Libertania free association of anarchists appeal for help in setting up a social centre in Manado (Indonesia)

Call For Support !

We the LIBERTANIANS, are members of a group who are established from many anarchist cells in Manado, Indonesia, and we’re trying to build a social center, a so-called infoshop here in our –fucking– town. We need to have a public space where we can share our thoughts, discuss many topics, make some DIY gigs, movie and film screenings, host a free and open library, free school for kids, translate anarchist literature and text to the Indonesian language and other activities that will empower each of our members and other struggles surrounding us where we joined. For more details, hereby we are attaching our proposal which describe the reasons and some background of our group.

never bow ! never step back !

LIBERTANIA

free association of anarchists

* * *

LIBERTANIA SOCIAL CENTRE

Manado, North Sulawesi, Indonesia

INTRODUCTION

Manado is a capital city of North Sulawesi province in Sulawesi island with 410,524 inhabitants. Historically, it was a city built by Arabians and Chinese merchants. The name of Manado itself is given by the Netherlands colonialists to replace an old name: Wenang, in 1 July 1919. After the Independence of Indonesia in 1945, Manado became a tourist city because of the diving spots, snorkeling areas and one famous international marine park, called Bunaken. The topography of Manado is hilly areas with a shoreline of more than 19 km.

But since the coastal reclamation mega project started in the early 1980’s, all the economic activity in this city centralized in Manado bay. In the last ten years, there are seven shopping centre areas built in 100 hectares of new land as a result of coastal reclamation and made Manado seized by consumerism temples across Manado bay. But not only fisherfolks who confronted the urbanising face of Manado. Traditional merchants and local peoples who lived in the areas in downtown also got evicted by the government.

In late 90’s punk subculture influenced Manado. Mostly punks came from university students before spreading out and inspiring high school students and other young people. In the beginning, many leftists also punks. In many cases until early 2002, punks are used by leftists to support mass demonstrations or as a members in their organizations.

First anti-authoritarian group in Manado was established in 2003 known as Celebes Anarchoz. This group was founded by individuals who did some translations and publications of anarchist texts in 2002. This group only focused to bring up the ideas of anarchy in public, targeted the university students and teenagers. Some Food Not Bombs actions held by this collective before fall out in early part of 2003. But the spirit of anti-state and anti-capitalism movement continued by some ex-members of this collective by establishing another group named Ya Basta !!! in mid 2005. This collective worked down until late part of 2007 even some of their members still did some translations and published zines until late of 2010.

In January 2011, some anarchists gathered and build in new groups named LIBERTANIA using form as free association of different cells. This group held food not bombs actions, translations and publications of anarchist texts, mass demonstrations and joined with the local resistance in Manado. Since January 2011, this group rent a house for one year and ended in December 2011.

OUR PLANING

We have no permanent goals or whatsoever; time will tell us what to do from our temporary activities. The most urgent step we want to achieve is finding a place, and build it into a community center from which we can operate. We need this place to distribute our own information and penetrate our ideas to people.

This place must have the capabilities to make a change and raise awareness in people, from the various projects that we will set up there. Considering the lack of reading culture (beside mainstream books and hipster’s clothing magazine), we are planning to open a bookshop and public library, for these kind of purposes. With various kinds of activities that we will ignite from that point, we believe we can slowly promote anti-authoritarian ideas in social relationships and inspire a critical society towards its own environment and ecological health.

By doing these projects we try to make people cooperate with each other without hierarchy, to distribute knowledge, to create a sense of community in this alienated society, and make a less violent environment by raising consciousness and a sense of needing each other as human beings.

HOW THIS SOCIAL CENTRE FORMS ??

The form of this social center will be that of a bookshop, public library, autonomedia center and space for community activities. These are the activities we plan to create:

1. Various Weekly Discussion Group

Anti-authoritarian discussion group: there will be a group discussion that we hold to introduce ideas and basic principles of anti-authoritarian society.

Social problems discussion group: a discussion group for social issues and local problems on community scale or wider.

Free discussion group: it can be imagined like a study group. This group will decide what things they should do with their discussion projects, whether it’s a book discussion, comic, zine, political subjects, movies, music, art, philosophy, contemporary culture, its up to them.

2. Workshop

To provide place for people and community to share their knowledge with each other for free such as: making zines, posters, websites, silk screen printing, writing, photography learning and sharing other skills that might use full and needed.

3. Cultural Activities

We want to maintain and expand our own culture such as D.I.Y music gigs, or making Food Not Bombs cells. To empower people to make their own music, recording, cooperating with each other to make our own community thrive.

4. Food Not Bombs

Currently, we have two cells of FNB in Manado. Now, we still regularly provided foods for people and local community.

5. Movie Screening

Once a week there will be held a movie screening. The movies will be chosen by the members of the whole group. On some special projects we will show a certain movie for knowledge purposes such as anti-globalization movies and other education materials in movies. We also translate movie subtitles so the people who weren’t able to use English language can be able to understand the movie’s message too.

6. Free School

Currently we are running a free school for fishersfolks kids under seven years old for one year already. We want to continue this project using all resources we have.

7. Free and Open Library

We will distribute any kind of independent media and books as long as their free from any kind of racism, fascism, narrow religious thoughts, government propaganda, or anything commercial culture. We also translate and publish anarchist literature that we find relevant and useful for the people’s empowerment, whether its about culture, politic, economy, anthropology, etc.

8. Social Center

We want to make this place a local center open to everyone and every problem faced by people in this society, not as an organization that will represent them, but with equal cooperation in a more horizontal relationship where we can discuss the problems and together find a solution for it. We also separate ourselves from other formal organizations such as the government, commercial corporations, any political parties, fundamentalist organizations, and other hierarchical organizations. We will cooperate with workers, students, individuals or society in general, as long as they are not affiliated with the kind of organizations that we mention above.

9. Anarchist Translating and Publications

We run this project to spread out the idea of anarchy from different point of views. On the other side, we can’t lie that self-choice from each individuals in our groups are the major reasons to decided which topics or text we translate.

10. Indymedia

It’s very important for us to spread out news about people’s resistance who are carrying a mutual, horizontal and anti-state values. Also, as a contra-info to the mainstream and leftist media who always contaminate all struggle in their dogmatism and propaganda.

WHAT WE NEED

We need money around 28.000.000 IDR [approx 2,355 Euro]. Around 18.000.000 IDR from this money use to rent a house for two years and the last will use to fund other projects held by this group. This house will be used as a space for library and bookshops and other community activities. As far as we know, its quite hard to find an empty building that can be squatted here, because of immediate repression from the police and a lack of uninhabited houses, that’s why we are planning to rent this place.

We also gladly accept books, posters or other kinds of donations that you think would be useful for this center. We also need movie projector for the movie screening and photocopy machine for the people who need to copy things. Or any kind of donation you might think relevant for our purposes.

WHO WE ARE

We are the LIBERTANIANS, formed by individuals from different backgrounds. We are established since January 2011. Some are fishers, some are part-time workers, some are punks, some are freelancers and some are unemployed. We form this group as an umbrella to combine different cells who became active since the last ten years, such as NEGASI [Free Information Channel and Provocation Agent], Anti Authoritarian Fraction, Food Not Bombs – Manado, ANTAGONIS journal, Nocturnal Studio, PASIR Community (Free School Community for Fisherfolks kids), Bubalus Team, Trojan The Bastard band, and The Sotset band.

Currently, we’re taking a place in Daseng –a building built by fisherfolks as a symbol of resistance against the mega-project of coastal reclamation– to run our activities. But still, some of our members feels that this place aren’t enough to make an autonomous social center. Some reasons is our stuff can’t be placed here and is spread out in different places and many of our agendas must be held in other places out of Daseng.

We don’t have any ideology –even so called anarchism. We gathered and combined any anarchistic points of view and other social theories that are relevant and useful for our present daily lives. But we are running our group based in mutual and horizontal relations, self-initiative and self-empowerment, which can roughly be declared as anti-state, anti-capitalism, and anti-society. We’re have networks with other anti-authoritarian groups and collectives –for example Kontinum and Linonipi Infohouse in Makassar, some individuals in Malang, Jakarta, Jogjakarta, Medan, Palembang, and Bandar Lampung. Also, we have connection with Indonesian anti-authoritarian websites such as Membakar Senja, Bara Wera, Kokemi and Hidup Biasa. Mostly our members also joined in resistance surrounding us.

CONTACT

Ruang Terbuka Pantai, Daseng Panglima

Pantai Panglima, Jalan Pierrre Tendean

Kelurahan Sario Tumpaan, Lingkungan IV

Kecamatan Sario, Manado

95114

Indonesia

Email: libertania (at) riseup.net

Paypal account: ranggayanbagusta (at) yahoo.com

Tags: Indonesia, Manado

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 23rd, 2012 at 11:56 am and is filed under Autonomy.