Voku benefit, child reunification costs for a lesbian refugee

Thursday 16 March 2023, Voku benefit, child reunification costs for a lesbian refugee. Food served from 7pm, no reservation.

The benefit dinner is for Harriet, a lesbian refugee, who came to the Netherlands in 2016. She was initially rejected out of asylum because they did not believe her sexuality, and was made irregularised. During her time without legal residency, in 2020 Harriet co-founded a self-led community for/by LGBTQ+ people in forced displacement based in Amsterdam, and grew it to over 130+ members from scratch. Harriet was finally recognised as a refugee a year ago.

Currently, Harriet is balancing between supporting her children living situation back in her country-of-origin, raising the necessary funds to ensure their reunion, and is also working on starting a self-led non-profit foundation to promote recognition of LGBTQ+ people in forced displacement.

As a result of Dutch Immigration officials (IND) attempts at restricting refugees’ right to family reunification, the procedure is taking longer. Harriet has been separated from her kids for almost seven years now, while at the same time supporting them from across the world the entire time.

With previous efforts from Harriet and previous communal fundraising, we have managed to raise enough to ensure their travel costs. However, the IND is now demanding a court document from her country to prove her guardianship with her foster children. We are raising funds with this dinner to cover the legal fees to prove her guardianship, and to make sure all of Harriet’s children don’t need to be separated from Harriet nor each other any longer.

We believe the right to family life and reunification belongs to everyone and should not be made conditional to the financial situation someone has. Feel welcome to join our efforts.

Volkseten Vegazulu is a people’s kitchens existing since the very beginning of Joe’s Garage, June 2005. Your donations are welcome. Food is vegan, no reservation. All benefits go to social & political struggles. Joe’s Garage is a space run by volunteers. Without a collective effort, without your active participation, we’re remaining closed. Get in touch in you feel like giving a hand. We’re always looking for cooks. Any help is welcome in the kitchen. Experience not required. If you want to know which days are still available, mail us.

ROSA benefit voku, music with Lasha, the lonely horseboy

Monday 6 March 2023 , ROSA benefit voku, Volkseten Vegazulu. Food served from 7pm, no reservation. Music from 9pm.

We are part of ROSA (Radical Organisation of Students in Amsterdam), a radical leftist student organization at UvA, and we are launching a week of action for international women’s day. We are setting up a donation drive for menstrual products and funds, with all proceeds going to ASKV. ASKV is an organization that provides legal assistance and social support to rejected refugees in the Netherlands. Undocumented refugees are often caught in an impossible position: being unable to return to their country of origin while lacking access to social security, education, and employment in the Netherlands. Undocumented refugees often end up on the margins of society, vulnerable to abuse and exploitation. The funds we collect with our benefit dinner will go directly to menstrual products.

After the food, around 9pm, music on the stage with Lasha Rukhadze, the lonely horseboy. Another visit of Lasha at Joe’s Garage, with his guitar, before heading back to Greece and Georgia.

Volkseten Vegazulu is a people’s kitchens existing since the very beginning of Joe’s Garage, June 2005. Your donations are welcome. Food is vegan, no reservation. All benefits go to social & political struggles. Joe’s Garage is a space run by volunteers. Without a collective effort, without your active participation, we’re remaining closed. Get in touch in you feel like giving a hand. We’re always looking for cooks. Any help is welcome in the kitchen. Experience not required. If you want to know which days are still available, mail us.

ROSA benefit

Thursday 23 February 2023 , ROSA benefit voku, Volkseten Vegazulu. Food served from 7pm, no reservation.

We are part of ROSA (Radical Organisation of Students in Amsterdam), a radical leftist student organization at UvA, and we are launching a week of action for international women’s day. We are setting up a donation drive for menstrual products and funds, with all proceeds going to ASKV. ASKV is an organization that provides legal assistance and social support to rejected refugees in the Netherlands. Undocumented refugees are often caught in an impossible position: being unable to return to their country of origin while lacking access to social security, education, and employment in the Netherlands. Undocumented refugees often end up on the margins of society, vulnerable to abuse and exploitation. The funds we collect with our benefit dinner will go directly to menstrual products.

Volkseten Vegazulu is a people’s kitchens existing since the very beginning of Joe’s Garage, June 2005. Your donations are welcome. Food is vegan, no reservation. All benefits go to social & political struggles. Joe’s Garage is a space run by volunteers. Without a collective effort, without your active participation, we’re remaining closed. Get in touch in you feel like giving a hand. We’re always looking for cooks. Any help is welcome in the kitchen. Experience not required. If you want to know which days are still available, mail us.

Benefit Voku for The Senegalese Association in Palermo

Monday 20 February 2023, Benefit Voku for The Senegalese Association in Palermo. The anti-authoritarian collective Ajo Negro is cooking, food served from 7pm, no reservation.

The Senegalese Association in Palermo is a social and cultural space run by the Senegalese community. It has a small community kitchen in Piazza Sette Fate, in the Ballarò neighbourhood, where the community regularly self-organise social dinners for friends and neighbours. This is one of the few self-organised, self-funded spaces in the city of Palermo, run by the migrant community and it has been existing for over 25 years. Also the Baye Fall movement is active in the space, organising cultural and political events around their anti-colonial struggles. During the months of Ramadan, instead of fasting, the Baye Fall crew cooks free meals for those fasting, so that they can break the fasting all together every day of the month.
The kitchen and the bathroom really need some renovation. As there is no institutional fundings supporting the space, they are asking friends and collectives around the world to support them with small donations to fix the space before the spring! Come to eat delicious vegan food!

Volkseten Vegazulu is a people’s kitchens existing since the very beginning of Joe’s Garage, June 2005. Your donations are welcome. Food is vegan, no reservation. All benefits go to social & political struggles. Joe’s Garage is a space run by volunteers. Without a collective effort, without your active participation, we’re remaining closed. Get in touch in you feel like giving a hand. We’re always looking for cooks. Any help is welcome in the kitchen. Experience not required. If you want to know which days are still available, mail us.

Benefit for No Border Kitchen Lesvos

Thursday 2nd and Monday 6th February 2023, Benefit for No Border Kitchen Lesvos. Food served from 7pm, no reservation.

Two benefit diners for shipping cost to supply No Border Kitchen with winter clothes to distribute to refugees stuck on Lesvos. The situation on Lesvos in the Greek archipelago is getting worse and worse. It has being criminalized to help people, so we still try to do what we can. For instance to send them winter clothes.
At the moment there are a lot of refuges trying to cross from Turkey to Lesvos. A lot of them are being pushed back by Frontex and the Hellenic coast guard. The prime minister of Greece Mitsotakis from the right-populist party Neo Demokratia, is denying it’s hapening and saying “these rumors are anti Greek propaganda made by the Turkish state. The push backs are very violent where the rubber boats full migrants are being pierced and the motor gets taken and then pushed back in Turkish territorial waters. The ones actually do make it and set foot on European land are then faced a lot of repression and by bureaucratic measures are forced to be stuck on Lesvos. To help these people is being more and more criminalized and you can now up to face two years in prison for saving someone from drawning, with the charge of human trafficking.
One of the things NBK (No Border Kitchen) is still able to do, is providing people with food and clothing. These benefit events are to raise money to ship the winter clothes to Lesvos. So people that are suck there don’t have to suffer by the cold as well.

STOP PUSH BACKS. FUCK FRONTEX. NO BORDERS

Volkseten Vegazulu is a people’s kitchens existing since the very beginning of Joe’s Garage, June 2005. Your donations are welcome. Food is vegan, no reservation. All benefits go to social & political struggles. Joe’s Garage is a space run by volunteers. Without a collective effort, without your active participation, we’re remaining closed. Get in touch in you feel like giving a hand. We’re always looking for cooks. Any help is welcome in the kitchen. Experience not required. If you want to know which days are still available, mail us.

Lebanese movie night: Capernaum (Nadine Labaki, 2018)

Sunday 29 January 2023, Lebanese movie night: Capernaum (Nadine Labaki, 2018), 126 minutes, in Arabic with English subtitles. Doors open at 20:00, film starts at 20:30.

Zain, a 12-year-old, living in the slums of Beirut ends up in the Roumieh Prison after a stabbing. Capernaum is told in flashback format, focusing on Zain’s life, including his encounter with an Ethiopian immigrant Rahil and her infant son Yonas, and leading up to his attempt to sue his parents for child neglect, “for giving him life in such a chaotic world. He’s actually not only suing his parents, he’s suing the whole system because his parents are also victims of that system — one that is failing on so many levels and that completely ends up excluding people” according Labaki.
Like her past movies, Capernaum features a cast of mostly nonprofessional actors, and tackles societal ills. Capernaum is fiction, but its portrayal of Lebanon’s rampant poverty and treatment of undocumented populations is very realistic. “Capernaum is a biblical village that was doomed by Jesus. Later on, the word started being used to signify chaos.”
“Some critics are very cynical of the film and say this is not really happening because they don’t see it around them… All I can tell them is: “Get real. Get out of your cafe where you’re writing your critique and go out into the world and see what’s happening around you.” What you see in the film is nothing compared to reality. We should wake up to how many children are suffering in the world. It’s unbearable suffering; I didn’t put rape scenes in the film, I didn’t put real abuse in the film — because I couldn’t.”

Film night at Joe’s Garage, cozy cinema! Free entrance. You want to screen a movie, let us know: joe [at] lists [dot] squat [dot] net

Benefit VoKu for Prosfygika & music by Rembetiko Against The Machine

Thursday 26 January 2023, Benefit Voku in solidarity with the squatted neighbourhood of Prosfygika with music performance by Rembetiko Against The Machine. Food served from 7pm, no reservation.

“Prosfygika”, or otherwise refugee homes, is a complex of residential flats built in 1930’s to house refugees resulting from the Asia Minor conflict between Greece and Turkey. The buildings are situated on a central avenue of Athens, surrounded on either side by the police HQ and the supreme court, in a heavily gentrified area . After years of abandonment, Prosfygika has been increasingly reclaiming its original purpose as many refugees, migrants, poor, greek and foreigner working class people have sought to resolve their need for housing by squatting the empty flats.
(Info-night and benefit for Prosfygika in 2014 at Joe’s Garage https://joesgarage.nl/archives/9989)

Rembetiko Against The Machine – A session with rebetiko tunes from the 1930’s till the early 1950’s. The period between the 1st and 2nd World Wars had a crucial role in the development of the Greek bouzouki players and the texture of the genre. We are gonna perform rebetiko tunes from each period. Looking forward to see you there and enjoy the night with this unique atmosphere!!!

Ilias Konstantinidis: guitar, vocals
Giannis Leloudas: bouzouki, vocals
Argyris Papadimitriou: bouzouki, baglamadaki, vocals

Statement Community of Squatted Prosfygika
ON THE ATTACK ON PROSFYGIKA OF L. ALEXANDRA

On the morning of 22/11, the forces of repression entered the 7th block of the squatted neighbourhood of the Prosfygika arresting comrade Kostas Dimalexis and then, in the afternoon of the same day, in the 6th block, arresting 79 of its defenders. The media once again did government propaganda.

There are more than 400 people living in the Prosfygika – The community of the squatted Prosfygika consists of about 150 adults and 30 children. We propose to organize society outside the state capitalism. We are the birthplace of the popular uprisings of December 2008 and the anti-monetary struggles of 2010-2012. We do not and have never believed in parliamentary fairy tales.
We promote the model of social self-management; we organize ourselves in direct democratic processes in our general assembly and in the regular and extraordinary procedures. We create and operate structures for living, education and and internal economy. At the same time we organize and participate in the struggles of the oppressed, because we fight until the collapse of this tyrannical and unjust regime. Until the whole world becomes one a community of equality, freedom, solidarity and social justice. […Lees verder]

Watch the med Alarm Phone benefit voku

Monday 23 January 2023, Watch the med Alarm Phone benefit voku. Food served from 7pm, no reservation.

8 Years of Struggle! Alarm Phone Anniversary Statement – Eight years ago, on 11 October 2014, we launched the Alarm Phone, a hotline for people in distress at sea. We chose that day as it was the anniversary of a disaster that had occurred on 11 October 2013, when Italian and Maltese authorities delayed the rescue of a sinking boat. Due to this delay, over 200 people died.

Over the past eight years, our shift teams are available 24/7 and have assisted over 5.000 boats in distress along the different maritime routes to Europe – the Mediterranean Sea, the Atlantic to the Canary Islands, and since 2022 also across the Channel, from France to the UK. Some of the 5.000 boats carried only five or ten people, most between 30 and 80 individuals, but also frequently more than 100 people, occasionally even over 500 people on the move…

October 2022
Alarm Phone https://alarmphone.org/

Volkseten Vegazulu is a people’s kitchens existing since the very beginning of Joe’s Garage, June 2005. Your donations are welcome. Food is vegan, no reservation. All benefits go to social & political struggles. Joe’s Garage is a space run by volunteers. Without a collective effort, without your active participation, we’re remaining closed. Get in touch in you feel like giving a hand. We’re always looking for cooks. Any help is welcome in the kitchen. Experience not required. If you want to know which days are still available, mail us.