F-word benefit

fword_festival_benefitMonday August 8th 2016, F-word benefit, Volkseten Vegazulu, 7pm

Do you feel pressured to be ‘feminine’ or ‘masculine’? Do you or your friends get harassed on the street for wearing a short skirt? Are you sick of being judged by what’s between your legs rather than what’s in your head? Not sure how to respond to the sexist comments you hear around you? If you feel like we still have a long way to go before all genders are equal – STRIKE BACK WITH THE F-WORD!

Feminism is back! And we are celebrating it this September in Amsterdam with the Fantastic Feminist Festival: The F-WORD fest.

To make sure this year’s edition of the F Word: a Fantastic Feminist Festival is just as amazing as the past 3 years, we want to collect money to be able to host awesome workshops and discussions with feminists from all over the world. Come have delicious vegan dinner and participate in the feminist quiz with chances to win out-of-this-patriarchical world prizes!

http://thefword.nl/

Volkseten Vegazulu is a people’s kitchen, every monday, 7pm, vegan food for 4€ or donation. All benefits go for social & political struggles. No reservation. From September, the people’s kitchen is also open on thursday.

We’re always looking for cooks. Any help is welcome in the kitchen. Experience not required. Enjoying it is a must. If you want to know which days are still available in the schedule, send an email to joe [at] squat [dot] net and book yourself the night. You can, of course, also participate by rolling up your sleeves and doing the dishes.

Taina Asili & Evan Greer, music for social change, Break the Chains tour

BreakTheChains_Euro2015_amsterdamThursday June 25th 2014, Singer songwriters: Taina Asili & Evan Greer, music for social change, Break the Chains European tour. Door opens at 7pm. Concert at 8:30pm, after the people’s kitchen.

Evan Greer one of the founder of the Riot-Folk Collective and Taina Asili, from Boston and New York, will be performing at Joe’s Garage as a part of their Break the Chains European Tour. Evan Greer is a radical genderqueer singer/songwriter from the Riot-Folk collective, based in Boston, MA, performing high-energy acoustic songs that inspire hope, build community, and incite resistance. Taína Asili is a US born Puerto Rican singer, combining powerful vocals with energetic fusion of Afro-Latin, reggae, and rock sounds of rebellion. Evan and Taina are very active in movements of resistance in the US, and in addition to sharing their music, will be sharing updates on the community organizing work they are involved in, especially as it relates to prisoner justice, Black Lives Matter and the movement to free Mumia Abu-Jamal and other US political prisoners.

More infos at: http://evangreer.org/ and http://tainaasili.com/

[…Lees verder]

Movie Night: Pride (2014)

Sunday March 15th 2015. Pride by Matthew Warchus (UK, 2014, 119 minutes). In English. Door opens at 8pm, film begins at 9pm. Free admission.

306_1_Pride-film-still-014

Tonight we are showing “Pride”. This movie has been released 2014 and has been received mostly very well among its audience, especially due to its narrative of cross solidarity between two particular and disconnected struggles that took place in the UK around the year of 84/85…

Wikipedia says about the movie:
Based on a true story, the film depicts a group of lesbian and gay activists who raised money to help families affected by the British miners’ strike in 1984, at the outset of what would become the Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners campaign. The National Union of Mineworkers was reluctant to accept the group’s support due to the union’s public relations’ worries about being openly associated with a gay group, so the activists instead decided to take their donations directly to Onllwyn, a small mining village in Wales, resulting in an alliance between the two communities. The alliance was unlike any seen before but was successful.

… and the Guardian adds:
In a decade when a degree of homophobia was the norm, LGSM (Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners) drove a couple of minibuses from Hackney Community Transport and a clapped-out VW camper van to a bleak mining town in South Wales to present their donations, uncertain what sort of welcome to expect. The events that unfolded said a lot about what it means to be empathetic, to overcome dissent and face common enemies: Thatcher, the tabloids, the police. They told a story about solidarity.

The real thing: LGSM members march in support of the miners

Besides the question of solidarity, which is an actual question still today, when thinking about solidarity and cooperation between our own local struggles of our daily life’s in the cities, neighborhoods and communities we are living in, but also globally when thinking about Gezi, Kobane, Ferguson or the Mediterranean Sea (just to name a few) there is another interesting theme to observe in “Pride”: the question of stereotypes that seem to emerge within the movie when it talks about the two movements in struggle and the question of media power when perceiving those emerging images.

Probably mainly for storytelling reasons, “Pride” portrays a large fraction of the miners in the village of Onllwyn as a relatively conservative, thus homophobic bunch of people, that does not want to have gays and lesbians supporting their struggle. In the movie, this situation will eventually be dissolved and overcome by LGSM, even though parts of LGSM did not seem to be comfortable with the idea of visiting the village of the miner community in the first place.

After the film has been released, former LGSM members explained that this reality was slightly different: LGSM activists did not perceive homophobic tendencies among the miners, that the majority of the communities were conscious about homosexuality and that they overruled those minor fractions within their communities that were clearly homophobic. The miners came to their stance against homophobia before LGSM visited them for the first time, and their first encounters were more welcoming and supportive as portrayed in the movie.

LGSM

In fact, the miners themselves had to struggle against a hard smear campaign initiated by British media all over the country, being portrayed as backward rednecks by media institutions that came up with absurd facts and stories aiming to discredit the miners and their struggle. It may be the only really unnecessary tendency in Pride, that it uses a similar strategy then the media of that time (on a different scale and for different purposes of course), and by that reproduces the very stereotypes that it aims to dissolve by telling this story of solidarity.

In order to dig into that situation a bit deeper we are also going to show a short documentary about the miners strike produced by LGSM in 1985. For further information, take a look at the following collection of texts about the situation in the UK during that times.

For a first reading, a quite nice interview has been made with one of the former LGSM members Ray Goodspeed who gives an insight into the context of that time and differences between the movie and history: Dear Love of Comrades: The politics of Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners.

lgsm-3-1-publicity-copy-of-a3-poster-pits-and-perverts

Some collection of texts about the miners strike 1984-85
https://libcom.org/tags/miners-strike
http://www.gayinthe80s.com/tag/lesbians-and-gays-support-the-miners/

Spanish anarchists in the Welsh valleys
https://libcom.org/history/spanish-anarchists-welsh-valleys

Tell us lies about the miners
https://libcom.org/history/tell-us-lies-about-miners-dave-douglass

Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners in their protests for ‘Coal not Dole’
https://unlockideas.wordpress.com/2014/01/31/lesbians-and-gays-support-the-miners-in-their-protests-for-coal-not-dole/

Pride: The UK miners’ strike through the distorted mirror of identity politics
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/10/29/prid-o29.html

Film night at Joe’s Garage, cozy cinema! Doors open at 8pm, film begins at 9pm, free entrance. You want to play a movie, let us know: joe [at] squat [dot] net

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‘Our Right’ Screening/ Voices of Women Media Benefit

Apna HaqMonday October 20th, Screening and Benefit for Voices of Women Media, Volkseten Vegazulu, 19:00

We invite you to a screening of our latest project, ‘Our Right.’ Voices of Women Media wants to contribute to a world where women from marginalized communities are empowered and their voices strengthened. We are an international non-profit organization that is committed to providing women from marginalized communities with innovative media tools, such as video, radio and photography, to enable them to voice their own lives.
In 2014 a group of young girls from the slums around Lajpat Nagar, New Delhi were trained to use media in an incredible way to raise awareness of the issues they face in their daily lives. Over three months, they learned to use film, photography and radio in order to enable them to tell their stories. By the end of the training workshop they created a beautiful body of photography documenting their everyday lives, and made a radio show in which they bravely recount the violence they suffer at home at the hands of their fathers, brothers and mothers. In the final part of the workshop, the girls made a film about the critical issueof toilets: in their communities, up to 700 families share only 20 toilets. The film creatively shows how lack of access to a toilet can have a major effect on people’s lives, particularly young women’s. The girls shot the film in their own neighborhoods and involved each other as well as members of their communities throughout the entire process. Of course it wasn’t always easy as they would get harassed by boys, told off by the police etc. but keeping focused on their work, the girls managed to get all the necessary footage. […Lees verder]

‘Feminism is for everybody’ spoken word night

Friday, September 26th 2014, 19:00: ‘Feminism is for everybody’ spoken word night

We welcome you to our spoken word night about feminism! We adopt the definition of ‘feminist topics’ in the broadest way, so feel free to make your performance about anything YOU think is connected to feminism. And about your experience. To us, that can be anything from racism, transphobia, marxist feminism, gender roles, pay gap, rape culture, pride, reproductive rights, global warming, masculinity, transmisogyny, femmephobia, sex work, beauty standards, black feminism, white middle class feminism, body autonomy, feminism and class, men and feminism, overly academic feminism, fat positivity, inclusive spaces, media representation, safe spaces, body positivity, sex positivity, queer feminism, identity politics, Islamophobia, cat calling, hair, women’s and trans only spaces, communicating consent, and anything else you may have spotted through your experiences.

This event is part of a wider monthly series called ‘Feminism is for everybody,’ taking place in Joe’s Garage and other places in Amsterdam.

What to expect? A safe space for people to:

  • talk about feminism and its intersections with racism, classism, transhphobia, homophobia,
  • share experiences related to these forms of oppression
  • explore ways of expression, from casual chats to semi-structured discussions to workshops to poetry to performances to whatever comes up.

By the way, safe space means that if you behave like an asshole, you will be asked to leave.

If you wanna take part in this or you know someone who would be ideal for it, drop me a line at joeworkshops [at] squat [dot] net. You can also contact me for feedback, questions and anything else.

 

Solidarity is for white women. A discussion about feminism and intersectionality

we can all do it

Friday November 15th 2013. Solidarity is for white women. A discussion about feminism and intersectionality. 6:30pm

In her book ‘Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center,’ Bell Hooks gives one simple definition for feminism: ‘[it] is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression.’

While most feminists can agree on the first two: ending sexism and sexist exploitation, there has been a lot of debate about the different types of oppression which are not taken into consideration by some types of feminism. A lot of debate around the question Is solidarity just for white middle-class highly educated white women? […Lees verder]

“The enemy within – What can we do about internalized sexism?” Discussion

Friday October 25th 2013, Workshop: “The enemy within – What can we do about internalized sexism?” Discussion, 6:30 pm.

Many of us can spot sexism. It is at work, in the women’s lower wages. It is among our friends and family, when eyebrows are raised when hearing of a man taking paternity leave. It is on billboards, in ads for washing liquid only starring women. It is on TV, where transwomen are only depicted as sex workers or sexual predators. It is in schools, when boys who are perceived as ‘girly’ are bullied in order to ‘man up.’ It is on the streets, in the whistle and kissing sounds made when women perceived as attractive walk by.  It’s everywhere and we see it! […Lees verder]

Voices of Women Media Benefit/ Screening – a collection of migrant women’s stories

missing Monday October 14th 2013, Voices of Women Media Benefit, Volkseten Vegazulu, 7pm

Time for a new Voices of Women Media evening! We are a women’s organization that works with different communities of girls and women to encourage the understanding and making of media.

We are in the process of raising funds for our latest project. The project, called ‘Displaced,’ aims at providing young first or second-generation migrant women living in the Netherlands, Romania, Greece and Spain with video and photography tools to allow them to create and tell their own stories, as well as control their own images of representation.

We want to provide a safe and creative space for young migrant women to celebrate their identity and belonging and share them with the world using multimedia. Join us on Monday for a screening of selected videos done by our former participants – all migrant stories told my migrants themselves. And, of course, for a discussion. Vegan dinner will be served at 19:00, as usual. […Lees verder]