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WITH DEMOCRACY UNDER THREAT, INDIE BOOKSTORES MERGE ACTIVISM AND
LITERATURE FOR COLLECTIVE CARE  
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Costa Beavin Pappas
November 11, 2025
Prism
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_ Building on the legacy of Black-owned bookstores, Charis Books, Red
Emma’s, and other booksellers serve as intellectual and cultural
hubs during rising authoritarianism. Under Trump’s authoritarian
regime, radical bookstores continue to be attacked. _

Credit: iStock // Prism,

 

At a Pride festival in October, a volunteer approached Sara Luce Look,
the co-owner of Charis Books and More
[[link removed]], and shared that decades prior, a
person in her life was sexually abused. The person’s counselor
suggested they go to Charis for support. Known as “the South’s
oldest independent feminist bookstore,” the Decatur, Georgia, shop
not only offered books that the survivor found helpful, but it also
provided a safe space where they could process the abuse they
experienced.

Look told Prism that the volunteer began to cry and asked for a hug.
Not much of a hugger, Look said in that moment, she became one. 

“It’s a story I’ve heard over and over again,” Look said.
“That’s who I want us to be for people, but I wish that wasn’t a
space people needed.” 

Charis Books is just one in a nationwide network of independent
bookstores with a dual focus on books and community-centered support.
While the closures of chain bookstores have increased in recent years
[[link removed]]—intensified
by the pandemic and the rise of Amazon
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exhaustion
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and a depressed cultural landscape
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under the Trump administration have led to a dearth of community
outreach and educational opportunities. 

Indie bookstores nationwide are filling the gap.

ORIGINS IN BLACK-OWNED BOOKSTORES

Charis Books was first established amid a broader wave of leftist
bookstores that emerged during the 1970s. These bookstores were—and
continue to be—crucial cultural and intellectual centers, bringing
an array of writers, leaders, and activists while also introducing
liberatory literature to local communities.

For Charis’ original founders, Linda Bryant and Barbara Borgman, the
store started as a community bookshop for Little Five Points, a
neighborhood just north of Atlanta.

“That neighborhood became a sort of hub of different kinds of
organizing, but especially lesbian, feminist, and other radical
organizing,” explained Look, who became co-owner in 1998. “And
Charis evolved into a feminist bookstore.”

During the 1960s and ’70s, the concept of merging activism and
literature was a significant part of counterinstitutional
establishments across the country. Black activists were at the
vanguard
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of many of these movements. One such initiative started in 1968 and
quickly became recognized as one of the most prominent Black-owned
bookstores of the 20th century.

Leading up to the opening of Washington, D.C.’s Drum & Spear
Bookstore in 1968, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was
assassinated. Protests overtook the nation’s capital, and there was
community-wide fear around King’s murder and the future of the civil
rights movement. 

Members of the pivotal grassroots organization called the Student
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) knew they needed a space to
center Black voices, resulting in former SNCC field secretary Charlie
Cobb opening Drum & Spear Bookstore
[[link removed]] on June 1, 1968.

Home to authors not found in mainstream bookstores, Drum & Spear
hosted readings, poetry performances from the likes of Sonia Sanchez
and Gaston Neal, and community conversations on subjects such as
Pan-Africanism. The civil rights bookstore-turned-salon
[[link removed]] was
especially popular among the students of Howard University, a
historically Black university.

The store closed its doors in 1974, though not before helping to
facilitate [[link removed]]
“Towards a Black University
[[link removed]],”
a Howard conference
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that expanded Black studies nationwide.  

But the existence of radical, Black-owned spaces was not without
consequence. Like other Black-owned bookstores
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at the time, Drum & Spear was surveilled by the federal government.
Activist Kwame Ture once visited Drum & Spear, and just a few weeks
later, the FBI came knocking.

Declassified documents now show that the FBI’s concern extended far
beyond Drum & Spear. A 1968 memo
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from FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover warned of an “increase in the
establishment of black extremist bookstores which represent propaganda
outlets for revolutionary and hate publications and culture centers
for extremism.”

Hoover instructed the government’s counterintelligence program,
COINTELPRO [[link removed]], to “locate
and identify black extremist and/or African-type bookstores in its
territory and open separate discreet investigations on each.” Agents
were also ordered to determine “the identities of the owners;
whether it is a front for any group or foreign interest; whether
individuals affiliated with the store engage in extremist activities;
the number, type, and source of books and material on sale; the
store’s financial condition; its clientele; and whether it is used
as a headquarters or meeting place.”

The consequences were chilling. The federal government targeted
booksellers
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The FBI dispatched undercover agents to readings and meetings and
tapped phone lines. Critical spaces that anchored Black intellectual
life, including Liberation Bookstore in Harlem, New York, and Marcus
Books in San Francisco, eventually bowed to the pressure and closed. 

But decades later, a new generation of radical independent bookstores
is thriving. 

RENEWED PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT  

The number of independent bookstores in the U.S. has grown by 70%
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since 2020. But this trend first began
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in the early 2010s, largely driven by intersectional feminist,
LGBTQIA+, and people of color–owned literary spaces that built on
the legacy of their Black-owned predecessors.

One such example is Red Emma’s [[link removed]] in Baltimore.
The worker cooperative bookstore and coffee shop first opened its
doors in 2004.

While radical literature is the heart of Red Emma’s, evident in its
wide variety of books on sex work, Marxism, socialism, communism,
Palestine, and activism, among other subjects, the bookstore follows
in the legacy of anarchist and feminist Emma Goldman. In practice,
this means that the shop serves as both a community resource and a
business model for anarchism and anti-capitalism.

There are no bosses, and no bureaucracy. As a cooperative, workers own
an equal share of the business and have an equal say in business
matters.  

Programming is also an important part of the store’s community
offerings. Recent events [[link removed]] have
included workshops on mindful journaling and seed-saving, community
conversations about financing a “wrecked democracy,” a book launch
party for Joshua Clark Davis’ “Police Against the Movement,” a
youth-led session advocating for reparations in Maryland, and a wide
range of public conversations focused on Palestine, colonialism, and
U.S. imperialism.   

The store’s community-focused approach extends into mutual aid.
Workers offer vulnerable community members free clothing, menstrual
supplies, and learning materials. But one of the store’s most
defining characteristics is its pay-it-forward approach.

Customers can prepay for meals, drinks, or snacks, allowing anyone who
needs something to eat or drink to order from the cafe at no
additional charge.

“How we’re going to survive is taking care of each other and being
in community,” said Taylor Morgan, a worker-owner at Red Emma’s.
“On any given day, students, parents, unhoused people, people
experiencing mental health crises, older folks—are all sitting
together and sharing space for the same reason: They want a better
world for themselves and everyone else.”

The term “third space,” coined by sociologist Ray Oldenburg,
refers to an accessible gathering space for the community outside of
home and work. These spaces are necessary for connection and
understanding in a democratic society.

Radical bookstores across the U.S. help to fill the country’s lack
of third spaces. Cafes, parks, libraries, and community centers still
serve an important role, even as online spaces now dominate
interactions. But algorithm-fueled online landscapes have deepened
social divides. Under the watch of tech billionaires such as Elon
Musk, platforms such as X are now flooded with
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racist, nativist, and nationalistic far-right rhetoric that has
international consequences.

But the far-right’s rise has also spurred renewed public engagement,
as witnessed by workers at Charis Books and Red Emma’s. This
“Trump bump [[link removed]]” phenomenon led many locals
to enter these bookstores and seek community and connection for the
first time.

But under Trump’s authoritarian regime, radical bookstores continue
to be attacked. 

Far-right groups now target bookstores
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that stock children’s books with LGBTQIA+, Black, and other POC
characters. Sometimes it’s merely online harassment, other times
it’s far more threatening. Last summer in Austin, the LGBTQIA+
feminist bookstore BookWoman [[link removed]] was vandalized.
A concrete block was thrown at a Pride flag display—one of several
such attacks
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reported nationwide.

“It takes more than a broken window to break our resolve,”
BookWoman wrote in a statement
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“We are no strangers to pushback and attempts at silencing the
voices of women, LGBTQA+ people, and POC. This isn’t new, and it
isn’t going to stop us from living out our values.”

Threats of institutional violence once posed by COINTELPRO continue
today. In states such as Texas, Florida, and Tennessee, lawmakers have
introduced or passed bills imposing criminal penalties
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for distributing books that right-wing lawmakers have deemed
“obscene” or “harmful to minors.” Historically, this rhetoric
is used to silence work from queer, trans, Black, and other
marginalized authors.

For independent booksellers—especially those rooted in
community—the struggle to stay afloat is no longer just about
financially surviving Amazon. Similar to Black-owned bookstores in the
past, today’s indie bookstore movement defends the fundamental right
to read freely.

“People might think people are scared or receding, but it’s the
contrary,” said Meg Berkobien, a worker-owner at Red Emma’s.
“I’ve never seen so many people writing in, wanting to be part of
communities like ours. People are not as scared. Actually, people are
getting braver all the time.”

And while online sales once threatened their very existence,
independent bookstores are finding new forms of community support that
extend beyond customers walking through the door. Online platforms
such as Bookshop
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have become an important lifeline, allowing readers to buy books
online from indie bookstores, which guarantees a portion of the sale.

Bookshop also plays a powerful role for readers, especially those who
are homebound, working double shifts, or in rural areas far from their
nearest bookstore. The general public has watched Amazon aggressively
reshape the book industry, making ethically buying books an
intentional act. Through Bookshop, readers who care about places such
as Red Emma’s and Chicago’s Semicolon
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books while supporting indie stores’ mission.

Amid escalating book bans; campaigns to censor library materials; and
mounting political pressures on cultural institutions such as museums,
archives, and public media, independent bookstores are leaning into
their legacies as intellectual and cultural community hubs. As public
infrastructure continues to buckle under the ideological and financial
strain of the Trump administration, radical independent bookstores
provide essential civic spaces and cultural safeguards.

Being a bookstore in America today carries a different set of
responsibilities. Beyond selling books, these spaces help communities
take action to organize, curate, and preserve intellectual expression.

_Editorial Team:__Tina Vasquez, Lead Editor__Carolyn Copeland, Top
Editor__Rashmee Kumar, Copy Editor_

 

_[COSTA BEAVIN PAPPAS is a graduate of American University with
bylines in ELLE, Oprah Daily, Teen Vogue, Newsweek, and Business
Insider, among others. He splits his time between New York City and
Cairo, Egypt.]_

_Real journalists wrote and edited this (not AI)—independent,
community-driven journalism survives because you back it. __Donate_
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mission and the humans behind it._

_This story was originally published in English at __Prism_
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* Activism
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* books
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* booksellers
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