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A Community Organizing Center in Ypsi

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The General Defense Committee (GDC) of Washtenaw along with other radical community and anti-capitalist organizations have committed to finding and buying a property to transform into a multi-purpose, anti-capitalist community center and union hall. This will be a pro-black, pro-brown, pro-women, pro-immigrant, pro-LGBTQ, and anti-fascist space.

To understand and support this space, it is important to understand the principles behind the GDC and the work we do. GDC is a revolutionary anti-capitalist organization with the primary purpose of broad defense of the interests of the working class. We believe a diversity of tactics is our strength and organize with all revolutionary anti-capitalists, regardless of their specific ideologies or affiliations with other organizations. This cooperation does not extend to the elections, institutions, or organizations of the owning class, so as not to divert us from our primary purpose of anti-capitalist revolution.

We are self-supporting in our financing, working collectively to uplift the organization and our work as a whole with what we are each able to give, both in material and physical support. We are non-professional, and we are not separate from the people. We believe in working with the people who are most affected, not to speak or organize for them, but to listen to and organize with them.

The potential for a community center like this is boundless. We, meaning any and all in the local communities, decide together what we need from this space. As long as it keeps us safe, fosters our connections to each other, builds our collective power, remains anti-capitalist in principle, and defends and promotes the world we want to see, it is a welcome idea. Some possibilities for this space include:

  • Union meetings
  • Summits and trainings
  • Political education and theory reading groups
  • Workshops and skillshares
  • Learning skills for self-defense
  • After-school programs and childcare
  • Tool and resource sharing
  • Benefit concerts and events
  • Community meals
  • An emergency shelter
  • A space to hold and operate community/organizing materials such as a printing press, button makers, t-shirts, etc.

For continuing and expanding our work as the GDC, we believe a common space for organizing would be a complete game-changer in our collective work. Currently, our capacity to hold meetings and events is limited by whatever space may happen to be available. We believe we must remedy this with a space that is not only consistent for holding our meetings, but a space that we control as a collective that is not reliant on a single person’s resources or an external space’s availability. The consistency of a secure, stable location would increase our capacity to make meetings accessible digitally, increase our access to collective materials for propaganda, mutual aid and other tasks, and would rule out 1.) the power imbalance of meeting at the same person’s home, and 2.) losing flexibility to a space that may not be available for use when we need it. Having a consistent space will allow us to improve our reliability, accessibility, and accountability.

We believe this dream is not only achievable, but absolutely necessary for the goals of supporting each other’s projects and needs. We believe that we are all able to achieve more when we work collectively, and that the work we do is built on the foundation of our relationships to each other. It is important for us to have a consistently accessible space that is in no one’s hands but our own, so that we are not operating on the schedules and within the limits of people whose goals are antagonistic to ours. We deserve to not just survive, but thrive. We deserve care and connection. We deserve to have all of our needs met, without working to the bone in attempt to meet them. We deserve so much more out of life than what is being given to us, and the only way to get it is to organize ourselves. Building our own space for connection, sharing, dreaming, and struggling will give us the platform we need to make that happen!

We cannot make this dream real without abundant, wide-spread support. This dream requires not only lots of money, but lots of time and energy from a wide range of people. We want your excitement and engagement, and most of all, we want to be here to support you in every way imaginable. Let’s see what’s possible together!

**for those who donated to this fundraiser in the past -- we had to start a new Go Fund Me in order to transfer the funds into our bank, but we still have the money you donated reserved for this purpose! it's all been transferred into this fundraiser page in order to reflect the amount we've made so far in total.**
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    Organizer

    Emily Hoepner
    Organizer
    Ypsilanti, MI

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