< img src ="https://joesgarage.nl/wp-content/uploads/joe2/2019/11/3rdAnniversaryTheBarricadeUtrecht.jpg 566w, https://joesgarage.nl/wp-content/uploads/joe2/2019/11/3rdAnniversaryTheBarricadeUtrecht-212x300.jpg 212w, https://joesgarage.nl/wp-content/uploads/joe2/2019/11/3rdAnniversaryTheBarricadeUtrecht-400x565.jpg 400w"> A promising event arranged by The Barricade taking place at ACU, Voorstraat 71 in Utrecht on Sunday 1st December. The Barrier is a “volunteer-run cumulative inspired by raccoons and anarchism“, hosting a weekly sunday occasion at ACU. https://thebarricade.noblogs.org/
The Barrier will be commemorating 3 years anniversary, Pursuing Autonomy! and has already announced a full day of events, from vegan brunch to music, exhibition, a book presentation “The Barricade ABC” and numerous workshops, discussions such as “Reflection Tables on People’s Kitchens and Political Struggle”, “DO IT YOURSELF: A cumulative toolbox versus the supermarkets”, “Social Centers as basis for Counter-power”.
Reflection Tables on People’s Kitchen areas and Political Battle https://squ.at/r/7gxy
A big part of what we have actually been doing for the past years, is hosting the anti-food waste supper on Sunday evening. For us, supplying people with a meal made from trash totally free or contribution is a political declaration to deal with the issue of food waste and the importance of cumulative cooking and eating. We are not the only ones doing this, there are a lot of VoKus around in the Netherlands who arrange meals or occasions out of the very same political concepts. We would for that reason like to host reflection tables in the afternoon throughout Barriversary, to share experiences and begin a reflection about the value of food and collective cooking/eating.
The topics for the 3 tables we’re going to host are these:
1. The politcs of food: How can we use our cooking areas and the food we prepare with to produce alter?
2. Getting away the service characteristics: What to do when people see you as a service and not as a cumulative effort?
The reflection tables are open to anyone to sign up with but they generally adress people currently active in VoKus.
If you are preparing to join, send us an email at barricade [at] riseup [dot] net
Intro texts to the reflection tables:
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1. Politics of food: How can we utilize our cooking areas and the food we prepare with to bring forth alter?
We wish to reveal a strong and firm critique at the existing standardized and industrialized food production system, hazardous for everyone’s health and even worse for the communities residing in the areas where this food is produced. This terrible food quality is due to the usage of chemicals and techniques based exclusively on principles of cost reduction and amount maximization. This is also a system that squanders more than one third of what is produced. Completely fine vegetables and fruits fill bins everywhere around the city everyday.
However, we consider necessary conquering a basic review of the food production system, specifically in these years where the international capitalist paradigma redefines itself around apparently ecologist instances. In the new “green economy” food gets a fundamental role, and labels like “organic” or “local” or “anti-foodwaste” are nowadays seen as financially valuable even from those businesses and federal governments that in the past and even now significantly contribute to destruction of lands. And for this factor then, when it comes to food-waste we have actually been seeing a great deal of company models (ads in supermarkets, expensive anti-foodwaste restaurants, anti-foodwaste apps …) turning up trying to generate income out of food-waste pretending to solve the problem.Moreover, not even
the so called”organic food “is unsusceptible to heavy contradictions and power dynamics enhancing the couple of and typical suspects. The accreditation system is putting the organic production in the exactly same characteristics of the normal food industry; this review, limited as it is to the healthiness of the product, is nothing more than the rhetoric of (presumed) “quality food”– that naturally only extremely few “lucky” ones can pay for, on the basis of the usual equation (low income: bad food = abundant people: certified organic food)– if it does not included a company and essential refusal of any logics of exploitation, reasonings that all these discourses on green capitalism do of course never ever question.We do believe that any meaningful discourse on food must begin with this: the commercial food system and its production and distribution are completely centered on the wildest exploitation: of land, of water, of animals and of human labour. Making it greener will not alter the dynamics.
In lots of VoKus this review is manifested in various ways, even if partly. We ourselves dumpster-dive every week, getting fruits and veggies, still completely fine to consume, actually out of the trash bins. This allows us to expose foodwaste, one of the most visible contradictions of this food production system (and its supposed efficiency) and at the exact same time to serve a free dinner with what is thought about to be waste. While, by reclaiming this waste, we firmly reject the large-scale retail trade and all the exploitation it straight or indirectly perpetuates, we do acknowledge that this is not building total alternatives to this food production system.Other VoKus do
the same thing we do, others use local items from small-scale farmers, others are buying the majority of their food from the supermarkets.It is also required to confront the contradiction developing in between the assistance that the food bought in supermarkets gives to the ipercapitalistic economy, thus the extreme power of the large scale distribution imposing woldwide new kinds of slavery (from fields in the Global South to the distribution centers of Jumbo or Albert Heijn)and the concepts and experiences distributing in the areas where our kitchen areas are operating, and where, despite whatever, we still do discover ourselves buying, from time to time, from the grocery stores. For these factors, we consider required to reflect together on methods to collectively refuse the existing and construct new possible alternatives beginning also from food.All this indicates in our viewpoint questioning what it suggests politically to choose which products to use in the kitchen, that is, considering how doing grocery is a political act, how all these options can have an effect when they are situated inside collective processes, in this case, to build a network of relations in between manufacturers and consumers/cooks at a local level, producing communities of uniformity based not only on financial relations but on sharing political goals, and making it possible, genuine, to give everybody access to a good meal.We would like to go over on this and other ideas and try to believe together on methods which we can start developing alternatives through food. ==== === ===== ===== === === == ===== ======== == ==== =2. Escaping the service characteristics: What to do when people see you as a service and not as a cumulative effort?”All the restaurants
that have had flowery write-ups in the newspaper, that serve just natural, wheatfree, vegan food, that cultivate a hip atmosphere with suggestive illustrations, still have cooks, waiters and dishwashing machines who are stressed out, depressed, bored and searching for something else.”(Eliminate all Dining establishments)The modern-day city has plenty of dining establishments and other locations where food, among the main aspects of social reproduction, gets commodified and for that reason inserted into capitalist characteristics that are
both, eploitative towards the workers, and unique towards who can get access to this food. Our Vokus are efforts to get the meal and its production out of these dynamics and make area for their collectivisation. We see this as a step to gain back some autonomy on our lives.
We wish to run them without cooks, waitress, cleaners and visitors, however with the partecipation of individuals that all can in a different way contribute.To achieve this, the involvement of everyone in the area is essential. Nevertheless, residing in the society we reside in, this participation is not something that comes automatic, be that because of absence of time and energy, or because we forgot what cumulative self-management is and ended up being unaccostumed to putting it
into practice. The sensation of being perceived as a service, a basic free meal, often pops up, delegitimizing the conflictual role we want to assume inside the city. While we do not wish to criminalize individuals that for one night are coming for a free meal and nothing more, we deem it necesessary to reflect together and find practices to not lose this conflictuality and push forward an idea of collective self-management The Social Center as basis for Counter-power https://squ.at/r/7hu6 Economic insecurity, over-individualisation, consistent stress and anxieties, fear. Everywhere you look, capitalist democracy remains in trouble, very couple of individuals think that political leaders are actually going to fix their problems, and still conditions worsen and get worse. In this context, the necessity of doing things differently arise, the requirement of developing a cumulative area where we can practice uniformity with each other, a space where we can attempt, autonomously, to get back control over our lives and over what surrounds us. This space is what a Social Center should be: a basis for Counter-power and solidarity in the city. In our context, however, squats and social centers frequently occur to not be very gotten in touch with the area, and therefore all individuals living there, but are more areas for the extreme scene only, if not simply areas for concerts and parties of a specific subculture
that tends to be commodified a growing number of. We therefore feel the urge to begin a discussion on this and to confront
ourselves with examples of social centers more connected with a particular kind of popular struggle, positioned in various contexts. For these reasons, we welcomed the Ex-OPG Je So’Pazzo from Naples and the Kiezkommune from Berlin to come and discuss their experiences and reflect on these topics with us.
During this panel, beside seeing the examples of how pursuing counter-power and practicing uniformity can appear like, we are going to deal with various thematics. What are the factors that gave a particular “subculturalisation “of social centers? In which methods do practices of uniformity and mutual help vary from assistentialism? What are the conditions that can give acquiring more or
less autonomy from the state?
