This saturday during the Hechtfest (festival of the Hechtviertel), we’re having a stall with cocktails (non-alcoholic and alcoholic) and lots of information at the az conni from 4pm. It’s a solidarity stall for our protest in Annaberg-Buchholz and we want to use the money to pay parts of the upcoming legal costs and lawyers’ fees. The police accuses a group of activists of having violated the assembly law by presenting a banner 50m away from the fundementalists’ march. We’re also looking forward to chatting with you!
Connection European Struggles
We are excited to share the call for the CES conference in Sweden, which is organized by Första Linjen. We will also contribute to it – our workshop will be announced soon.
Conference 18-20 september 2015
In 2014 the first Connecting European Struggles conference was held in Lund, Sweden and gathered participants from multiple European countries in order to discuss, connect and mobilize around crisis politics. Now we are calling for the 2015 conference, this time in Malmö, which we hope will build on the previous one and be bigger, better and broader.
For the 2015 conference we have decided to highlight gender issues and feminism in crisis, a perspective that has mostly been lacking in many radical analysis and perspectives on our current situation. Continue reading
Labour of Love? – Searching for Feminist Answers to the Crisis of Reproduction
When it grew up, capitalism fell in love with unequal gender relations. Their relationship is somehow complicated, but flexible, and all in all it seems to be a strong and long lasting one. Still today production and reproduction are organized along gender categories, the production of economic value has its precondition in mostly unwaged ‘female’ reproductive work. (Without childcare, cleaning, shopping, cooking, sex, emotional support a.o. reproducing labour force, it wouldn’t be there.)
In the last decades many european feminists have thought it would be a key step in emancipation for women* to go to work (in sense of waged jobs). But as we can see now, when this is partly realized, in most cases women* work in the low-paid care sector, an ‘extension’ of housework in commodified form. And still, whichever job they have, domestic work seems to remain their task.
The result is an unmanageable overload. Some economically better-situated women* hire other (often immigrant) women* to do ‘their’ housework or childcare, frequently low-paid and under bad conditions of never-ending working days and personal dependency.
In times of crisis and austerity politics, when ‘welfare’ is out back into private homes, the whole precarious situation aggravates – we can speak of a crisis of reproduction.
What could be strategies concerning gender and work? What kind of struggles are going on in the different countries, what are the experiences or outcomes? How can low-waged care workers, how can unwaged reproductive workers organize? What could ‘working conditions’, ‘union’ or ‘strike’ mean referring to private households? How to relate to the state, should we call for public services or/and organize them on our own? What is the role of feminism in all this?
Therefor it could be inspiring to look back to the 70s’ ‘Wages For Housework’ campaign. We will read and discuss the short text ‘Wages Against Housework’ by Silvia Federici and its implications for today. What has changed, what hasn’t? How to take this discussion and our practices further?
Thursday: 5pm, Megali Panagia
at the Beyond Europe Camp in Greece
The World. One household.
The so called ‘household summit‘, an international summit on domestic affairs, is taking place in Dessau.
On Saturday at 11am, we’re having a Reading Group on Siliva Federici’s „Wages Against Housework“.
Presentation of the Lili-Elbe-Archive for Inter, Trans, Queer History
A self-determined sense of life needs both the preservation of and reflection of one’s own history. The history of emancipatory intersexual and transgender as well as queer people and movements often remained and remains unmentioned or marginalised. In a pluralistic society, the culture of remembrance serves various interests and consequently becomes a dynamic field of negotiations and conflicts. An approach that focuses on those affected becomes more and more important.
The Lili Elbe Archive is the first of its kind to collect and archive documents about trans, inter and queer in detail. Niki Trauthwein introduces the archive’s work and invites us to discuss the relevance of a culture of remembrance.
Niki Trauthwein is chairwoman of the Lili Elbe Archive – research centre for inter-, trans- and queer history. More information (some in English)
As usual, the cafém welcomes you to come around from 2pm. We’ll have a small brunch (feel free to contribute something, as well) as well as many books and zines to browse.
date: Sunday, 19/07/2015
place: kosmotique, Martin-Luther-Str. 13, Dresden
cafém: 2-8pm
talk: 4pm
PussyPowerGrrrls performance cancelled
Unfortunalty, both performances of PussyPowerGrrrls (4th and 5th July at Projekttheater) were cancelled.
We and the collective PussyPowerGrrrls hope, that we can make them happen some time later.
cafém in June: waffles, coffee and a film
Our cafém in June is going to be quieter and cosier: we want to make waffles, drink coffee and chat. It starts later as usual, as well: you can meet us at the kosmotique between 4pm and 8pm. Apart from waffles, we’ll have the usual brunch, so feel free to bring some food along. Besides, we have a lot of new zines and everyone interested can watch Matthew Warchus’ film from 2014 at 5pm (English with subtitles). It is based on a true story and depicts a group of homosexual activist supporting the British miner’s strike in 1984.
cafém: 4-8pm
film: 6pm
@kosmotique // Martin-Luther-Str. 13 // Dresden
Facebook
Transnational Infotour
This Friday the “Transnational Mobilisation-Tour for freedom of movement, autonomy and good living instead of G7” will visit Dresden.
You will find the program here.
One of our members will take part at the input session on Jorge-Gomondai-Platz. She will give a short input about coloniality and gender. The input will be held in English.
Women in Exile meets Refugee Women* Café
The workshop will describe the history of Women in Exile and Friends. In a power point presentation and a short film clip from our raft tour last summer, this was joined by refugee women and supporters without refugee background nation wide.
We will tell a story that started from personal problems, which made us organize ourselves politically and friends supporting our political fight. After that, we will discuss together about general refugee issues, from a woman’s perspective such as isolation, exclusion, sexist and racist discrimination.
Women in Exile‘is an initiative of refugee women founded in Brandenburg in 2002 to fight for their rights. We decided to organize ourselves as a refugee women’s group because we have made the experience that refugee women are doubly discriminated against, not only by the racist and discriminative refugee laws in general, but also as women.
Women in Exile & Friends‘ was formed in 2011 by Women in Exile & activists in solidarity without refugee background. We focus on the abolition of Lagers, all laws governing the life of asylum seekers and migrants, and on the intersection of racism and sexism. In our group we experience that women can relate to each other, regardless of their differences in age, origin, religion, status, sexual orientation or other factors. And that together we can make an impact. We develop strategies to achieve political change and take our protest against the inhuman living conditions of refugee women to the public.
Wednesday May 13th
6.30pm // Martin Luther Str. 13 (kosmotique)
https://www.facebook.com/events/836986843016575/
cafém in May: Talk about §218 and Information on Annaberg-Buchholz
The option to choose abortion is part of the human rights. In Germany since 1871 the §218 considers abortion a crime. The following paragraphs state the conditions that have to be met to legally carry out an abortion. One of those conditions is the so called „Zwangsberatung“, an obligatory counselling. This is opposing (queer) feminist demands for bodily autonomy. In addition abortion is still a taboo in societey. Womyn*, who have had an abortion, are still being stygmatized. Also increasingly loud voices coming from fundamentally christian groups as well as right wing groups are calling for a prohibition of abortion in general. So we think it’s time to put the discussions about abortion back on (queer)feminist agendas, to discuss old answers and to pose new questions!
We are happy to announce that Katja Krolzik-Matthei will be our guest in the cafém on May 17th. She will talk about her recently published book „§218 – Feministische Perspektiven auf die Abtreibungsdebatte in Deutschland“ (Unrast Verlag). After her talk there will be the opportunity to discuss the upcoming protests against the „Schweigemarsch“ of the CDL on June 1st in Annaberg-Buchholz (more information on: schweigemarsch-stoppen.de) . You can also purchase bustickets and we can talk about actions that could take place against the event.
As usual the cafém will open at 2pm. There will be a small brunch buffet and we are happy if people contribute and bring along some stuff (like cake or salads, or whatever vegan) Just hang out with us, read some zines or have a cup of coffee!
The event is organized in cooperation with the Stura of the TU Dresden.
cafém: 2 – 8pm
talk: 4 – 5.30pm
Information on the protest in Annaberg-Buchholz: 6pm
Facebook