Infokafana: WE MUST LOVE PEOPLE MORE THAN WE HATE EMPIRE

// A-Infoshop – 20 let //

Infokafana: "WE MUST LOVE PEOPLE MORE THAN WE HATE EMPIRE"

Subversiveness includes dealing with our own, and other peoples', shit. 

Zine presentation / mini-workshop / experience exchange and discussion:

From a meeting in BAB 2025, some comrades from the Balkans and beyond started a series of honest and hard conversations that basically turned into a support group / experience exchange in relation to our collectives’ ways of dealing with conflict, and hurtful, non-trauma-sensitive responses to disagreement, power imbalances, hurt, etc. Too often things are blown out of proportion, people are treated as disposable and literally discarded, binary, punitive logics disguise themselves as “transformative justice processes” when in reality there is not work put in to transform behaviors and confront systems of domination. From these exchanges grew the project of researching and trying to make sense of why this was happening, and possible antidotes, which ended up taking the form of the zine “we must love people more than we hate empire”.

At infokafana on November 20th we will be doing a short presentation of the zine, discuss these topics collectively, and do some exercises and reflection work together. 

The zine treats the topics of anarchist conflict resolution; how the systems of oppressions in which we all exist left its traces in us; how this rendered us (largely) incapable of having generative conflicts and grow together; and that this is necessary for radical community building and, ultimately, liberation. The zine and our work are not about cases of abuse or violence, but rather, other types of hurt that can (and do) stem from disagreements and inconsiderate, problematic, behavior. It basically approaches all the more subtle ways in which we consciously and unconsciously hurt each other, believing that prefiguring a society that we want must start with investigating, practicing, and transforming how we treat each other. We argue that it should be all of our nightmare to have neoliberally-functioning, shallow, canceling and policing collectives, which is heartbreakingly enough largely what we have seen in our years of anarchist organising (at least when shit comes to shove). We try to approach these topics with suggestions regarding how to improve our ways of treating each other, from a place of active listening, empathy, criticism, ethics, and (collective) transformation. Tools and exercises are then presented, ultimately suggestions of ways to move in this direction collectively and individually.

event will be held in english // dogodek po potekal v angleščini