[LAF] SWOU

[VolodyA! V Anarhist]

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Hello, brothers, sisters, etc,

Sorry for not doing my reports on the All Genders Group recently, i have been
either missing the meetings or too busy to actually sit down and write something
about them. But i really am excited about the last "failed meeting" so here are
my memories and two zloty.

The last scheduled meeting was on April 5, but the room was booked by the Sex
Worker Open University. At first they have told us that the upstairs room was
actually not being used, but we have decided that it would be great to join in
on the fun. It was too late to take part in the current round of the workshops
(we didn't want to disturb the participants just to get 15 minutes of the
discussion), so we have waited for the last actual workshop before the final
wrap-up one. In the mean time we have discussed some issues upstairs, talking
about things like sexual education in schools...

I was very excited to partake in the SWOU, even though i was quite upset that i
have missed two days of it by then (if i'd have known i would be able to get
there at least on saturday for a couple of workshops). However, my hopes were
crushed by the fact that the organiser of the workshop has made a decision to
make it primarily for self-identified sex workers, asking the rest of the people
to organise something on their own. Although there was a subject that got
proposed for use ("How can non-sex workers help sex worker struggle") it was
pretty clear that the discussion wasn't going to go there. I should mention that
there was a documentary being made of the event... and our little self-organised
workshop was being filmed. We did start talking about a paper which i have sent
out to the list (i actually thought that this was the idea for our meeting for
people to propose something to discuss, like a paper), as it was directly
relevant to sex workers and how some radical feminists oppose them. However,
that conversation didn't get very far, i have a feeling other people weren't
very interested, and when another person has arrived who made a point that there
should be no filming the group turnt into a counceling session.

Now the wrap-up workshop for the SWOU has actually made my day. I really needed
to have this experience, of having people, who were actual people, and not
robots or victims talked about by anti-sex-workers, talk about how they envision
their fight for better life. The room was full of individuals from different
parts of the world, most of them radical (anarchists, feminists, other
activists) speaking with the increadible energy and strength, even when their
language was disallowing them from speaking as poetically as they wanted. They
have discussed what they found good about the Open University, and how to
organise for the future, unfortunately i had nothing to contribute to their
discussion, since this was my first contact with SWOU. I really do hope that
this is not the last time that i see these increadible comrades organising
something like this, and hopefully next time i will know of this earlier on.

                        - Volodya

P.S. I have booked the room for next time, so there shouldn't be any problems,
but we do overlap with the new Queer Activist Group which got formed, maybe we
can intermingle with them some time.

- --
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 "None of us are free until all of us are free."    ~ Mihail Bakunin
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