Statement of Solidarity with the Student Encampment
We support the student-led movement on campus to pressure WUR to divest, boycott, and disclose ties with Israeli institutions and companies in apartheid, occupation, genocide, and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. Since May, students are camping on the bridge between Orion and Forum, months of negotiation with the Board, months were nothing has changed! We stand behind the students demands and the Boards to reorient its hypocritical and ridiculous stance to ''academic freedom'' toward justice and accountability.
Upcoming Events
Movie Screening: Little Palestine, Diary of a Siege
Join us together with other organizations for the Palestine Cinema Days. On the 2nd of November, all over the world, Palestinian movies are shown in the cinemas.
We are happy to have a movie screening traveling to Wageningen. On the 2nd November 2024, 7.30 PM at NudeToekomst, we will be streaming 'Little Palestine, a Diary of a sige', by Abdallah Al Khatib, followed by a discussion. Drinks, snacks & merchandise, Palestinelibre moctails with Palestine cola, vegan Manakish with zaatar will be provided by Strange Streken.
About the movie:
The movie follows a womans' daily life in the Palestinian refugee camp Yarmouk in Damascus which is under siege by the Assad regime. Abdallah Al-Khatib lives in the camp, grabs a camera and films for two years. The result is determined, optimistic, shocking and heartbreaking, and full of deep humanity.
Everyone is welcome, and entrance is free.
Lunch Seminar: Book Launch & Conversation 'Daybreak in Gaza'
We are excited to have Mahmoud Muna and Matthew Teller come to present their newly edited book 'Daybreak in Gaza' , a compilation of stories collected by the editors that seek to push back against the dehumanization at the heart of the Gaza genocide by illuminating the human spirit of a place under attack.
When: 5th November 2024, 11.45-13.45 o'clock
Where: Leeuwenborch building, Hollandseweg 1, 6706 KN Wageningen, room B0067
The program will consist of a panel discussion, readings from the book, followed by a Q&A and book signing, where you get the chance to get your own copy!
All profits of the book sales will go to 'Medical Aid for Palestinians'.
This event is joining a series of book presentations in the Netherlands, in Groningen, Utrecht, and Amsterdam. We co-organized the event together with Rural Sociology chairgroup at Wageningen University, and literary scholar Marinne Dagevos. who is part of Podium voor Palestine.
Workshop: Collaborative Forces. Building Community Through Activism
We invite you to our workshop: ''Collaborative Forces. Building Community Through Activism''
on November 6, 5:00 PM - 7:30 PM at the Clockhouse, Generaal Foulkesweg 37, Wageningen.
If you are interested, please fill out the form to sign up for this Activist Academy session:
https://forms.gle/ciKr9EJkZTjQ4ec48
Snacks and drinks will be provided. You are invited to stay for dinner after the workshop! Please indicate in the above forms if you would like to join us.
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Activism is work against the odds. In attempts to bring change to a complex system, activists face oppression, exhaustion and isolation. To sustain our efforts, we need to find sources of energy and nourishment that allow us to continue doing our work. But what keeps us together? What makes us continuously show up for each other, at meetings and actions?
We think community is a central notion. Community is another way to understand, organize society, and to live life - an alternative to 'individualistic society'. Communities can support and strengthen the individual by creating relationships that promote collective action and social change, allowing them to deviate from the hegemonic model of capitalist patriarchy.
In this activist academy session, we want to discuss what community means to us and offer a reflection space on our (Wageningen) activist groups. We aim to explore elements of community and together reflect how these elements support our work already, and/or what keeps us from doing so. We will have individual exercises, group exercises and discussions to dive into these topics.
This workshop will be hosted by Kick and Foxie, two Master students and activists that are passionate about community building and activist well-being. The workshop is connected to their thesis project with the Sociology of Development and Change Group and the insights of the workshop will be used in their Master Thesis and design a course with OtherWise on Community Building in Activism.
Hii everyone 🍉
The lino print workshop that took place in June brought to life this beautiful collective print designed and carved by a small group of passionate people in Wageningen.
We are so proud to announce that we started with the printing and distribution of the poster with an aim to raise money for the organization of Musicians Without Borders in Palestine.
You can find more information on how to get your poster and make a donation here:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1U8C2ZZvHz33kZA3pmqKn58FgDFtuxBDk5TkP_XdSqgE/edit
Good to Know
We would like to invite you to an upcoming lunch session around the topic of Women’s Health & Wellbeing in Wageningen!
We see there is some energy around this topic and we want to bring relevant stakeholders together to 1) get inspired by running initiatives, 2) discuss what issues are at play in Wageningen, and 3) discuss what we can do to tackle said issues! We don’t know if we will reach any concrete steps within this session, but we hope it can be the spark to a bigger flame.
On Tuesday 5th of November, from 12.00 to 13.30, you’re welcome at Thuis for food and a chat. A delicious lunch will be cooked by volunteers – and donations will be more than welcome! The program will roughly be the following:
12:00 – 12:30h: welcome and presentation (including questions) from 2 local projects involving students
12:30 – 13:30h: semi-guided discussion in smaller groups (minor facilitation, the aim is to facilitate meaningful conversations among attendants)
Recent Events
Workshop: The house modernity built
When: 30 September, 5.30-8 PM
Where: old library, Clockhouse in Wageningen
Register here: https://forms.gle/miHyjUEtsN9QM7Du6
The social cartography “The house modernity built”, developed by the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures Collective (GTDF), was inspired by Audre Lorde’s famous insight that “… the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.”
How do we collectively build alternative modes of existence on a planet facing unprecedented crises?
''The House Modernity Built'' is a metaphor that invites conversation around the modern/colonial global imaginary in which being is reduced to knowing, profits take precedent over people, the earth is treated as a resource rather than a living relation, and the shiny promises of states, markets, and Western reason are subsidized by the disavowed harms of impoverishment, genocide, and environmental destruction.
Using the metaphor of a house, we will explore modernities' architecture through a listening meditation, and craft a house that imagines alternative modes of existence in a context where the house appears to be crumbling, and, indeed, has always been a fantasy.
Palestinian Seed Stories with Vivien Sansour
When: June 20th from 5-7PM
Where: Forum C0221 (hybrid-online)
'Palestinian Seed Stories' by Vivien Sansour is the lecture culminating the seminar series 'Beyond Sustainability: Theorizing Post- and Anti-Capitalist Food Futures'.
To Eat Alone is to Die Alone* Oftentimes when Palestinian farmers put seeds in the ground, they mutter a quiet prayer, “may we eat and may we feed others”. This and many other linguistically profound sayings provide a lens into a cultural design based in the idea that our survival as individuals is connected to the well-being and survival of our community. In this time together we will be invited to let go of our commitments to and preconceptions with “reality” in order to allow ourselves to imagine alternative universes that are inspired by nature and her daring imagination. From the real to the fantastical, we will engage in a hybrid and intimate activity of being physically present with other living beings, while channeling this co-presence into a writing activity that will bring us deeper clarities about who we have been, who we are , and whom we would like to be. This session will take us through a short but profound trip into our own spirits, the spirits of other people, and the seeds that help us weave stories to navigate a world that is in a state of hospice. For instance, how did imagination, nature, and science come together to make it possible for humans to develop bread from a wild grass, and how might this relationship of co-creation between humans and other beings inform our future? These questions call for urgent contemplation, because many of the things we love are dying or are already gone. We will have to learn how to grieve, and even how to die, together, in order to rebirth a new world in which we become “better designers”, together. *A Palestinian Proverb
Vivien Sansour is an artist, storyteller, researcher, and conservationist.
She uses image, sketches, film, soil, seeds, and plants to enliven old cultural tales in contemporary presentations and to advocate for the protection of biodiversity as a cultural and political act. Vivien works with a global network of farmers and seed advocates to promote seed conservation and agrobiodiversity. As part of this effort, she founded the Palestine Heirloom Seed Library, with the goals of finding and reintroducing threatened crop varieties and collecting stories to assert the ownership of seeds by communities.
More information about Vivien: https://viviensansour.com/
Colonialism & Meat
Join us in Impulse this Thursday for "Colonialism & Meat - how white supremacy and cattle changed the 'Americas'"
When: Thursday, June 20, 19:00-21:00
Where: Impulse, Speakers Corner
Did you ever wonder about white supremacy in regards to food? Or how weaponizing animals for enclosure of the commons and ecocide has gone hand in hand? In this event we’ll look at historical events around colonialism and cattle and ask questions about what multispecies justice could look like in the context of decolonizing land, culture and diet.
Chihiro Geuzebroek works as a multidisciplinary activist and artist on restoring and re-storying our relationship with earth and each other. She has been a climate justice speaker,organizer and creative since 2009. Her politics and her Dutch-Bolivian with Quechua ancestry has put her on a path of advocating solidarity for Indigenous struggles for land and environmental justice. She is co-founder of the decolonial foundation Aralez.
Listening to the Silence, Remembering the Roots
When: June 23rd from 3-5PM
Where: Belmonte Arboretum (Generaal Foulkesweg 94-A, Wageningen)
In the Belmonte Arboretum, one can find a great collection of trees from all around the world. However, the diversity of trees all refers to a monoculture narrative, which is Western modern science mood from classification, taxonomy and knowledge as possession. Yet the trees used to hold so many sacred relationships in their original territories in the temple of life. One may start to listen to their hidden stories when listening to the silence because silence has something to tell.
The approach where humans transform life into resources, as owners of the world, and transformed nature into an object of study, has brought us to a condition of Earthlessness and Worldlessness. However, it has not always been the way and it is certainly not our defining human nature. There are other worlds of meaning, where humans hold a radically different relationship to Earth. We want to learn together from these other worlds of meaning which have been protecting life. Like the trees, many of us are also uprooted from our territory, disconnected from our ancestral knowledges. How can we heal the relationships by remembering our roots and start weaving connections?
Weaving Realities invites you to a workshop where we activate our bodies and listen to the stories of the trees, the soil, the water and the wind, and sow a seed of memory.