History
The collective gets its name from the "sabot" (French for "wooden shoe"). French peasants often resisted early industrial capitalism by tossing their wooden shoes into the gears of a factory machine, in order to get a break after having worked long hours.
The early founders of the Wooden Shoe collective were members of Philadelphia Solidarity (PS), a group of labor-orientated libertarian socialists. Along with others interested in working-class struggle, PS opened the store in December 1976. It was located on 112 South 20th street, right near Sansom Street, in Philadelphia.
The store was vandalized on October 8, 1978. Members of the collective flooded the store’s floor with water, ruining most of the inventory. The Wooden Shoe on 20th and Sansom burnt to the ground on February 12, Ash Wednesday, 1997 in an electrical fire.
As of December 2006, The Wooden Shoe's application for 501(c)3 status with the Internal Revenue Service to become a non-profit organization was approved.
Read more about this topic: Wooden Shoe Books
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The custard is setting; meanwhile
I not only have my own history to worry about
But am forced to fret over insufficient details related to large
Unfinished concepts that can never bring themselves to the point
Of being, with or without my help, if any were forthcoming.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“History, as an entirety, could only exist in the eyes of an observer outside it and outside the world. History only exists, in the final analysis, for God.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)