After reading some of the critics posted here, I would like to respond and explain why we (meant as ACU people) are at such a point, according to my personal experience.
As I said I have been working in the ACU almost 15 years and have seen enough going on in this place.
I also don't agree with the tone of the call out and I definetly find some of the points very far streched. And I am scheptical about what this meeting will really bring...nevertheless, there are good reasons for it to happen and I do support it.
Often when frustrations reach the top, issues get expressed in unappropriate ways, but it is important that this message finally got out of closed walls.
How did we get to this point?
It did not happen in one day, or in one time. As it was said, routines build up and took root, sometimes without people really aknowledging where they will lead. In this, I think, we are all to blame for letting it go this far. But it is not as we are discussing these issues for the very forst time. Several attempts have been made to change things, to requalize the structure and make it horizontal again. Take my word, it is years we are discussing it..all I can give on the matter is my own account.
In my experience, since this group was formed in 2004, there has been always a tendency to "select" people for tasks of responsibility or for the key stone positions in the ACU, which more and more, in time, became "NOT" accessible for all.
It started from small little things, and grew to the point of creating real managerial positions, obviously very out of place in a collective structure.
Many people stood up to this and not just with critics. People offered to take part of the responsibilities, did work hard for the place and tried to contribute in the sharing of knowledge and information (and not to just to "take over").
There have been endless discussions over these positions of power and how they affect in a negative way a collective structure, demotivating others, creating self appointed managers, how they build up frustrations and so on..many attempts have been made to solve this conflicts internally.
But these attempts always failed, since there are a few people within the ACU (I can count about four or five basically who really hold the strings of the place) that always backed each other up and made a compact front that made it impossible for the collective to really make a break through in this front.
How does this work? How is it possible?
Finances:
There is a small group that holds all information and decisional power over the finances.
They have the books, invoices and administration at their home and do not make them accessible for others, so that everyone is "forced" to go through them to be able to use this information for work. I had this experience when I was busy trying to reconstruct what happened with our lift maintenance company. After six months of "begging" direct information, I gave up.
They hold bank passes and the key to the safe. To access money, you don't go to meetings, you have to go through them.
The collective does not decide anything over investments. The ACU, I esteem, spend something between 100.000 - 150.000 euro in light and sound equipment+maintenance of it in the past 9 years. Seriously, there are more lights and sound stuff that in some commercial disco..
These investments HAVE NEVER BEEN DISCUSSED AT MEETINGS. What we did discuss, also endless times, is that many ACU volunteers are not happy to work for the techincs team to spend and spand as they please.
We tried everything..reasoning, making appointments, giving budgets. The conclusion has always been the same. These people have their hands on the dough and thay just do what the fuck they want with it.
We never see proper financial reports. The balans is a far away mirage so nobody really has a proper clear inview over the financial state of our company. It's always a vague more or less, expenses are not specified and there are no "toelichting" to the list of costs and incoms.
To change this also has been demanded several times but after ten years we are still waiting to see it happen.
At best, some papers got out at time of high crisis..and then went back in the black pit.
It takes an enormous amount of energy to squeeze simple basic information and to break through this silent obstracism and excuses that you encounter every time you are simply asking for what should be on the table to begin with. So forgive people for not always feeeling to put up with it.
A selected finances group has been formed, a few years ago. But they never got to see any real financial stuff..as I said, there are always milions of little excuses that impeach any real concrete development. Where there's no will, there's no way.
Besides, the ACU administration is seriously amatorial. Having knowledge of book keeping myself, I can only urge that we finally hire someone with proper skills to do this job, which can for one provide us with some transparency over ACU finances and put an end to the privileges that this structure implies.
Self appointed managerial positions:
Some characters like to believe they are actually directing the place.
They behave as if they are in charge and make the rest feel it. If you are doing bar, or anything else, expect someone to walk up to you and tell you what to do, even though you are the one busy with the work, or perfectly capable of handeling yourself.
The comments given are not finalized to improve working together, they are the expression of a self fulfillment from who's placing them on you.
This have a strong impact on all the new volunteers, often intimidated by these attitudes. And they create huge conflicts with the people that are not easily intimidated (I will place myself in this second category, since I told a couple of people to go f... themselves more than once).
Still, they do not stop nor seem to have any understanding of it. Every time you can start all over again, here also having to waste energy and time to contain these people.
In the past ten years, I heard from dozen of volunteers and ex volunteers that they didn't like to work in the ACU in this atmosphere, lots of them even left because of it..
But the more we tried to bring these problematics on the table, the more these people pulls the strings and sits on top of the ACU as their own property.
A practical example.
After the face book message and Indymedia communicate, a couple of people, living upstairs from ACU, went and bought a really expensive lock, with certified keys.
They put the new lock on and in fact this certificate remained in their hands. That, despite all nice bla bla, means that they have the last word on who can or actually cannot get a key from ACU, which is something unheard of. Even claimed it was a collective decision (which was absolutely not).
It is easy to talk about collective decisions when finally only one has the actual power to make it happen..or not.
As a anarchist sympatizer (well, I consider myself an anarchist, but don't want to go in the details of my political believes) I think it's ridiculus to pretend that there can be a democracy, or equality, or how you want to call it when the means of power are all in the same hands. Because finally I can agree or disagree, but I will never be in the position to make anything happen without the approval of who's holding these means..
And this is the history on how few people came to control the place. By taking little piece by little piece, forcing things through, discussing decisions afterwards and always cooking some nice reasonable story to justify prevarications.
When too much pressure was put on turning around a decision huge dramas and distractions are created around different issues..and the decision go through, even though many do not agree with them.
For who's interested to know, the new lock didn't make it to last half an hour on the door. But do we have to come to this?
ACU meetings
After 20 years of participation in several groups, collectives, squats, I would describe ACU meetings as one of the most undemocratic and hypocritical experience ever.
The organ of the meeting, which should be the space of encounter of people and ideas, where decisions are made together, are a farce.
We live in a bureaucracy of rules and small unspoken appointments, where to me appears clear only one thing: decisions go through only when certain people agree. If not, they do not go through.
Of course things are never put on the table like this..there are many manipulative ways to play this game.
I can bring many examples of it, but the list would be endless.
Just one that came up after months of discussing how to make decisions: we have a written appointment about benefits that litereally says "a proposal is brought to the meeting and then people can agree/disagree with it". Amnesty international group asked us to have a benefit, many people disagreed, the benefit took place anyway.
On the other hand, on different issues, the same disagreement but from different people counts as a veto on making things happen.
And every time, afterwards, comes the nice explanation why in that case is so, and in the other case so...
Frustrations build up to the roof and nothing changes.
I find it hard to stand up to this unless by playing the very same game, which i do not like.
But making appointments together seems to me an impossibility cause people are simply not respecting them and problems or issues are not discussed in an objective and honest way.
To be completely fair, I would add that there has been a strong incapability from everyone, myself included, to address this problem in a proper way.
Incapabilty mostly to act upon it, which becomes difficult when you share a place together but have not the same accessibility to information, money or real decisional power.
Political views:
Here I have the biggest critics on what has been communicated in the posts.
I don't see nazis walking around the ACU, and as far as I know there are no rapists amongst us either.
What I do se, though, is that people are welcome to join the ACU collective despite their political believes. If they can deliver the job, it's all fine.
For me, a collective that acts on this criteria cannot be taken serious in the hold on to certain political positions, as we do in our ABC booklet. You can find there a nice description on how the ACU is supporting small independent groups, is pro squatting, alternative, political left outside governmental structure and so on. This is what we, as ACU, declare to stand for.
Then, we actually work in an environment in which people believe that police is there for your own protection, or that the Ubica people getting arrested after resisting the eviction just got what they deserved. And these people are voicing their opinions as part of the ACU, cause they also work there.
So on which bases and for what are we all calling ourselves a collective, when we do not share any basic ground of political understanding?
The ACU should not be a black blok place in my opinion. I am not in favor of ultra feminism or including people only when they wear an anarchist patch on their jacket. But to ovethrow completely the meaning and accept views that sadly remind me of the VVD party is something completely different.
There are opinions that are in conflict and contradiction with each other and are creating a fracture within our group which is getting without solution.
I also cannot bring myself to compromise about "loving police".
Conclusions:
I will attend the meeting on the 6th and I have no fear of signing this letter. What I say here I already said before within the ACU.
I just hope that there will be an active participation and most of all that people will focus on how to act upon this unsustainable situation before we loose this place for good.
I will bring some proposals on serious changes that are needed if anything is to get solved.
I hope to see many faces there and that people will realize that as it is important to bring this structure down, it is even more important to replce it with something clean and concrete.
That means also being serious about taking responsibility back and working together to keep the ACU alive.
ACU in the past ten years..an inside story
After reading some of the critics posted here, I would like to respond and explain why we (meant as ACU people) are at such a point, according to my personal experience.
As I said I have been working in the ACU almost 15 years and have seen enough going on in this place.
I also don't agree with the tone of the call out and I definetly find some of the points very far streched. And I am scheptical about what this meeting will really bring...nevertheless, there are good reasons for it to happen and I do support it.
Often when frustrations reach the top, issues get expressed in unappropriate ways, but it is important that this message finally got out of closed walls.
How did we get to this point?
It did not happen in one day, or in one time. As it was said, routines build up and took root, sometimes without people really aknowledging where they will lead. In this, I think, we are all to blame for letting it go this far. But it is not as we are discussing these issues for the very forst time. Several attempts have been made to change things, to requalize the structure and make it horizontal again. Take my word, it is years we are discussing it..all I can give on the matter is my own account.
In my experience, since this group was formed in 2004, there has been always a tendency to "select" people for tasks of responsibility or for the key stone positions in the ACU, which more and more, in time, became "NOT" accessible for all.
It started from small little things, and grew to the point of creating real managerial positions, obviously very out of place in a collective structure.
Many people stood up to this and not just with critics. People offered to take part of the responsibilities, did work hard for the place and tried to contribute in the sharing of knowledge and information (and not to just to "take over").
There have been endless discussions over these positions of power and how they affect in a negative way a collective structure, demotivating others, creating self appointed managers, how they build up frustrations and so on..many attempts have been made to solve this conflicts internally.
But these attempts always failed, since there are a few people within the ACU (I can count about four or five basically who really hold the strings of the place) that always backed each other up and made a compact front that made it impossible for the collective to really make a break through in this front.
How does this work? How is it possible?
Finances:
There is a small group that holds all information and decisional power over the finances.
They have the books, invoices and administration at their home and do not make them accessible for others, so that everyone is "forced" to go through them to be able to use this information for work. I had this experience when I was busy trying to reconstruct what happened with our lift maintenance company. After six months of "begging" direct information, I gave up.
They hold bank passes and the key to the safe. To access money, you don't go to meetings, you have to go through them.
The collective does not decide anything over investments. The ACU, I esteem, spend something between 100.000 - 150.000 euro in light and sound equipment+maintenance of it in the past 9 years. Seriously, there are more lights and sound stuff that in some commercial disco..
These investments HAVE NEVER BEEN DISCUSSED AT MEETINGS. What we did discuss, also endless times, is that many ACU volunteers are not happy to work for the techincs team to spend and spand as they please.
We tried everything..reasoning, making appointments, giving budgets. The conclusion has always been the same. These people have their hands on the dough and thay just do what the fuck they want with it.
We never see proper financial reports. The balans is a far away mirage so nobody really has a proper clear inview over the financial state of our company. It's always a vague more or less, expenses are not specified and there are no "toelichting" to the list of costs and incoms.
To change this also has been demanded several times but after ten years we are still waiting to see it happen.
At best, some papers got out at time of high crisis..and then went back in the black pit.
It takes an enormous amount of energy to squeeze simple basic information and to break through this silent obstracism and excuses that you encounter every time you are simply asking for what should be on the table to begin with. So forgive people for not always feeeling to put up with it.
A selected finances group has been formed, a few years ago. But they never got to see any real financial stuff..as I said, there are always milions of little excuses that impeach any real concrete development. Where there's no will, there's no way.
Besides, the ACU administration is seriously amatorial. Having knowledge of book keeping myself, I can only urge that we finally hire someone with proper skills to do this job, which can for one provide us with some transparency over ACU finances and put an end to the privileges that this structure implies.
Self appointed managerial positions:
Some characters like to believe they are actually directing the place.
They behave as if they are in charge and make the rest feel it. If you are doing bar, or anything else, expect someone to walk up to you and tell you what to do, even though you are the one busy with the work, or perfectly capable of handeling yourself.
The comments given are not finalized to improve working together, they are the expression of a self fulfillment from who's placing them on you.
This have a strong impact on all the new volunteers, often intimidated by these attitudes. And they create huge conflicts with the people that are not easily intimidated (I will place myself in this second category, since I told a couple of people to go f... themselves more than once).
Still, they do not stop nor seem to have any understanding of it. Every time you can start all over again, here also having to waste energy and time to contain these people.
In the past ten years, I heard from dozen of volunteers and ex volunteers that they didn't like to work in the ACU in this atmosphere, lots of them even left because of it..
But the more we tried to bring these problematics on the table, the more these people pulls the strings and sits on top of the ACU as their own property.
A practical example.
After the face book message and Indymedia communicate, a couple of people, living upstairs from ACU, went and bought a really expensive lock, with certified keys.
They put the new lock on and in fact this certificate remained in their hands. That, despite all nice bla bla, means that they have the last word on who can or actually cannot get a key from ACU, which is something unheard of. Even claimed it was a collective decision (which was absolutely not).
It is easy to talk about collective decisions when finally only one has the actual power to make it happen..or not.
As a anarchist sympatizer (well, I consider myself an anarchist, but don't want to go in the details of my political believes) I think it's ridiculus to pretend that there can be a democracy, or equality, or how you want to call it when the means of power are all in the same hands. Because finally I can agree or disagree, but I will never be in the position to make anything happen without the approval of who's holding these means..
And this is the history on how few people came to control the place. By taking little piece by little piece, forcing things through, discussing decisions afterwards and always cooking some nice reasonable story to justify prevarications.
When too much pressure was put on turning around a decision huge dramas and distractions are created around different issues..and the decision go through, even though many do not agree with them.
For who's interested to know, the new lock didn't make it to last half an hour on the door. But do we have to come to this?
ACU meetings
After 20 years of participation in several groups, collectives, squats, I would describe ACU meetings as one of the most undemocratic and hypocritical experience ever.
The organ of the meeting, which should be the space of encounter of people and ideas, where decisions are made together, are a farce.
We live in a bureaucracy of rules and small unspoken appointments, where to me appears clear only one thing: decisions go through only when certain people agree. If not, they do not go through.
Of course things are never put on the table like this..there are many manipulative ways to play this game.
I can bring many examples of it, but the list would be endless.
Just one that came up after months of discussing how to make decisions: we have a written appointment about benefits that litereally says "a proposal is brought to the meeting and then people can agree/disagree with it". Amnesty international group asked us to have a benefit, many people disagreed, the benefit took place anyway.
On the other hand, on different issues, the same disagreement but from different people counts as a veto on making things happen.
And every time, afterwards, comes the nice explanation why in that case is so, and in the other case so...
Frustrations build up to the roof and nothing changes.
I find it hard to stand up to this unless by playing the very same game, which i do not like.
But making appointments together seems to me an impossibility cause people are simply not respecting them and problems or issues are not discussed in an objective and honest way.
To be completely fair, I would add that there has been a strong incapability from everyone, myself included, to address this problem in a proper way.
Incapabilty mostly to act upon it, which becomes difficult when you share a place together but have not the same accessibility to information, money or real decisional power.
Political views:
Here I have the biggest critics on what has been communicated in the posts.
I don't see nazis walking around the ACU, and as far as I know there are no rapists amongst us either.
What I do se, though, is that people are welcome to join the ACU collective despite their political believes. If they can deliver the job, it's all fine.
For me, a collective that acts on this criteria cannot be taken serious in the hold on to certain political positions, as we do in our ABC booklet. You can find there a nice description on how the ACU is supporting small independent groups, is pro squatting, alternative, political left outside governmental structure and so on. This is what we, as ACU, declare to stand for.
Then, we actually work in an environment in which people believe that police is there for your own protection, or that the Ubica people getting arrested after resisting the eviction just got what they deserved. And these people are voicing their opinions as part of the ACU, cause they also work there.
So on which bases and for what are we all calling ourselves a collective, when we do not share any basic ground of political understanding?
The ACU should not be a black blok place in my opinion. I am not in favor of ultra feminism or including people only when they wear an anarchist patch on their jacket. But to ovethrow completely the meaning and accept views that sadly remind me of the VVD party is something completely different.
There are opinions that are in conflict and contradiction with each other and are creating a fracture within our group which is getting without solution.
I also cannot bring myself to compromise about "loving police".
Conclusions:
I will attend the meeting on the 6th and I have no fear of signing this letter. What I say here I already said before within the ACU.
I just hope that there will be an active participation and most of all that people will focus on how to act upon this unsustainable situation before we loose this place for good.
I will bring some proposals on serious changes that are needed if anything is to get solved.
I hope to see many faces there and that people will realize that as it is important to bring this structure down, it is even more important to replce it with something clean and concrete.
That means also being serious about taking responsibility back and working together to keep the ACU alive.
Margherita