This year's AntiMall was held at East LA's Chavez Studio. As organizer Laura Palomares explained on Uprising last year (full interview
here), the concept was inspired by her experiences with Zapatistas and the notion of an alternative, parallel economy. The AntiMall brings together many co-ops. "So the idea of El Puente is providing a space where you know you're buying something directly from the artisan, and that group of people are working on making things better for their community," she explained to Uprising's Sonali Kolhatkar. "So they--for example, the Zapatistas--are not waiting for the government to come in and fix what's going on in their community. They're going to make a demand, but at the same time they're working on creating their own autonomous communities. So the purpose of El Puente is to support those communities in their struggles and not support things like Walmart and Target in our neighborhoods but really invest back into social change ."
Story and photos:
2008 AntiMall (part 1) and
2008 AntiMall (part 2) by RP
2008 AntiMall