Author: Gisela Mackenroth

Documentation: Imaginaries of Transformation

Published date August 30, 2021 Categories care / climate & ecology / feminism / food justice

This time-travel session takes us from desirable futures back to our complicated past, asking: How do we imagine transformation? Centering on a performative interview with Amaranta Herrero and Dimitris Papadopoulos, set in 2050, this session engages the playful and transdisciplinary method of the Future Archive project. Animating and complicating questions of what is desirable, this session encourages to go beyond strictly utopian and dystopian visions of the future, based on their own implicatedness in worlds and struggles.

Documentation: Learning and Struggling in Pandemic times

Published date August 26, 2021 Categories care / city / climate & ecology / feminism / movement / organizing / protest

The pandemic, like other unfolding and coming ecological crises, profoundly reshapes the terrain upon which social movements operate and emerge. We held a workshop in order to discuss different terrains of struggle over housing, reproductive rights, and ecology. Here we are allocating recordings of the talks and of the discussion on May 21st as well as further reflections on the workshop on May 22nd.

Workshops and movement learning spaces in Pandemic Times

Published date August 25, 2021 Categories city / movement / organizing / protest

Commentary on the workshop “Learning and Struggling in Pandemic Times”.

Time and space seemed to have become somewhat warped since the beginning of the pandemic. Personally, I often get struck by a feeling of paralysis when I think about our collective struggles and organizing efforts during the pandemic, almost like being frozen in time and waiting for things to change from the outside. This newly learned and shared pandemic vulnerability meant for most of us to reduce our real life encounters and therefore find new ways to connect, meet and organize…

Care and unconditional solidarity in the struggle for the right to housing.

Published date July 28, 2021 Categories care / city / feminism / housing / organizing

Commentary on the Workshop “Learning and Struggling in Pandemic Times. Available in German and French.

Die Erfahrungen von Organizing im Wohnumfeld und die Erfahrung der Pandemie (die uns auf unser Wohnumfeld zurückgeworfen hat) können Grundlage dafür sein, ein Bewusstsein für informell geleistete Care-Arbeit zu schaffen und neue solidarische Formen von Care-Arbeit zu leben und zu erkämpfen…

Panel Discussion “The Istanbul Convention is ours”

Published date July 12, 2021 Categories feminism / movement / protest / public space

Due to Turkey’s official withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention on July 1st, we invited three activists to discuss the consequences of the recent developments in Turkey and beyond. During the discussion Özlem Kaya from UnitedforIstanbulConvention gave a run down of the recent events in Turkey. Kalina Drenska from E.A.S.T. Network and FemBunt, talked about the situation of LGBTQI+ communities in Bulgaria. Furthermore, Natassa Diamanti from the 8th of March Assembly Athens talked about the situation in Greece as well as the current discussion regarding femicides. Elif Artan from DaMigra reflected upon the positioning of Germany and other EU-States after Turkeys withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention.

Organizing with tenants and fighting rightist resentments

Published date June 27, 2021 Categories city / housing / organizing / public space

Through two neighborhood case studies in the rapidly upgrading East German city of Leipzig we discuss political implications of urban restructuring. Scrutinizing tenants’ rightist and racist reactions to the housing question, we argue that residential alienation affects people’s sense of place in a divisive manner, which in turn impacts both their interpretations of urban change and their respective practices. Based on our analyses of scapegoating and territorial stigma, we critically discuss the potential of activist intervention, drawing from two qualitative and ethnographic research projects, as well as activist experience in neighbourhood organizing.

Learning and Struggling in Pandemic times

Published date May 21, 2021 Categories Uncategorized

The pandemic, like other unfolding and coming ecological crises, profoundly reshapes the terrain upon which social movements operate and emerge. By bringing researchers, activists, and researcher-activists into dialogue, we discussed different terrains of struggle over housing, reproductive rights, and ecology. Our aim was to facilitate an exchange of concepts, analyses, and tactics, and to build new connections that may encourage solidarity and transversal organizing in the future.

Gleanings: The Kaleidoscope of Catastrophe

Published date May 4, 2021 Categories care / climate & ecology / food justice / infrastructure

Recently, I announced my intention to write a long essay about Malm to a circle of degrowth communists. One, a researcher and activist of US pipeline struggles, was exasperated at Malm’s apparently contradictory embrace of a strategy of pushing the capitalist state to do the right thing in Corona, Climate and Chronic Emergency (2020) and his stringent support of sabotage in How to Blow up a Pipeline (2021).

Gleanings: Building Power

Published date March 10, 2021 Categories care / climate & ecology / movement

Syriza took power through elections—not so much on the basis of a movement that could embolden or depose it. Now it is back to fighting power for many Greeks. But beyond the taking and fighting of power, there is the question of building power.