North Graham Street would seem an unlikely setting for an anarchist/ socialist/ progressive reading room-cum-coffeehouse-slash music hall. It’s a road littered with temp agencies, abandoned semi trailers and junk shops. Most of the acreage is covered with medium-sized warehouses making things one would never imagine a person could make money on — shrinkwrap, cardboard gidgets, and the kind of amorphous little plastic gewgaws you find while sweeping the house and then spend an hour trying to figure out what they are.
So imagine the surprise of coming face to face with a building that seems better suited to, say, San Francisco, or Ann Arbor, or maybe Asheville — somewhere where everything is a cause either worth celebrating or fighting for. Where young folks worry about political unrest in the Philippines.
Where young people think about politics at all.
Where young folks play games like Magic The Gathering to clear their heads of the grinding, grating world right outside the door. Where kids go to drink coffee and listen to bands with names like Angel Named Israfel and Choke Their Rivers With Our Dead. Where bands play benefit concerts for the Zapatistas of Chiapas, Mexico. Where you can sing (or sing along) with anything or anyone you like as long as you’re not smoking or drinking.
You’re at a place called the Boiling Point. And yes, part of the Boiling Point’s Graham Street existence is economic. It’s run as a collective, and survives on donations and the spark-a-fire beliefs of the individuals who make up the collective. However, there’s a certain poetic beauty to the location as well. If change has to start somewhere, why not here? Graham Street. It was a radical, progressive thought at the time. If you listen to the collective, it’s to be merely the first of many.
“We would identify as anti-capitalist,” says Dave Phillips, speaking along with friend Leanne Finnigin on behalf of the group. “But ‘anti-capitalist’ can come across as being pessimistic. We like to think that we advocate more than we oppose.
“It really breaks down to your faith in people and their nature. When denied their dignity and individual expression, along with their basic needs, you’re likely to see the worst in any living thing.”
According to Phillips, the Boiling Point operates on some other simple premises. One is the concept that, deep below all their own problems and prejudices, folks are more inclined to be helpful and co-operative than to be what he terms “enemies of humanity.” Another is the feeling that evolution “demands a higher degree of co-operation than of competition.”
“Capitalism, in its obvious way, organizes humanity on a competitive foundation, and it shines through in all social aspects of society,” Phillips says. “But we’ve learned that people have an innate desire to work with you and make the world a better place.” Simple premises, mind you, but not always simple to put into action.
As such, the Boiling Point has turned to action. No picketing, no slacker-anarchist grandstanding, no standing naked as an alternative to wearing fur. Action, from the ground up. Literally from the ground up. The space is committed to being the soil that folks with a passion can plant themselves in.
“The collective at the Boiling Point doesn’t look at themselves as people who pick causes,” says Phillips. “Instead, we try and provide a space where the ideas of others can take root. That’s not to say that members of the collective don’t get involved in specific causes, because we do. But that cause will take its own root and remain separate from the Boiling Point collective.”
Instead, the dusty, sun-warmed warehouse is used as a meeting space for progressive groups, providing resources and facilitating discussions and workshops on those issues. It is, in short, an infoshop, something the collective consider the most important thing they can provide.
Part of the Boiling Point’s success to this point has been its integration into the community. Not the music community, though the Point’s shows routinely bring in fine regional indie and hardcore bands. And not the activist community, though the space has become home to more than a few. Rather, the community — the folks that live in and around Graham Street, and that work in its stores.
Perhaps more importantly, the spot has provided help for those who don’t work in area stores — those without a job at all.
“The area we decided to move to was an industrial one,” Phillips says. “It was practically dead as far things like (what we wanted to do) were concerned, so the response was a bit uncomfortable at first. As we remained open and welcomed the people who we met, the word spread.”
Some of those same people have helped protect the Point in what otherwise might be considered a dodgy neighborhood.
“The resource center of the Boiling Point is something we have put a lot of effort and thought into,” says Phillips. “I would guess that it’s our most popular project. It’s basically a swap shop or free store with books, clothes and food. Although this resource center isn’t political at the surface, it does foster a sense of community.
“We feel we haven’t compromised our personal politics at all,” he continues. “Through all our projects we maintain a core commitment to personal empowerment. We feel that empowerment is the key to individual growth and community development.”
To the Boiling Point, this process is more important than any political theory they can offer up. When people are empowered, the thinking goes, then they’re more inclined to become political. Put another way, you can’t fight someone else when you’re fighting yourself.
The fight in question is everywhere. To the Boiling Point, there is no difference between thinking locally and acting globally. It’s all about making connections, and about seeing that people are basically alike. It’s more Martin Luther King than Malcolm X, more “act right” than “act up.”
“We feel that issues we identify with, locally, are struggles you’ll find all across the globe,” Phillips says. “Aruna Roy, a speaker from India, came (recently) to speak with us about her struggle in Rajasthan. The struggles she told us about would sound very familiar to minority groups in America. It’s a matter of making those connections and creating that need of solidarity in the minds of people here. And by staying here, we do feel that our struggle will be less transparent in our own communities. In that respect, our efforts are local.”
This summer is crucial for the Boiling Point. They’re working toward non-profit status, and also launching their fullest schedule of events to date. Something called the Liberation Skool is likely the biggest task. All events will be free and focused toward self-empowerment — and thus, liberation. The series includes classes in things like guitar lessons, Spanish conversation nights, women’s history classes, electronics repair, a radical film series, and an ongoing discussion on re-thinking the way we organize society, entitled My Journey with Aristotle. As a sideline, the arts and music portion of the space will host all manner of shows (the space is working on bringing in more acoustic acts), various speakers, art shows, circuses, puppet shows, and more. In May, the space had an open house/chili day that brought a large crowd out, an extension of some of the volunteers’ former work with the Food Not Bombs project. The space hopes to make a similar plan viable for later this year, which would feed folks for free every Sunday. First, however, the space must continue to matter, something the Boiling Point crew feel very confident about.
“What isn’t paid through shows,” says Phillips, “is mostly paid through our pockets. However, we have received, with incredible appreciation, large donations from certain individuals in the past. But overall, we find that our constituencies have little time and money to give. Making a space like the Boiling Point take root in a city such as Charlotte takes strong community outreach.”
And commitment from folks who are willing to do all of this for free, just because it’s a good idea. It’s a collective in the strictest sense of the word: a number of people acting as a group in support of an undertaking. “It’s hard to digest the collective into key people,” says Phillips, speaking, along with friend Leanne Finnigan, on behalf of the group. “Really, some people just have more time than others. But folks like Ben Webster, Jackson Gilman, Ben Sawyer and Mark Lewis are some I’d be happy to plug.”
Phillips says becoming a part of the collective is easy: “Other than no sexism, racism, homophobia, or ageism, people just need an earnest desire to recognize and change the things they are concerned with,” he continues. “We welcome and encourage anyone to get involved in what we have going, and make it better.”
While we were visiting the Boiling Point for this story, two different folks wandered in from the street, one with a Julius Erving-like afro and sweats, and the other seemingly straight from the mold of the of Dickies-wearing, factory working kind of folk that work and wait and live in this section of town. Both are greeted by name as they walk in, and the younger fellow with the combed-out hair brings Dave and collective member Ben Webster a CD of some forgettable alterna-rock band that he found or bought or was given. They thank him, and he lazily takes a seat in a chair, picking all sorts of atonal notes and rhythms on a guitar standing nearby. It’s downright awful, but the guy doesn’t seem to care. Webster asks him if he’d like to learn to play the guitar, and mentions the upcoming guitar lessons he’ll be teaching.
“Nah,” the guy half-mumbles. “But that’s cool. Y’all cool.” *
This article appears in Jun 12-18, 2002.
