Between 20th of November and 19th of December we invite you to the 3rd edition of Laolaltă. Below you can see the program for the next month, along withour manifesto.
All events are free of entrance. They will be held (with few exceptions) in Ⓐcasă space, 45 Someșului street.
PROGRAM
20-21.11 | 16:00-21:00 @ Casa Tranzit
Autonomous bookfair
Editura Pagini Libere & ZINE FEM
The autonomous bookfair is, first of all, a place to meet and discuss alternative and independent publications. Zines, magazines, brochures and books from various collectives, posters, postcards and other materials await you for two days in Cluj. We will also have presentations and discussions related to the various autonomous editorial projects. We want to encourage independent publishing initiatives and illustrate the need to develop critical alternatives to the dominant models, the need to open autonomous meeting and reflection spaces.
https://www.facebook.com/events/729557730881443/
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24.11 | 14:00-17:00 @ Mihai Viteazul sq.
Piața Autonomă Cluj #21
The Autonomous Market of Cluj is based on the “gift economy” principle. Goods and services are offered without an explicit agreement or expectations of a reward. Ideally, these exchanges already take place voluntarily in a community and they contribute to building up social relationships. Not everything is resumed to obtaining a social advantage or profit, as the majority of exchanges in a society work outside the market economy, and are based on goodwill and cooperation.
https://www.facebook.com/events/2412094872387260/
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28.11 | 19:00 // discussion
Gentrification. How it affects us and how we can resist it
Ⓐcasă
We live in Cluj, a city where everything is getting more and more expensive. Many of us can no longer afford to pay the rent, have a meal in the city or use the bus regularly. Gentrification also affects our daily lives in other ways than financially. Let’s get together and talk about this and see what we can do individually or together to fight against this phenomenon.
https://www.facebook.com/events/2421469128069701/
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29.11 | 19:00 // movie screening
Feminist Night. ‘The Punk Singer’
Unnamed queer group
Let’s watch together The Punk Singer, a documentary about Kathleen Hanna, singer of Bikini Kill, and the beginnings of riot grrrl. After the movie, we’ll be around for a beer and some feminist punk and queercore and all that.
https://www.facebook.com/events/416122175941047/
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30.11 | 18:00 // discussion
Self-organized autonomous spaces
Armonia (Timișoara) &Ⓐcasă
How do autonomous spaces work, why it’s important to create and maintain them and how can we support these initiatives.
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30.11 | 20:00 // party and concert
Anti-national day Party. Concert: Balerinul Underground [TM] and Capră [Cj]. Soli Armonia
Ⓐcasă
On the non-national day we invite you to an anti-nationalist party, to celebrate the things that make us different and, at the same time, bring us together, in solidarity. All donations from this event go to the Armonia space from Timișoara. Special guests are the corrosive rhymes and subversive beats of Balerinul Underground and Capră.
https://www.facebook.com/events/1240387576154473/
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3.12 | 19:00 // discussion
What is toxic masculinity and how does it affect dynamics in autonomous groups?
păpădia group [the dandelion group]
A critical discussion about masculinity initiated by persons socialized as men, about sexism and patriarchy, and their toxic effects on groups we participate in.
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5.12 | 19:00 // discussion
ClimaTalk – Climate urgency now!
Ⓐcasă
The climate catastrophe that we already start to live in our lives cannot be separated from capitalism and its logic of profit and constant accumulation, from imperialism, oppression and the exploitation of different peoples and regions, from militarism and the great war machine. Our political class does not understand the urgency, so we need direct action now!
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7.12 | 19:00 // movie screening and debate
Mutual help and self-organising at the workplace
Mahala comunity (București)
We will watch two documentaries that show different tactics for organising at the workplace. After the screening we will discuss about what tactics to use in full-on gentrifying Cluj. __________________________________________
8.12 | 17:00 // seed exchange and discussion
Gardening, a radical act in capitalism + seed exchange
Cultivă Orașul
What does it take to do urban gardening when it comes to motivation, organization, strategy in the context in which we live? What are our tools for action, where do we dig when there is no land available, what do we want to compost out of the capitalist system, which ideas and practices do we want to sow and what do we want to harvest at the end? Let’s talk about all these and share some seeds and experiences.
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10.12 | 19:30 //screening
Documentary: Gaza Fights for Freedom
LMA collective.
The documentary is about the Gaza Strip movement for national liberation during the protests organized in the Great March of Return, March 2018, when the Palestinian population claims its right to return to its homelands under Israeli occupation. The film documents the numerous abuses of the Israeli army, but also the iron will of the Palestinian people who continue their struggle for liberation despite the extremely disproportionate scale of the two forces.
https://www.facebook.com/events/1474743952682463/
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11.12 | 19:00 // discussion
Anti-militarization movement from an anarchist perspective
Ⓐcasă
We live in an increasingly militarized society. The police and the gendarmerie get increased power, the army has a huge budget used to purchase high performance weaponry, and it is all in the name of national security. At the same time, we see how the same institutions protect the state and capital interests every time when citizens revolt against them. Join and find out more about the present situation and the principles of the radical anti-militarization struggle.
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13.12 | 17:00 // presentation-workshop
Police Kills! (Feminist ACAB). Principles and practices for an anti-repression feminism
Veda Popovici (Macaz; Dysnomia)
The feminist ideas around us are heading towards more penal punishment for acts that arei dentified as being part of the patriarchal order. However, this way of reacting makes us accomplices of the systems of oppression. Recent events, like the tragedy of Alexandra Măceșanu, revealed a fundamental tension in the local feminist movement: do we fight for more punishment and surveillance, or for anti-police and anti-punishment practices that will abolish the penitentiary system? In this presentation-workshop, I will speak about the possibilities that we have for an anti-repression feminism, starting from de-escalation practices and transformative justice practiced in the anti-authoritarian collectives in our local context.
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13.12 | 19:00 // discussion
Violence and sexual abuse: support and action
Dysnomia collective (București)
We will talk about how we can build support networks and strategies for action against sexual violence in leftist groups, starting from real cases.
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14.12 | 17:00 // collective reading
When we are Laolaltă we are #Împreună
Cutra (București)
CUTRA is a feminist, pop, political, intersectional magazine and online platform. For Laolaltă, Ali, Nico & Lav, ¾ from the editorial collective, are preparing a collective reading workshop inspired by the second issue, launched on 29th of November in Bucharest.
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14.12 | 19:00 // discussion
Rhythms of resistance: tactical frivolity and street disturbance
Rhythms of Resistance (Chişinău & Bucureşti)
We invited RoR groups from Bucharest and Chișinău to discuss together about different alternative tactics through which we can reclaim street protests and transform them from harmless processions to ostentatious and troublesome actions.
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14.12 | 21.00 // concert
Concert Sofia Zadar, Bucuresti
Sofia Zadar’s concert is an acoustic spoken-word anarcha-feminist project, a political-magical imaginary and emotional-antipatriarchal expression.
https://www.facebook.com/sofiazadar/
https://soundcloud.com/sofiazadar
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19.12 | 19:00 // discussion
Laolaltă. How do we continue?
Ⓐcasă
After three editions, we invite you to an open discussion in which we look back to what we achieved and we try to find ways to keep alive the Laolaltă atmosphere in our struggles. More solidary, more critical, more active.
—> MANIFESTO<—
The third edition of Laolaltă takes place in a grim atmosphere. Ideas such as social justice, mutual help, or the acceptance of any kind of difference, are increasingly demonised, assigned to bankrupt political forces and associated with a poorly understood past. As nationalist forces seem to back down, economically, socially and culturally speaking we are engulfed by right-wing politics: austerity, individualism, repression and all kinds of discriminations. On top of it, we witness the growth of right-wing and extreme right groups internationally.
Our political hopes and vision are not and will never be connected to any political party. The pseudo-democratic farce of parliamentary and electoral fights does not represent us, and cannot speak for us or about us.
We are autonomous, self-organised and we fight, brought together by affinity, against multiple systems of oppression that attack us.
Our autonomy means we choose not to engage in an opposing struggle against the political system or to deliver a sterile critique of its institutions. To be autonomous is to destitute the system, to neutralize it and empty its institutions of any meaning. We do not want to win power, we want to leave it, overcome it, to become un-governable, to create our own utopia here and now.
That’s why we choose to self-organize. Without expecting or asking anything from anybody. Without patrons, bosses or hierarchies, without compromising with the forces that might use us for their own gain. Self-organizing does not mean we take upon ourselves the job of the state, that we just built parallel practices accepting its retreat from social assistance. On the contrary, through our every gesture we denounce the indifference and repression of the neoliberal state, which today spends more on weapons than on housing, education and health.
But the affinity between us and our groups makes us aim for other goals than to replace the bankrupt institutions and practices of the neoliberal state with our voluntary work. Affinity means to be aware of the power dynamics between us, to eliminate the hierarchies and authority from our practices, to focus on the process of our actions as much as on the action itself. Affinity means to love each other more than our enemies hate us.
Our actions are based on fighting against the systems of oppression that first of all hit us and our comrades, along with those with whom we stand in solidarity. These systems are not called “corruption” or “the red plague”. The oppression we, and the groups we are in solidarity with feel, is not an electoral discursive construct. It is something that we feel every day and that affects our life. Our fight with the systems of oppression is one of life and death.
We speak of gentrification, sexism, militarization, poverty, criminalization and climate change brought by capitalism.
Laolaltă, we are an archipelago of autonomous, self-organized affinity groups. We each have our own struggles, which intersect, but remain independent. We do not want to be united, to confederate, to have a common policy. We want to come together to reinforce our affinities, to know better our fights and plights, repression and victories.