Opstand – Anarchistische Plek 070

🎥 Neptune Frost (Eng subs, Rwanda/US 2021). Afrofuturist science fiction romantic musical. The films is set in a village in Burundi made of computer parts, and centers on the relationship between Neptune, an intersex runaway hacker, and Matalusa, a coltan miner.

Content Warning: violence, death

📅 Tuesday September 23th. Doors open 19.00, movie starts at 19.15.
⏲️ Movie length: 1h50
📍 De Opstand, The Hague (ask your network or e-mail for the address at boekenwinkelopstand@riseup.net)

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Accessibility information: the event is on the ground floor. There is a (steep) ramp for wheelchair accessibility. A quiet room is also available. The Opstand library and books are upstairs and only accessible via stairs.
We encourage everyone to refrain from wearing products containing fragrances, to wear a face mask, to do a self-test and to stay home if you have cold-like symptoms. Face masks and self tests are available on location.
Send us a message if your accessibility needs are not covered.

📢 Join us on the 28th of September at 12:00 in Plesmanlaan, Den Haag, for a demonstration in support of Emily, against attacks on trans people, against the far right, for true safety and rights for all!

Attacks on our community:
On August 4th our comrade Emily was assaulted by 2 men, in her own neighborhood. They kicked her and hit her on the head, on the basis of her being trans, after she noticed the hateful texts on streetlights. This occurrence is not new – these people have been putting up hateful far right stickers promoting LGBT+phobic and antisemitic rhetoric. It has gotten to a point where Emily is forced to use the back door of her house in fear of her safety.

Attacks on trans people and far right on the rise:
This attack is not isolated – many trans and queer people share similar experiences – there is a rise in attacks against trans people over the last few years, in the NL and globally, physical ones but also ones on rights and healthcare. This trend is directly connected to the rising far right – Wilders, Trump, AfD in Germany – they use trans people, muslim people, immigrants and other minorities as scapegoats and portray them as the source of problems in society, while at the same time they propose no solution to the real problems plaguing a majority of working people – ever increasing housing prices, a wave of violence against women, rising cost of living and more.

“Liberal” parties offer no solution:
Meanwhile “centre-left” and “liberal” parties, GroenLinks PvdA for example, are offering no alternative, and instead they prefer to invest in war while cutting on our welfare and do not even attempt to handle the troubles facing us. These austerity measures especially hurt trans people and other oppressed minorities. Additionally, they only serve to strengthen the far right who are presenting themselves as friends of the “average person”.

Build up  the fightback!
For us to achieve trans safety and to guarantee rights, and for us to combat the far right, there is a need to build a mass struggle against the whole agenda of the far right that is promoting these attacks, and against the “centre” parties who are not offering  any alternative.

Check out the new arrivals at our bookshop:

1. Trans Femme Futures
2. Islam and Anarchisme
3. Fascist Yoga
4. Constellations of Care
5. Radical Intimacy
6. Practical Anarchism: a guide for daily life

We also got the a new issue of the Buiten De Orde and many new zines, including special ones from Romania.

A note on radical accessibility for future Opstand events. We recently moved the Opstand to the upstairs of the space, which makes consulting the books and zines less accessible. Although, the events still happen at the lower floor. At the same time, we have slowly moved towards ignoring Covid. There is not much we can do about the first but there is something that can be done about the second.

We will also keep the space ventilated and we encourage everybody to:
• Do a self test if you can (we also have some in the space)
• Wear a mask if you can
• Do not come in you have symptoms

This might come as surprise for some but the pandemic is not over. To give a few numbers, 10% of infected people develop long term symptoms and Japan had the highest death rate since the pandemic began at the start of last year. This post is about promoting mutual aid and taking care of each other. Including also the people that cannot mask. As anarchists, we pride ourselves in making our own decisions instead of just listening to politicians. Yet, in this topic, we seem to just blindly follow the state policy.

For a deeper discussion on the topic, this zine is a good start https://en.scrappycapydistro.info/zines/pandemic-praxis and here is the reference for the 10% of long covid https://www.nature.com/articles/s41577-023-00904-7

As Pride The Hague 2024 approaches, we want to shed light on ongoing discussions De Opstand and fellow collectives have had with the organizing pride team.

This year, cops are official partners of the pride week, and although we have extensively voiced our disappointment and worries about this, our concerns have not been meaningfully listened to.

We hope this open letter brings transparency to the issue, and we, once again, urge the organizing team to take our concerns seriously and reflect on their choices.

A different Pride is possible, and we will keep dreaming of it.

Pride Open Letter

We do not want police at pride

After extensive discussions with COC Haaglanden, regarding the presence of cops at Pride, we still don’t feel heard and our community needs are not respected.

Our position is clear, we do not want police at our pride. Police presence at queer demonstrations have only stood to further instigate violence against us, rather than protect us from it. This has been the case both historically and within the recent past. To our greatest disappointment, the police force will be present at pride walk and at the opening party at Pride The Hague 2024.

Recently, in canal pride Leiden, we have witnessed violence against our community during pride. History keeps repeating itself. We do not want that to happen here at Pride The Hague.

The police and the system of border controls are well documented to be institutionally racist and perpetuate hatred toward queer people of color and queer migrants. Queer and trans people of color and migrants in our community do not feel safe around the police.

It’s possible to not have police force at pride: New York, London have done it!

There is international precedent for ending police presence at Pride: following the spread of the second wave of Black Lives Matter actions in summer 2020, New York City’s Pride, Vancouver Pride, and Toronto Pride ended police presence at the 2021 parade. The same is also true for Trans Pride in London. We urge Pride Den Haag to follow similar principled steps.

We have high hopes for what a Pride march and activities for queer liberation would include. We hope that Pride The Hague’s organizers will move closer to what a shared vision of pride and queer liberation would look like.

This open later is co-signed by QLU (Queer Leiden University) https://www.instagram.com/p/C64R6slIrYt

Nederlands onderaan

Hey everyone, it’s been a while since you heard from us. In January, we had to move out of our space at Beatrijsstraat 12 where we have been part of De Samenscholing for the past years. We are lucky enough that we can currently collaborate with a different space in The Hague, where we can temporarily organize.

Our first event after the move is happening this Friday, February 17th, from 6pm to 9pm. It will be open to anyone who identifies as queer or as a member of the LGBTQIA+ community. Shoot us a message for the location, and please stay tuned for more updates on our future opening times and events.

After having pressure put on them from many sides, the Municipality of The Hague has agreed to provide De Samenscholing with a new location. So far, they haven’t proposed anything viable, but we will continue to fight for a space where we can organize autonomously.

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Hoi allemaal, het is alweer een tijdje geleden dat jullie iets van ons hebben gehoord. In januari hebben we moeten vertrekken uit onze plek aan de Beatrijsstraat 12 waar we de afgelopen jaren deel hebben uitgemaakt van De Samenscholing. Gelukkig kunnen we momenteel samenwerken met een andere plek in Den Haag, waar we de Opstand tijdelijk kunnen voortzetten.

Ons eerste evenement na de verhuizing vindt aanstaande vrijdag 17 februari plaats, van 18.00 tot 21.00 uur. Het is open voor iedereen die zich identificeert als queer of als lid van de LHBTQIA+ gemeenschap. Stuur ons een berichtje voor de locatie, en hou onze socials in de gaten voor informatie over onze toekomstige openingstijden en evenementen.

Nadat er van veel kanten druk op ze is uitgeoefend, heeft de gemeente Den Haag alsnog toegezegd De Samenscholing een nieuwe locatie te gaan bieden. Tot nu toe hebben ze nog niets fatsoenlijks voorgesteld, maar we zullen blijven vechten voor een ruimte waar we ons autonoom kunnen organiseren.

We have added all the books from our library to the “library thing” website. You can now check out what we have from home. To make sure we haven’t lent the book that you like, send us an email first to confirm that we have in the store at the moment. The link is in the menu above and also here: https://www.librarything.com/catalog/opstand.denhaag