Grants for and solidarity work with Zapatista and resistant co-operatives

For thirteen years, Café Libertad has been part of the distribution network for Zapatista coffee from uprising communities in Chiapas. We are also supporting indigenous self-organisation and the work of political co-operatives and women’s projects in other countries. From January 2012 to February 2013, Café Libertad Collective has disbursed more than 25 000 Euro and guaranteed additional 22 500 Euro, which adds up to grants of 47 500 Euro in total. 15 000 Euro have been earmarked for the support of autonomous Zapatista communities, including the creation of a community hall in Oventic and an administration building of the Caracol en Resistencia Hacia un Nuevo in La Garrucha. Additionally, 500 Euro have been granted to Radio Regeneracion and the realisation of a film project about the Zapatista co-operative Ssit Lequil Lum, respectively. Another 7500 Euro are going to contribute to the Caracol Hacia La Esperanza’s extension of two medical centres and the purchase of generators for the electrification of ultra-sonar examinations and the operation of additional medical devices. Further grants of 15 000 Euro have been guaranteed to the Good Governments of two other Zapatista communities and will be transferred on demand. Additional 1000 Euro have been supporting the indigenous organisation COPINH’s and Berta Caceres’ work of empowerment of the indigenous population and 500 Euro to Radio Resistencia and a school in Honduras, respectively. Furthermore, the construction of the Costa Rican co-operative Finca Sonador’s drying hall has been co-financed with 1500 Euro. By the means of round-trips, we have supported the autonomous CACITA project in Oaxaca, the Synapsis media collective from Chile and anarchists on the Philippines. More than 1500 Euro were transferred to support Greek workers on strike, political activists as well as migrant sex workers and HIV positive persons in Athens suffering severe repression. We want to expand on the co-operation with alternative structures and collectives in Greece. Additional 500 Euro have been disbursed to compas in Thessaloniki in order to restart production of the squatted factory Viomichaniki Metaleftiki. A fund supporting anti-racist football fan projects and Right to the City initiatives – established this year – has received 1500 Euro from the sale of St. Pauli Roar solidarity espresso. Moreover, a round-trip of Partizan Minsk anti-fascist fans, the realisation of a documentary about gentrification, protests and the Esso building in St. Pauli as well as a fund supporting squatters in court have been co-funded. Minor amounts and coffee donations from Café Libertad’s Störtebeker Fund have been going to a trailer park squat in Poland, a girls’ project in Bremen, the anti-Castor camp in Dahlem, the Hambacher Forst squat, a youth camp about KZ Neuengamme, anti-fascist and anti-racist groups, the Refugee Caravan, Neupack workers on strike, and two activists of the – now evicted – Basque centre Kukutza. Besides, several culture and media projects, including an anti-genetic engineering magazine, the Bochum libertarian book fair and the Wutzrock festival have been receiving contributions. These grants are provided entirely by solidarity surcharges from coffee sale - therefore by yourselves and everyone enjoying Café Libertad’s solidarily traded coffee and espresso. Thank you very much! A detailed record of all grants is going to be published on our website www.cafe-libertad.de in March. Solidary trade by an anarcho-syndicalist collective Solidary trade isn’t a one way street, but an exchange on equal terms, with all its contradictions and difficulties. It’s an opportunity to change political conditions here and now, to support EZLN in Chiapas or co-ops and movements in Honduras and Costa Rica. Café Libertad is considering itself as an anarcho-syndicalist collective which doesn’t realise profits and aims at a solidary and liberated society. Work for import and production is being paid, political work considered an essential part is done on a volunteer basis. At the same time, collective self-organisation of work isn’t free of power relationships. Capitalist strictures are permeating ourselves and our everyday lives. Wrong life cannot be lived rightly. Consequently, it’s not essential for uprising communities and the Zapatista movement only to reinvent themselves continuously, but for ourselves as well, everywhere and in all areas. We advance asking questions, sometimes doubting. Always in the perspective of an entirely different whole, which as often as not starts locally and with ourselves and which is re-discovered in the Lacandon jungle’s mountains as well as in any other contested places worldwide.

Café Libertad Kollektiv eG Stresemannstraße 268 22769 Hamburg
Kontakt und Infos: cafe-libertad@gmx.de Tel.: 040 20 90 68 92 Fax: 040 20 90 68 93