Need advice about an issue with your boss or landlord? Want support organising in your workplace or community? Want to talk about anarchism or syndicalism? Want to meet members of the group and find out how SolFed works? Just want to say hi? Then come see us at one of these drop in sessions.
The next session will not be our usual third Thursday of the month, but will be on Monday, March 16th, 19:00 – 20:00, at the London Action Resource Centre (LARC), 62 Fieldgate Street, E1 1ES. We will be in the upstairs rooms. If you can, please bring a donation for the space.
We will be holding an open meeting on the 29th of March for hospitality workers who want to organise a union in their workplace. We will talk about ways people can organise at work that can actually get results, whether the problem is dodgy contracts, missed breaks, pay, or a wanker boss.
We believe that organised workers taking action into their own hands is what’s needed, not just having to leave your job, having to take it, or going through a big bureaucratic union or HR department. Come along to talk to organisers from SolFed and connect with local workers to discuss issues that face us at work and in the community and what we can do about it.
Although the meeting will be in Camden, London and that is the area we will be flyering in, if you work in a bar, cafe, restaurant, hotel or other hospitality venue and want to organise in your workplace, please get in contact with us wherever you are. We will also need people to help us flyer and otherwise spread the word, so please also get in contact if you want to help.
The meeting will be at 6pm, 29th of March, in the Castle Room at the Castlehaven Community Hub, 21 Castlehaven Road, London, NW1 8RU.
For our eighteenth reading group we will be reading Poll Tax Rebellion by Danny Burns. From the blurb:
This book tells the gripping inside story of the biggest mass movement in British history, which at its peak involved over 17 million people.
Using a combination of photos, text, and graphics, and drawing from the voices of activists and non-payers, it describes the everyday organisation of local anti-poll tax groups and chronicles the demonstrations and riots leading up to the battle of Trafalgar Square. It shows how the courts were blocked, the bailiffs resisted, and the Poll Tax destroyed. The final chapter draws from our experience to present a radically new vision of change from below.
A free version of Poll Tax Rebellion can be found at Libcom here and our friends at Freedom Press here have offered a 10% discount on physical copies for the reading group. Just quote “London SolFed Reading Group” or pop into Freedom for your general radical book buying needs.
The reading group will be meeting on Tuesday the 24th of February, 19:00, at Freedom Bookshop, 84b Whitechapel High St, London E1 7QX. You are welcome to come and join in the discussion even if you have not finished the reading.
Need advice about an issue with your boss or landlord? Want support organising in your workplace or community? Want to talk about anarchism or syndicalism? Want to meet members of the group and find out how SolFed works? Just want to say hi? Then come see us at one of these drop in sessions.
The next session will be on Thursday, February 19th, 19:00 – 20:00, at the London Action Resource Centre (LARC), 62 Fieldgate Street, E1 1ES. We will be in the upstairs rooms. If you can, please bring a donation for the space.
For our seventeenth reading group we will finish reading Abolitionist Voices, a compilation edited by David Gordon Scott. From the blurb:
Why have so many radical thinkers advocated for the abolition of prisons and punishment? And why have their ideas been so difficult to popularize or garner the political will for change? This book outlines several different approaches to penal abolitionism and showcases their calls for the ending of legal coercion, domination, and repression.
This exciting and innovative edited collection shows how abolitionist ideas have continued topicality and relevance in the present day and how they can collectively help with devising new ways of thinking about social problems, as well as suggesting alternatives to existing penal policies, practices and institutions.
This month we will be finishing the book, reading Part III onward.
We normally link to a free online version of what we are reading, but this month we could not find one. If you would like to join the reading group but can no afford to buy Abolitionist Voices, please send us an email and we will try and get something sorted for you. Our friends at Freedom Press here kindly offer the space for our use, visit them for radical books, news, and events.
The reading group will be meeting on Tuesday the 27th of January, 19:00, at Freedom Bookshop, 84b Whitechapel High St, London E1 7QX. You are welcome to come and join in the discussion even if you have not finished the reading.
Need advice about an issue with your boss or landlord? Want support organising in your workplace or community? Want to talk about anarchism or syndicalism? Want to meet members of the group and find out how SolFed works? Just want to say hi? Then come see us at one of these drop in sessions.
The next session will be on Thursday, January 15th, 19:00 – 20:00, at the London Action Resource Centre (LARC), 62 Fieldgate Street, E1 1ES. We will be in the upstairs rooms. If you can, please bring a donation for the space.
Unfortunately we had to cancel this event. Hopefully we will hold it later in the month. Apologies for late announcement.
Our first discussion group on accountability and abolition was a success. We discussed the various public examples of “cancellation”, our own personal experiences with various forms of abuse, processes, why abusive behavior is so widespread within our society, and how individuals, radical spaces, organisations and individuals have struggled with holding people to account without either drifting into abuse apologetics on the one hand or recreating authoritarian structures of judgement and punishment on the other hand.
However, the session wrapped up with a lot more left to be said. What are the alternatives to what we do now? What are the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches? How can we reconcile the very different and sometimes contradictory experiences we have all had into a cohesive understanding of the problems? So we are holding a second discussion meeting on the topic.
Join us on the 5th of January at 7pm on the top floor space of the London Action Resource Centre (LARC), 62 Fieldgate Street, Whitechapel, E1 1ES. Please bring a donation for the space if you can, as LARC is run entirely off of the the donations of its users.
There is no reading group this month, as it would fall to close to Christmas. However, people involved in the reading group wanted to further discuss some of the topics that came up from our reading of What About the Rapists and Abolitionist Voices. So, we will be running a special discussion meeting on what accountability means in radical spaces and movements, and how this fits into the anarchist stance of prison abolition. This may be a one off meeting, or the first of many, depending on what those involved want to do.
While there is no expected reading for this discussion group, some of the people involved have suggested reading We Will Not Cancel Us by Adrienne Maree Brown as a shared point of reference for the discussion.
Join us on Monday the 15th of December at 7pm on the top floor space of the London Action Resource Centre (LARC), 62 Fieldgate Street, Whitechapel, E1 1ES. Please bring a donation for the space if you can, as LARC is run entirely off of the the donations of its users.
Need advice about an issue with your boss or landlord? Want support organising in your workplace or community? Want to talk about anarchism or syndicalism? Want to meet members of the group and find out how SolFed works? Just want to say hi? Then come see us at one of these drop in sessions.
The next session will be on Thursday, December 18th, 19:00 – 20:00, at the London Action Resource Centre (LARC), 62 Fieldgate Street, E1 1ES. We will be in the upstairs rooms. If you can, please bring a donation for the space.
