Our talks and visual arts in Ashville created a platform for sharing ideas and help each other go together deeper in understanding of social war around the planet and our role in the global social struggles.
The center of our open public talks, dialogues, cultural work, meetings, networking and community assemblies was Firestorm, an anarchist collective work café, bookshop and venue for events decorated with an amazing poster exhibition of Just Seeds / Celebrate People’s History. Firestorm is a wonderful concept created by Anarchists that refuse to work in the commercial market and prefer creating a legal café / restaurant / bookshop business company together… In this project they can accommodate their dreams as also offer to the society of their town the live example of horizontal non exploitative work, the atmosphere of mutual help, social care and welcoming of all different ages, cultural and economical backgrounds in a place of social struggle and arising of critical mind… The Firestorm can be another wonderful example for all possible ways people can invent and put in try to escape the totalitarianism of United States of America regime, the monopoly of the elite on the creation of social content and the complete lack of public, social places for the creation of honest, open public social life .
In the first day of our tour in Asheville the influential young anarchist writer Peter Gelderloos did a wonderful open public lecture about Global Warming…Void Optical Art Laboratory created a mystic atmosphere with environmental abstract visual arts. It was a talk, a public dialogue and a multi media show for the destruction of earth, the struggle against the elite and all the possible revolutionary solutions on the problem of destruction of earth by capitalism and representative democracy. You can find some of the ideas of Peter Gelderloos shared with us in his lecture here: http://voidmirror.blogspot.com/2010/02/more-wood-for-fire-capitalist-solutions.html
Meetings with environmental activists and people from local struggles took place after the end of the talk…
You can find some of their ideas and struggles here: http://www.risingtidenorthamerica.org/wordpress/category/asheville-rising-tide/
here: http://www.mountainjusticesummer.org/
here: http://warresistersleagueasheville.wordpress.com/
as also the experimental emancipatory school Sudbury Katuah School:
The second day of our events in Asheville was a day dedicated to the Greek insurrection. Under a huge cinema screen for projecting hundreds of photos from December 2008 & 2009 revolt people had the opportunity speaking with Greek comrades about all possible questions and misunderstandings about the strategies and methodologies of social struggle in Greece for more than 2 and a half hours. We hope that the comrades of Asheville benefit from our meeting and they will find all possible ways to expand the counter-information and create new assemblies that will bring people from all ages and all social backgrounds to their lines.
The important thing for us is to imagine and construct new forms of struggle depending on the social context. But we have also always be able to resist to the repression and the limitations that our social background can enforce to us. We should not forget the reasons, the causes of our struggles and the causes that make us select that path of fight. We need to be able focus on the preparation and the process of eliminating capitalism even if we are taking part in a small assembly of an anarchist bookshop, in a meeting of anarchist workers, in a local struggle of the people of our city.
A short introduction about the social struggle in Greece and the December 2008 revolts :
http://voidnetwork.blogspot.com/2009/01/how-to-organize-inssurectionquestions.html
Next step New Orleans…
