Six months ago we opened the Base with some modest and some ambitious intentions. We wanted to create a venue where young people and the broader populace can engage with anarchist and revolutionary ideas and organizing models in a respectful and open way. We also wanted to create a model and platform where revolutionary modes of organizing can spread beyond the space and interact with the city/country/world in new ways.

Every week now we have talks, several workshops, film screenings, organizing projects and are developing one of the best revolutionary libraries in the city.

Everything we do here is free and built on mutual aid and our firm belief in the projects that are developing.

So now at this point we’re asking for supporters, politicos, occupiers, comrades, and friends who have been using the space, growing with us, and interested in liberatory politics to contribute to our recurring donation drive and become sustainers of the Base.

We are specifically looking for 25 people to donate $20 a month. And secondly, 50 people to donate $10 a month. That will give us $1000 a month and will be adequate for practically the entirety of the spaces 3 year lease.

So for the next month, we’re asking for your help with a small recurring donation and help sharing this fundraiser on social media outlets and other avenues.

During this fundraiser month, please join us for talks, parties, and an open house to celebrate what’s happened so far and glancing toward the future of what may be possible.

Thanks friends! In solidarity we’ll keeping marching until we reach a borderless, stateless world where the beauty of cooperation and solidarity prevail.

http://thebasebk.org/donations

‘Future Suspended’ is a documentary of the research project www.crisis-scape.net. It is a film on Athens and crisis, starting from the days of the 2004 Olympics to the current authoritarian complex, the film explains how the capitalist crisis was manufactured in the city of Athens in order to create the conditions of exception in Greece. Q&A will follow.

It is being screened for the first time this week in 6 countries.

* Filmed and edited by Ross Domoney
Co-edited and script by Jaya Klara Brekke
* Music composed, performed and recorded by Giorgos Triantafyllou
* Assistant editing by Antonis Vradis, Christos Filippidis and Dimitris Dalakoglou
* Research by Christos Filippidis, Dimitris Dalakoglou and Antonis Vradis
* Produced by Ross Domoney, Jaya Klara Brek

Saturday, February 15, 7 pm
The Base
1302 Myrtle Ave
Central AVe M
Dekalb L

The next Introduction to Anarchism reading series is on Friday, February 14th at 6 pm. We’re going to read some texts about illegalist anarchism!

Doug Imrie, “Illegalists”

http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/doug-imrie-the-illegalists

Emile Armand, “Is the Illegalist Anarchist our Comrade”

http://www.marxists.org/archive/armand/1911/illegalism.htm

Secondary reading:

If you have time this is one of the best illegalists texts out there about the Bonnot Gang.

https://libcom.org/files/Richard%20Parry%20-%20The%20Bonnot%20Gang.pdf

Living in New York City right now we all have a direct experience of the so-called gentrification process. While questions swirl in radical communities about individual participation in the process, forces of capital, civic policy, and private development plow on toward further rent hikes, displacement, and entrenched policing strategies.

This group will seek to analyze these forces and their application in specific detail by reading the book ‘The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City’ by Neil Smith. This book will cover historical instances such as the battle for the Lower East Side and Harlem, and look at historical shifts that have created the moment we are working with.

For each meeting we will read one chapter (about 30 pages) and look at a news article about current development in areas like Crown Heights and Bushwick. We will use the academic investigations and theoretical postulations of Smith’s book as a launching pad to understand the current situation and potentially brainstorm how to counter these capitalistic forces and the propaganda machines that back them up.

Link to the book:

http://grr.aaaaarg.org/txt/image/detail.php?id=51c5856f6c3a0e090ce40500

or try:

http://www.4shared.com/office/4X7FiAdHce/the-new-urban-frontier-neil-sm.html

Thursday, February 13th, 7 pm
The Base
1302 Myrtle Ave
Central Ave M Stop
Dekalb L Stop

Twenty years ago the Zapatistas emerged from the forests and mountains of Chiapas to occupy the major cities of that Mexican state and to recuperate for the landless hundreds of thousands of acres of land from the big landowners. During the 1990s the Zapatistas became known as the most effective example of the claim that “another world is possible.”

Since then the Zapatistas have worked to turn that claim into a reality. Starting in August, 2013, they have invited thousands of people from all over the world to a program called “escuelita” allowing these visitors to learn from rank-and-file Zapatistas what freedom and autonomy mean to them in practice. To do this they have turned the state of Chiapas into a “little school house” or “escuelita” in Spanish.

Come to listen to and discuss what three students (George Caffentzis, Dan Coughlin and Peter Linebaugh of the Midnight Notes Collective), who went to the forests and mountains of Chiapas with thousands of others to be part of the experience, learned.

Saturday, February 8th, 7 pm
The Base
1302 Myrtle Ave
Central Ave M Stop
Dekalb L Stop

Join Mutant Legal Collective and other groups for a monthly Know Your Rights primer at the Brooklyn Base. Get the basics on how to deal with police in the streets, in vehicles and in your home. Learn some security culture that can keep you, your community and your movements safer. If you think you know your rights, it’s always useful to brush up as supreme court decisions and policing policies change. The second Saturday every month, and feel free to request a workshop for you and your collective.

Saturday, 1 pm, at the Base
1302 Myrtle Ave
Central Ave M Stop
Dekalb L Stop

Tomorrow, February 2nd at 2pm, the Jane Addams Circle will be having its next 8 week open house. You should definitely come to this meeting to join the next circle. Its really a great group! The description is below.

MAST is an open-source and evolving set of cognitive techniques aimed at promoting better emotional health for individuals in a non-hierarchical or medical model.

MAST draws heavily upon the techniques found in Rational Emotive Therapy, Existential Psychology, Cognitive Behavioral Techniques, Dialectical behavioral Therapy and related systems. Its focus is to teach techniques of thinking that can allow individuals to make positive changes in their emotional lives.

The Jane Addams Circle

Is a small anarchist collective made up of professional social workers and psychologists who believe that to have a true and sustainable culture of resistance we must be able to maintain our mental health. We know everyone has sustained some emotional damage from this society and that we must find a variety of ways to undo this damage for us to be able to struggle effectively for our revolutionary dreams and passions with others. Struggling with emotional issues limits our ability to connect with others and to effectively enact the change we need in the world. Stigmatizing or refusing to deal with mental health issues in ourselves and in our community is weakens our struggle.

1302 Myrtle Ave at Stockholm
Brooklyn
Central Ave M Stop
Dekalb L Stop

For this week’s Introduction to Anarchism we are reading some texts on Propaganda of the Deed! The reading will be a bit lighter this week as well.

The two primary texts to read are:

Sergey Nechayev, “The Revolutionary Catechism”

http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/sergey-nechayev-the-revolutionary-catechism

Émile Henry’s Defense:

http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/emile-henry-emile-henry-s-defense

If you feel the impetus these are good as well for secondary readings:

Paul Avrich, “Review of Luigi Galleani’s ‘The End of Anarchism?’”

http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/paul-avrich-review-of-luigi-galleani-s-the-end-of-anarchism

Howard Zinn, “Sacco and Vanzetti,”

http://libcom.org/history/sacco-vanzetti-howard-zinn

Saturday, January 25th 2013, 7PM
The Base
1302 Myrtle Avenue, NY 11221
$3 Suggested Donation

Come hang out with us Saturday at the Base at our first communal dinner and potluck of the new year. As always, we’ll cook a simple vegan meal, but encourage others to bring something to share as well: fruits, vegetables to cook or eat raw, breads and cheeses, wines and juices, sweets–whatever. We ask for a small $3 suggested donation to help cover the costs of the dinner.

These dinners are part of a strategy to resist what our lives have and will become if we don’t get organized: atomized and dispersed; individualized and isolated; precarious and vulnerable: defeated. This means initiating and following-through with a set of practices and relations; being consistent and reliable; establishing the material foundation for a new form of life. To organize collectively around our needs and desires with friends, comrades, lovers, roommates, neighbors, co-workers and family members will be the basis for our communes.

We want to share some moments together; we want to find each other; we want to move towards collectively sustaining ourselves outside of our individual relations with the marketplace and state.

While these dinners are not meant to be formal assemblies or meetings, we expect and encourage comrades to discuss current and future struggles in New York City and beyond. We’d like this to happen outside of the traditional structures and temporalities of activism, with its specialization and professionalization of the political. Resistance and struggle will be part of life itself, or not at all.

Saturday, January 25th 2013, 7PM
The Base
1302 Myrtle Avenue, NY 11221
$3 Suggested Donation

http://year0.org/2014/01/21/january-solidarity-dinner-potluck-at-the-base/

ANARCHISTS BUILDING POPULAR POWER IN CHILE

Chile has a long history of working class struggle in shanty towns, factories, mines, community organizations, and schools. In the 20 years after the US supported coup which overthrew Salvador Allende’s government, much of the organizing was done underground. However after the fall of the dictatorship in 1990, there was a new rise of mass popular organization in the country. Anarchists have been a major force in the social movements, strategically organizing to build power. This has manifested in solidarity for the Mapuches, anarchists winning the student union elections at the University of Chile, militant pro-abortion actions, and libertarian labor organizations.

This national tour brings three individuals involved in these struggles to talk about the lessons learned and to create solidarity across hemispheres. From January to the end of February, the speakers will be traveling throughout the country and we hope that you can spread the word and hear about the important work that is happening in Chile.

January 23, 2014 @ 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm

Sunday Night!

Jason Kirkpatrick has flown in from the UK to present clips from his film Spied Upon, a documentary about his close relationship with undercover agent Mark Kennedy:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Kennedy_(police_officer)

This is not only an intriguing story of love and betrayal, but a cautionary lesson for every activist!

Here’s some background:
http://www.occupy.com/article/jason-kirkpatrick-film-spied-upon-digs-world-fbi-informants

This Saturday, January 18, Ryan Harvey is playing a benefit show at 8pm for The Base and IOPS at the excellent Brass Bottle, right next door.

Come by for a good times!

$5, though no one will be turned away

Come by this Friday 6pm for a section on Emma Goldman and Lucy Parsons!

Here are the texts we’ll be drawing on for the discussion:

Emma Goldman, “The Psychology of Political Violence,”
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/goldman/psychology.html

Keith Rosenthalm, “Lucy Parsons, ‘More Dangerous than a Thousand Rioters,”
http://joanofmark.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/lucy-parsons-more-dangerous-than.html?m=1

Jacob McKean, “A Fury for Justice: Lucy Parsons and the Revolutionary Anarchist Movement in Chicago,”
http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/jacob-mckean-a-fury-for-justice-lucy-parsons-and-the-revolutionary-anarchist-movement-in-chicag#toc7

Emma Goldman, “My Disillusionment in Russia,”
http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/goldman/disillusion/toc.html

On February 2nd of the New Year the Jane Addams Circle will be having its next 8 week open house. You should definitely come to this meeting to join the next circle. Its really a great group! The description is below.

MAST is an open-source and evolving set of cognitive techniques aimed at promoting better emotional health for individuals in a non-hierarchical or medical model.
MAST draws heavily upon the techniques found in Rational Emotive Therapy, Existential Psychology, Cognitive Behavioral Techniques, Dialectical behavioral Therapy and related systems. Its focus is to teach techniques of thinking that can allow individuals to make positive changes in their emotional lives.

The Jane Addams Circle
Is a small anarchist collective made up of professional social workers and psychologists who believe that to have a true and sustainable culture of resistance we must be able to maintain our mental health. We know everyone has sustained some emotional damage from this society and that we must find a variety of ways to undo this damage for us to be able to struggle effectively for our revolutionary dreams and passions with others. Struggling with emotional issues limits our ability to connect with others and to effectively enact the change we need in the world. Stigmatizing or refusing to deal with mental health issues in ourselves and in our community is weakens our struggle.

Unfortunately, we lost the previous posts here due to a slight problem. We’re going to continue updating the site regularly though!