On the 1st of December, our collective, The Barricade, will be
celebrating three years of activity with our library, our cafe’ and our
anti-foodwaste dinners. To celebrate, we decided to dedicate the day to
reflections and talks on the topic of Autonomy, and we would like to
invite you to join us on that day.
We have invited two social centers, the Ex-Opg from Naples and the
Kiezkommune from Berlin, to reflect together on how a social center can
serve as a basis for counter-power and solidarity in the city.
During the panel, beside seeing the examples of how striving for
counter-power and practicing solidarity can look like, we are going to
address various thematics. What are the reasons that brought to a
certain “subculturalisation” of social centers? In which ways do
practices of solidarity and mutual aid differ from assistentialism? What
are the conditions that can bring to gaining more or less autonomy from
the state?
We’ll use the occasion just as well to release a small booklet with
information on theirs and some other reflections on the social center.
We have also invited many VoKus from around the Netherlands to join our
reflection tables on People’s Kitchens and Political Struggle, where we
want to reflect on various topics that are at the core of making our
dinners political acts. Topics we’re going to reflect on will be, among
others: How to escape the service dynamics of a restaurant and be more
and more a manifestation of collective self-management in action? How
can we bring forth change with the food we use? Can we create and
support in our kitchens economies of real solidarity escaping green
economy’s co-optation?
On the day we are also going to present our book “The Barricade ABC”,
which is our attempt at putting together many moments and reflections on
these years of activity in all the letters of the alphabet. We are also
going to host a photo exhibition on food waste, DIY workshops for
collective self-production, music performances from Your Local Pirates
and Trikosis Trio, and, of course, a lot of amazing vegan food!
The complete schedule is as follows:
– 11:30am-12:30pm: Vegan Brunch
– 12:30pm-2:30pm: Reflection Tables on People’s Kitchens and Political
Struggle ( https://squ.at/r/7gxy )
– 3:00pm-4:15pm: DIY: A collective toolbox against the supermarkets! (
https://squ.at/r/7h0p )
– 4:45:-6:45 Talk: Social Centers as basis for Counter-power (
https://squ.at/r/7hu6 )
– 7:00-7:30 Book presentation: The Barricade ABC ( https://squ.at/r/7hua
)
– 7:30pm-9pm: Dinner
– 9pm-9:45pm: Your Local Pirates (https://squ.at/r/7hu9)
– 10pm-10:45pm: Trikosis trio ( https://squ.at/r/7hu9 )
Complete information on the day can be found on our page on radar (
https://radar.squat.net/utrecht/barricade ) where more updates will be
posted as the date comes closer.
We hope that you’ll be able to join us
—
The Barricade