On solidarities and mutual aid
Monday, November 27th, 6pm
WEG Spreefeld, Wilhelmine-Gemberg-Weg 14, 10179 Berlin
The event will be held in English spoken language with translation in German sign language and German spoken language.
“Nothing will work unless you do.”
—Maya Angelou
Capitalism needs labor to survive. Between exploitative wage labor, the lack of labour rights and protections, stigmatisation and the accumulation of wealth for a few: labour affects more than making money. Whether labour is stigmatised, unprotected, or exploitative, the labour we do (or labour we are not allowed to do) dictates what entitlements, skills, and means we have to exist in society. And if our labour is precarious or in crisis, so are we.
Collective practices, such as Mutual Aid, demonstrate alternative understandings of labor, solidarities, and mutual interconnectedness. They translate the notion of a solidarities into daily and self-engaging practices. Counter-practices are created that confront the oppressive system and its their consequences.
But how do we understand our lives and each other beyond labour, even though capitalism forces us to understand ourselves through our labour and its context? What understanding of ourselves and our lived reality do we need to approach from? How do solidarity practices and labor resistance need to take place to avoid reproduction? How do our lived realities influence this? To what extent do labour-related identity markers facilitate or impede these practices? And how do we deal with the consequences?
In the framework of this year’s topic labour of our project #CommunitiesSolidarischDenken (Thinking of communities in solidarity) we invite you to join us on November 27th, 6pm at WEG Spreefeld Berlin, Wilhelmine-Gemberg-Weg 14, 10179 Berlin.
In this conversation we want to discuss and analyse together how collective solidarities interact with each other to navigate the current reality while realising a new one.
Our speakers:
Asmara Habtezion is an activist, musician and community organizer from Hamburg, founder of the MSO “Asmaraʼs World” with the desire to actively fight discrimination within authorities and to accompany people in their arrival process, to support communities in order to obtain the right to stay and experiences of racism in Germany.
Jihad Yagoubi is a PhD candidate at the Freie Universität Berlin, finalising their doctoral thesis on the topic of “Gender, ethnic and racial identities, and land justice in Morocco”. Jihad’s quest for decolonial praxis blurs the lines between their academic research and community organizing. As an Amazigh Black researcher born and raised in Morocco, Jihad’s academic and activist interests revolve around Black Feminist Thought and Black Internationalism, Feminist Political Ecology, or global conversations around Transformative Justice from the perspectives of marginalized communities. Besides their doctoral thesis, they work towards creating and consolidating Safer Spaces for Queer and racialised (BIPoC) communities
Newroz Çelik is a Kurdish non-binary trans masculine activist who has been involved in different queer and/or trans of color communities in the past 20 years and has some thoughts on certain things. They talk, write, act, dance and laugh a lot.
Thủy-Tiên Nguyễn is queer, trans non-binary and việt-diasporic, works as a performer, dance theatre maker, choreographer, author, political educator and community organizer. They deal with topics of anti-racism, gender, classism, queerness, diaspora pain, joy & dreams, collective healing and empowerment, and combine these in writing, bodywork, art and the co-creation of community spaces. They also explore what an approach to more sustainable community work can look like in practice and what this has to do with transformative justice and relationship work. Thủy-Tiên is part of the art and empowerment collective Spicy Ginkgo Collective (@spicyginkgo.collective) and part of the consulting collective DisCheck (@discheck_).
Information about registration:
Register via written, video or audio at contact@xartsplitta.net. Due to the theme, queer people who identify as Black, Indigenous or People of Color will be given priority in registration.
Please do answer the following questions when you register:
- How do you situate/position yourself?
- In what ways have you engaged with the topic so far?
- Do you have needs or require assistance to participate (e.g. childcare or language assistance, etc.)?
Please come to the event tested and stay home if you are symptomatic.
The event takes place within the framework of the LADS funded project #CommunitiesSolidarischDenken.