Andrea Popelka

"The Casino for Social Medicine is run hundred percent by unpaid labor -meaning all four daily bartending shifts, weekly accounting, events coordination, tax filing, bathroom cleaning are all done by people who work together without pay. The rent is made by the sale of drinks. There is a very little buffer left. This economic arrangement came out of necessity, rather than being the product of insufficient wishing otherwise. Equally, it is an outcome of our original priorities. We wanted to offer rent-free space where social organizing and culture making can meet. Such spaces are very few in Berlin's fast gentrifying and fascist landscape. Charging for rent or having entry fees at the door would have felt like pumping our own (current or potential) comrades. We were not interested in running the bar space as an extractivist business. Even though we had money dreams such as starting a foundation to support organizers to rest and paying each other’s health insurance, we also wanted a space where a visitor would need very little to no money to stay – stay warm, stay connected, stay still. The fact that the Casino is still open and in fact has by now stabilized both financially and in labor, is a testimony against the prevalent local attitude of waiting for institutional approval and stability."

"For instance, the bartenders here have a little bio printed out at the bar, which says their name, what languages they speak, what they like to talk about, what they can help you with and also what they need. This really changes the nature of being a bartender: you are here as a human, and you immediately have much more interesting conversations. And many of the bartenders had to make another bio because all their listed needs got met just through having that bio on display. We have a banner at the front that says: “Needs are not scary.” But they require a kind of social gluing, or social prescribing, as it’s called by the NHS in the UK. So one of the functions of the Casino is that it is a connecting spot, a place where people can come and have their needs met between each other. This is why we call it a clinic. Another example is that we host help desks where people offer skills they have, for instance someone who speaks German, Arabic and English comes in for a couple of hours to help out with bureaucracy. People are just so happy to actually talk to someone. We’ve had a help desk about top surgery, another one about digital security."

Helpful Parapraxis editorial about groups.

Jule sent me this 🧡

"Ein grosser Teil des Lebens bleibt immer unausgesprochen, damit muss man sich abfinden. Aber wir müssen uns beeilen, um möglichst viel vom menschlichen Leben dem Chaos zu entreissen."

“FZA: I think this has a lot to do with what Amílcar Cabral said: “Agir para pensar melhor” (“Take action to think better”)”

I'm coming across Madeline Gin's work for the first time, exciting!!

Josef Lackner, Grottenbad Flora, Innsbruck, AT, 1969–1970© Architekturzentrum Wien, Sammlung, Foto: Foto Feil

Flora Yin-Wong brought me here

liv wutang brought me here

Maroon leaders who were also eminent spiritual practitioners and healers, and their legacies persist through the modern era. 18th-century Black political leaders in the Caribbean, including Mackandal in Saint Domingue and Queen Nanny and Three-Fingered Jack in Jamaica, were well known as healers and ritual practitioners in addition to being insurgents."