Wooden Shoe

What Is Anarchism? What Is The Wooden Shoe? To put it simply, anarchism is the the political philosophy that people are better off making decisions for themselves, and communities making decisions for their communities, rather than having any centralized power/governing body do it for them. Furthermore, anarchism is opposed to capitalism and all systems of oppression that attempt to exploit or control.

Founded in 1976, the Wooden Shoe is an all volunteer, collectively-run, anarchist book store. Functioning within a system we oppose, we seek to be an example of one way things can function without anyone commanding or forcing us to think or act a certain way. We have neither bosses nor managers and make all of our decisions through consensus rather than majority rule voting so as to empower those involved. We also identify as an infoshop, meaning that we serve as a space for people to gather, learn, and find out more about like-minded activities happening in their communities.

Mission Statement & Statement of Values

Mission:

The Wooden Shoe is an all-volunteer collectively-run Infoshop located in Philadelphia, PA that seeks to embody the principles of anarchism and other movements for social justice. We strive to provide our local community with radical and non-traditional sources of written, digital, and spoken information. We wish to be an empowering resource for activism, organizing, art, self-education, dialogue, community-building, and the anti-capitalist struggle.

Statement of Values:

We seek to be an example of the society we envision and what we are working towards as radicals. We are a non-profit space that works to offer ethical choices in what people buy, eat, drink, and learn. We are a non-hierarchical collective that hopes to empower members through worker self-management and a consensus decision-making process. As a collective, we are committed to discussing and challenging all systems of oppression including but not limited to: racism, sexism, classism, heterosexism, ableism, and ageism within our own collective and in larger society. We seek to recognize and identify various points of privilege we may have as members of a collective that is made up of people with unique identities, backgrounds, and histories. We hope to build a space that is part of a larger social movement that combines our resources with other cooperative and collective organizations locally and around the world for the purpose of mutual aid and the creation of a cooperative society.