As you may or may not have already heard, Freedom Press is in some difficulty, both financial and in terms of volunteer labour – basically we need you.

As part of getting our act together to deal with these problems we are proposing to have a series of public meetings where you ask any questions you may have and discuss how we can drag the paper, the bookshop, the publishing house and the building out of trouble.

If you are part of a sympathetic group, we would like you to send a delegate or, if you won’t be meeting in time to discuss this letter before the 12th, an unofficial observer to help us in putting together our plan of action and suggest where support can be found. As an individual we would like you to come along and find out a bit more – you can even volunteer on the spot if you have the time!

The first of these meetings will be on Sunday, August 12th from 3pm at the London Action Resource Centre, 62 Fieldgate Street, London E1 1ES. We’ll be doing a short presentation and Q&A to hopefully answer any questions you might have about our situation, followed by discussion. Below is a tentative agenda:

Intro presentation [5-10 minutes]
On the building, what it does, why it’s important, how the various parts of Freedom interact, explaining the financial situation and talking about the newspaper.

Discussion for wider community [Half hour to an hour]
- Ideas: Proposals for financial and journalistic activity for the next year
- Schedule: Explaining a basic plan of what we’ll be needing over the course of the next year and when, including activity and finances
- Relaunch: Explaining a basic plan for content changes and discussing the October issue as a “relaunch” issue
- Action: Asking directly who is prepared to put time into helping specifically as editors and on distro/marketing/admin

The meeting will then formally end, with any volunteers being asked to stay for a further half hour, in which we’ll flesh out ideas, allocate roles, look at the requirements for next year and plan to meet them, and if we have the numbers, firm up an editorial meeting.

We look forward to seeing you on the 12th, but if you can’t make it we will be holding another meeting in September for non-attendees, and our main meeting where hopefully we will be able to unveil a full plan of action with your help, gain any support we still need – or announce our timeline for failure if everything’s gone hideously wrong – will be at the Anarchist Bookfair on October 27th.

Regards,

The Freedom Collective

This even has already happened but if you missed it you can check out the audio from the talk here.

London Action Resource Centre Sunday 10th June, 12-3pm and Thursday 14th June, Park Hotel, Lancaster, 7:30

This is a very special opportunity to discuss together the overlaps of personal practices, political organising and ideas of social justice and change! Joshua Stephens from the Institute for Anarchist Studies in the US will be visiting London for a short time. You are all warmly invited to come hear his informal talk followed by shared vegetarian lunch and group discussion.

If you can, please bring some food or drink to share with others. Donations toward travel and building expenses are also warmly welcome from those who feel good about giving them.

A Thai Buddhist teacher by the name of Ajahn Chah once wrote, “We human beings are constantly in combat, at war to escape the fact of being so limited. But instead of escaping, we continue to create more suffering, waging war with good, waging war with evil, waging war with what is small, waging war with what is big, waging war with what is short or long or right or wrong, courageously carrying on the battle.” At some level, we know this, intuitively. It’s reflected back to us by political and economic institutions on a daily basis — whether it’s the language (and execution) of xenophobia, racism, and coercive force, or the promise of buying our way out of discomfort, insecurity, and pain. Those of us committed to forms of social transformation anchored to direct democracy have cause to take this quite seriously, as we effectively aspire to an unmediated politics; a world directly reflective of who we are. “The State is a condition, a set of social relationships,” noted German anarchist
Gustav Landauer, “it is a mode of behavior.” Perhaps more ominously, French philosopher Michel Foucault famously declared, “Politics is war, continued by other means.”

While utterly necessary, the overthrow of intolerable institutions does not magically equip us to build better ones. While complementary, the two are distinct tasks. In this unprecedented moment of rapidly unfolding, global social upheaval — a moment that turns entirely on what we bring to it, and how we meet each other — can we afford modes of behavior reproductive of war? Is there, perhaps, something deeply political about forging a relationship with oneself that, itself, is an act of refusal; a refusal of the impulse to control, dominate; a refusal to be conducted by our anxieties and fears; an anti-authoritarian mode of being?

*Joshua Stephens* is a board member with the Institute for Anarchist Studies and has been active in anti-authoritarian movements for the last two decades, drawing from mentors as diverse and dispersed as the Ruckus Society and Murray Bookchin’s Institute for Social Ecology in the US, to Zapatistas in southern Mexico and the Popular Resistance Committees in Palestine. His work has spanned coordinating and training participants for direct action struggles around issues both local and international, co-teaching a course on classical and contemporary anarchist traditions at Georgetown University, and co-founding three workers cooperatives. He lives in Brooklyn, NY where he’s active with the Occupy movement, and has spent the last two months traveling and interviewing anarchists in the eastern Mediterranean.

Spring HacktionLab 2012 London Low Down

Come play with technology. We’ll learn and share how to make it work for us!

HacktionLabs are learning spaces to experiment and share knowledge. This event is organised by a network of people with a focus on using communications and information technology in the name of social justice.

The Spring 2012 HacktionLab in London is a weekend of workshops and discussions with an open invite to all.

The focus of the event is on Free Software, alternative media production and fighting to protect our digital freedoms. This event also features the launch of our new website, Tech Tools for Activism, so please do have a look at that: http://techtoolsforactivism.org

Friday Night 7pm onwards – Welcome night – Social and Film Screening

Come meet other participants at this free film screening and social event. Includes launch party for Tech Tools for Activism more info at – http://techtoolsforactivism.org

Dissident Island Radio will be hosting their 103rd show in the basement, and people will be welcome to chat, mingle and drink in a friendly, non-corporate environment.

Saturday 10am – 6pm – Workshops & Discussion

Saturday is aimed at all levels of computer knowledge. The agenda for the day will be set in the morning, based upon who is there and what people want to do. This is a day to embrace the most user friendly side of Free Software. No prior knowledge of tools is assumed and workshops are encouraged to be introductory, accessible and immediately practical to all.

You are welcome to get in touch to make sure the right resources are available if you want to deliver a session. See the contact section below.

Some sessions are pre-planned by the organisers. These include how to:

• Do live & encrypted communications.
• Replace twitter and facebook.
• Set up an anonymous blog.
• Create your own Internet radio station.

If you would like to add another please suggest it to the Hacktionlab mailing list.

Sunday 12pm – 6pm – Workshops, Discussions and Hack sessions

Sunday is aimed to build on any needs and other areas of interest identified on Saturday. There are many projects that have grown out of the HacktionLab network including online radio streaming (catalystradio.org), anonymous blogging (network23.org) & Free Software advocacy and training (techtoolsforactivism.org). We shall also be taking HacktionLab on the road again this year and have some bookings for workshops at festivals; we will discuss how to take this forward.

These are all projects that would welcome your input. Or, maybe you have a project that you would like to get feedback on? In any case, this day is a chance to sit down and discuss existing and potential projects in depth. You will have the option to get cracking on and start collectively working on them. There will be more of an idea of the exact shape of how Sunday will be the end of the Saturday.

MORE ABOUT HACKTIONLAB:

HacktionLab is UK tech-activist run project that aims to create regular convergence spaces where activists interested and/or working in the areas of alternative media, renewable energy, on-line video distribution, free software or any other form of activism that utilises technology can get together and plan how to better harness the technology (or not) to support grass roots social movements. HacktionLab is also working to create a roadshow of outreach workshops and discussion spaces that can be run alone or as part of a larger event.

HacktionLab runs the successful BarnCamp event a rural skills-sharing gathering.

HacktionLab has also helped to nuture and launch several projects, including Network 23, Tech Tools for Activism and Be The Media.