar refused to turn them away, which in the words of one volunteer, “[had] the whole town pissed off at us”(Kinder 131). Eventually, Kinder writes, “These incessant, aggressive confrontations became so overwhelming that… the exhausted collective members gave up and closed the store”(Kinder 131). Unfortunately, it was not just the neighbors’ reaction to people sleeping in the space, but the poor behavior of some of those people in need that also hurt the store’s prospects. Many of the homeless people who came into the store seeking shelter were “shitty, misogynist, transphobic men”(Kinder 186) who were abusive towards the marginalized people for whom the store was intended to be a safe space. Being fiercely anti-police and anti-incarceration, they refused to call the police on anybody for any reason, and as a result the volunteer interviewed for the book says that they were taken advantage of often (Kinder 186).
Reading the official closing statement in more detail, it’s clear that the store also struggled to balance the needs of unhoused people with the need to bring in paying customers to continue making rent each month. Hellebore, the author of the statement, puts it more succinctly: “We struggled to be able to continue to offer space for those people who most desperately needed it, while still having a store that felt accessible and enjoyable for customers and groups holding events. It was a learning process, and we did not always succeed”. I’ve only lived in Bloomington for five years (closer to three if we don’t count COVID era) but I’m well aware of the city’s ongoing housing crisis and large unhoused population, and that it was much more visible in the years immediately following up to me moving here for school in 2019. I can empathize with the store’s commitment to inclusion for the city’s most vulnerable and marginalized, especially given their openly leftist political slant. To disallow visitors who had no intention of spending money would go directly against their mission, even though doing so was probably the biggest reason the store ultimately closed. This conflict between community and capital seems like a fundamental contradiction to me.
Now, I must admit, my initial reaction upon reading the phrase “anarchist bookstore” was reminiscent of the man in the orange shirt from the Matt Bors comic often circulated on the internet, titled “Mister Gotcha”:
I’ve seen that last panel in particular countless times, and I do understand the argument. It’s often impossible to advocate for resisting oppressive structures without also participating and living within those structures, and so to call people hypocrites for doing so is disingenuous. No ethical consumption under capitalism, as they say. Still, I find myself asking the question of why someone dedicated to resisting capitalism would want to open a store, which needs to generate income in order to keep existing.
In author Kimberly Kinder’s book The Radical Bookstore: Counterspace for Social Movements, she acknowledges this contradiction and names it as a major barrier to radical bookstores, writing “Working through capitalism is not a smooth process, and tensions invariably arise when antiauthoritarian activists participate in capitalist commodity exchange by selling books and paying rent”(Kinder 7). This applies moreso to radical and openly leftist bookstores than the majority of independent stores. For politically oriented spaces, one way this contradiction is reconciled is through weighing the pros against the cons of participating in capitalism. One major advantage gained through running a business is the permanent space that activists can use to physically meet and organize together. Compared with meeting at one person’s house, a permanent organizing space provides the benefit of anonymity. According to The Radical Bookstore, this was one of Boxcar’s stated goals. Much of their work was anti-police and anti-prison, and it was their goal to provide a safe space for organizing against these structures without activists feeling under the threat of surveillance.
On top of creating a space for organizing, radical and progressive bookstores also often prove their commitment to the community through treating their workers as well as they possibly can. The book How to Protect Bookstores and Why by Danny Caine profiles 12 independent bookstores across the country, most of them aligning on some level with leftist politics. One of the stores he details, Red Emma’s Bookstore Coffeehouse in Baltimore, was formed with the explicit goals of providing a space to organize social justice movements in the city and to be a welcoming space to learn about leftist movements (Red Emma’s: About). One way they achieve these goals is by operating as an employee owned organization: every staff member has the opportunity to become a worker-owner, giving them the right to vote on all store decisions (Cane 104). Aside from higher wages, many stores strive to provide healthcare to their employees, a difficult feat given the razor-thin margins independent bookstores tend to run on (Cane 173).
One more way independent stores can further progressive goals is through curation of the products they sell. Writing in The Art of Libromancy, Josh Cook struggles to reconcile his store’s mission of promoting inclusivity and diverse voices with keeping titles on the shelves that were written by authors who hold beliefs against this message. He argues that “Whether they agree with [the author]’s ideas or not, the fact of a traditionally published book tells readers some basic level of value or legitimacy has been reached”(Cook 114). He goes as far as partially blaming Trump’s rise to presidency on the media’s willingness to platform the ideas of the white supremacist thinkers who supported him. When it comes to white supremacist authors, Cook argues that to continue to sell their books under a guise of neutrality equates to a willingness to profit off of hatred. Still, in some cases (or simply because bookstores cannot be expected to research the views of every author whose books make it onto shelves), bookstores will continue to sell books by (and therefore platform) authors with bigoted beliefs. J.K. Rowling is one such author whose books continue to be massive sellers despite her being notably outspoken against transgender people. In these situations, bookstores use a variety of methods to take a stance against her beliefs. Some have refused to stock her books despite their popularity (Kirch). Others, such as Josh Cook’s bookstore Porter Square Books, place within each copy of Harry Potter a bookmark highlighting and recommending similar books by transgender authors (Cook 137). Another solution is to speak not about the authors that are excluded, but who is included. The simplest way to promote literature by authors of marginalized groups (and those promoting progressive ideology) is to simply recommend them to customers. Independent bookstores have the power to control what is displayed most prominently in the store, and books that receive personal recommendations from staff are far more likely to sell. Cook calls this a form of ‘affirmative action” and sees it as an important form of activism.
The now-defunct Boxcar Books practiced many of these strategies. As mentioned previously, they allowed their space to be used for activists to meet with safety and discretion in mind. They shared their space with Midwest Pages to Prisoners. From what I can gather about their selection, Boxcar routinely stocked their shelves with leftist and feminist theory, and they often hosted local authors to come speak and sell their books.
In the present day, Redbud Books practices a few of these strategies as well. I spoke to nikolae cline, one of the store’s volunteers and curators, and they told me that while Redbud does not publicly identify with any particular political movement, they do want to serve as a community space. From looking at their event schedule, it’s clear that they also have a leftist, activist lean. As of my writing this, some upcoming events include an author’s talk about her new book and Christian Socialism, an author talk on feminism and animal advocacy, and a letter writing event on behalf of a man recently arrested for organizing against Cop City (@redbudbooks on Twitter). Additionally, the store’s bookshop.org page promotes The Radical Bookstore in a list titled “Inspirations”. Though their politics are not stated on the door nor the website, Redbud is not shy about the ideas it promotes. In my first visit to the store, I noticed that a large portion of the nonfiction section was dedicated to feminist theory, queer theory, and socialist movements. The authors represented in the fiction section were similarly diverse. Though the amount of books Redbud carries is much smaller than any of the other stores in town, it’s clear that every one of them was handpicked by someone.
It’s too early to say for sure what their impact will be on the community or how long they’ll last in their space, but I have high hopes for Redbud. They seem to genuinely care about the work they do in promoting leftist and/or marginalized authors through their events, and it’s a lovely building to visit and hang out in as well. I’m very glad to know that Bloomington has once again become home to a more radical bookstore.