The next GM will be on Monday 29th January at 7pm.

On the agenda so far is

The art and resources room
Roof repairs / fundraising
The name change
New leaflet
New building sign

Legal Observer Training Workshop.

Sunday 21st Jan. 10.30-4.30pm.

This workshop is free but bring (vegan) lunch to share.

Legal Observers are volunteers who are part of an organised team gathering information on protests. Their presence is reassuring to protesters and can protect people from unlawful or repressive policing. You don’t need a special legal background, but you need to be able to take fast, accurate notes, be able to communicate well with others, and to stay calm under stress.

Green and Black Cross (GBC) provide training and support for Legal Observers at hundreds of demonstrations every year, their website is an amazing resource: https://greenandblackcross.org/

Please publicise:

https://www.facebook.com/events/188045648446272/

OK I’m interested, what do I do now? To enrol send a short summary of your interest in Legal Observing to:

bristol-legal-observer-network@aktivix.org

Join a group of Bristol based activists for a food and discussion evening around community accountability in anarchist scenes. We all have experiences of conflict within our groups, often leading to burnout, stress, anxiety, worries and frustrations. Our campaigns lose energy and become derailed, friends fall out, people are excluded from spaces and some groups implode altogether.

We invite you to discuss:

What are the solutions? How can communities pull together to show more responsibility/accountability? What skills are needed? Can restorative approaches be used successfully? How can we support our groups to remain strong and focussed during times of conflict?

If there is enough interest we’re hoping to organise training around community building, conflict resolution and mediation skills for community organisers and activists within Bristol. So please invite anyone you think may be interested!

Food 6:30pm and chat from 7-8pm.

Plenty of others have written about events at the 2017 London anarchist bookfair and the disagreements since. We recognise that some of the harm caused is ongoing, which is why we wanted to respond even though some time has passed.

While it is uncomfortable, and often deeply painful, to find ourselves disagreeing with people we’ve regarded as friends and comrades, trans people have been facing discomfort and hostility in our movements for a lot longer. Ignoring this conflict is not an option.

We don’t think transphobia should be tolerated in anarchist spaces and events.

As underlying attitudes come to the surface, it’s become clear that some people in our movements think such bigotry should be given credibility (sometimes on the basis of ‘free speech’) as one viewpoint among many, to be debated calmly as if it were not something doing real damage to real human beings.

We disagree. To us, ideas which try to turn disempowered groups against one another should be opposed vigorously with all the tools available to us, including, where appropriate, physical force and no-platforming.

We’re also concerned at yet another case of someone’s social capital within the movement being used to excuse their behaviour. We all need to find ways to challenge the gaps in each others’ awareness, not ignore them – and to do this in a way that doesn’t pretend we are perfect ourselves.

Some have suggested that doing so is divisive, that we should focus on state or institutional oppressions; this ignores the fact that these divisions are already there, but some of us have the luxury of being oblivious to them.

In the long run, we want to build a feminism which attacks the common enemy instead of reinforcing oppression.

http://www.welcometoleithfilm.com/

In relation to the current upsurge in fascism and far right movements we feel it’s important to raise awareness about where fascism can head if left unchecked.

Welcome to Leith is a feature documentary from 2015 that chronicles the attempted takeover of a small town in North Dakota by notorious white supremacist Craig Cobb.

“As his behaviour becomes more threatening tensions soar, with residents desperately looking for ways to expel their unwanted neighbour.”

A talk and discussion with Uri Gordon, author of “Anarchy Alive” and “Dark Tidings”.

5pm, Saturday 25th November at Kebele.

https://libcom.org/files/anarchy_alive.pdf

http://autonomies.org/pt/2014/07/the-dark-tidings-of-uri-gordon/

Uri Gordon is an Israeli anarchist theorist and activist. He is a lecturer at the University of Nottingham, and formerly at Loughborough University in the UK and the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies in Ketura, Israel. One of several anarchist theorists to come of age during the anti-globalization movement at the turn of the 21st century, he has worked with anarchist and radical movements including Indymedia, Peoples’ Global Action, and Anarchists Against the Wall. Active primarily in Britain and his native Israel, Gordon has participated in protests at international summits across Europe, and played a part in the 2011 Israeli social justice protests.

http://news.infoshop.org/opinion/anarchism-and-nationalism-uri-gordon