Events – North London Solidarity Federation

February Drop in Session

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 19^th, 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.

Accountability and Abolition Discussion Group 02 Canceled

Unfortunately we had to cancel this event. Hopefully we will hold it later in the month. Apologies for late announcement.

Reading Group 17 – Abolitionist Voices Part Two

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.

January Drop in Session

The next session will be on Thursday, January 15^th, 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.

Accountability and Abolition Discussion Group 02

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.

Discussion Group – Accountability and Abolition

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.

December Drop in Session

The next session will be on Thursday, December 18^th, 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.

November Drop in Session

The next session will be on Thursday, November 20^th, 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.

Reading Group 16 – Abolitionist Voices

For our sixteenth reading group we will be 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.

We will be reading Abolitionist Voices over two sessions. This month we will be reading Part I and Part II.

The reading group will be meeting on Tuesday the 25th of November, 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.

Learning from the 1938 Stepney Rent Strikes – 29th October

A member of SolFed and the London Renters Union will be giving a talk on a little known case of working class direct action; the Stepney rent strikes.

The rent strikes organised by Stepney Tenants Defence League in the thirties saw barricades raised at blocks of flats and stopped evictions, got rents lowered and forced landlords to do repairs. What can we learn today from this exemplary movement? Come and hear tales of flour bombs and rolling pins and discuss the lessons of the rent strike for our movement today.

The talk will take place on Wednesday the 29th of October, at Pelican House, 144 Cambridge Heath Road E1 5QJ, from 7pm to 9pm.