Occupy - Resist - Produce: Vio.me with David Graeber and others
7:45PM DOORS
TICKETS £10 ON DOOR (SUGGESTED DONATION)
ADMISSION ON THE DOOR ONLY: monies raised will go directly to the Vio.Me workers in their struggle to resist eviction.
LIMITED CAPACITY: Arrive promptly to ensure admission.
A benefit event in solidarity with the factory workers of Vio.Me.
Screening of the new film Occupy, Resist, Produce by Dario Azzellini and Oliver Ressler, followed by talks by David Graeber, Heathcote Ruthven, Elena Loizidou and poetry readings by Stephen Watts.
Supported by Naomi Klein, David Harvey and Giorgio Agamben among many others internationally, the self-organising Vio.Me workers of Thessaloniki have, for the past three years, occupied a factory in the north of Greece. All the workers had been fired, but they then seized control and restructured, reorganising the methods and ownership of their means of production. They now make ecological cleaning products. It is an exciting new experiment set within a long tradition of Greek workers' struggle for autonomy.
Now they are faced with imminent eviction and are calling for a week of Solidarity before Direct Action intended for the first auction (26 November).
Following a screening of the new film Occupy, Resist, Produce by Dario Azzellini and Oliver Ressler, David Graeber, Heathcote Ruthven and Elena Loizidou will speak about the factory and its example, about organising outside the state, the future of social movements in Europe, direct action and the wider economic crisis.
David Graeber is an Anthropologist and Anarchist and Professor of Anthropology at LSE. He is perhaps best known for his best-selling book Debt - the First 5000 Years and for his founding role in the Occupy Wall St. movement.
Heathcote Ruthven is an activist and writer for International Times and has reported extensively from Greece.
Elena Loizidou is a political theorist and Senior Lecturer at the School of Law, Birkbeck University, she is the editor of a collection of essays on Disobedience (2013).
Poetry Readings by Stephen Watts are from Futures: Poetry of the Greek Crisis, just published by Penned in the Margins
The evening will be hosted by Gareth Evans.