PICO-UNION : Leftist Bookstore Broadens Its Base

Offering works by Fidel Castro, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Malcolm X and Nelson Mandela, the Pathfinder bookstore for 10 years has been a meeting place for the political left from throughout the city.

Although most of the store’s activity has been geared toward leftist intellectuals, it has begun to focus on the plight of the unemployed and homeless in the Mid-City area.

“I like the bookstore for its symbolic value and as a resource to the community,” said Jaime Coyle of the Pico-Union area. “It serves the intellectual left population, but I’ve been there for forums on worker rights and people would just come off the streets speaking mostly Spanish and talk into the microphone with a translator. It’s a great place for everyone to come and air their feelings.”

Razed in last year’s riots, the Pico Boulevard store reopened in January. The store sells Spanish-language books and has translators at weekly forums that touch on topics ranging from Marxist theory to police brutality. The national Socialist Workers Party, which has offices in Pathfinder’s, has joined local groups, such as the Central American Refugee Center, during protests.

Roberto Lovato, the center’s executive director, said that although some might not agree with the political views of Pathfinder’s or the Socialist Workers, their voices should be embraced in the spirit of democracy.

“We know that straight capitalism as it is practiced does not work,” Lovato said. “If it did, areas like Pico-Union would not be the crime-ridden, overcrowded, drug-infested places of massive suffering that they are. . . . Whether or not we disagree with it, the fact is any alternative voice is good because nobody has come up with the answer to these problems.”