Defense of the Hotel BAUEN Pt. 1

The workers at the Hotel BAUEN Cooperative recently held a gathering of solidarity activists to announce their plan of struggle against the eviction order and for their full expropriation of the building. For now, I will just post the list of upcoming activities. Later, I will post my thoughts and experiences of the events and the month of struggle as a whole. I will also later be posting an email get-active that people can send to the judges and politicians involved as a statement of solidarity with the cooperative workers. However, before posting the calendar of events there are a few things that immediately struck me that I want to mention.

On the day of this gathering, the workers of the Hotel BAUEN came with announcements and tasks. They had stacks of thousands of leaflets explaining their situation along with a list of important locations in the city to distribute such information. It was the sort of seriousness in organizing that I rarely see in the United States and shows the absolute importance of community support for their struggle. The locations they chose reflected a real diversity in their outreach efforts as well as a general attempt at communication with the public.

Included in the list of events are a number of cultural events as well as typical protest organizing. This is an important element so often left out in organizing in the United States, and it tends to make our organizing dry, boring, and exclusive. Artistic groups are actively doing this sort of solidarity as a means to defend BAUEN and the rest of the cooperative movement.

Lastly, I’m impressed by the strategic organizing being done. The demands are not purely defensive, as they easily could be. Rather than simply calling for the eviction order to be reversed, they are using this mobilizing opportunity to take an offensive stance. They are using this moment to simultaneously call for full expropriation of the building for the cooperative. In the face of state repression they are maintaining an astounding strength and clarity.

Month of activities in defense of the Hotel BAUEN Worker Cooperative:

• July 27^th and 28^th – The band Ataque 77 will play a concert in support of the cooperative.
• August 3^rd – The San Telmo neighborhood assembly is organizing a show with La Covacha and Poder Sikuri as a fundraiser to defend the attack.
• August 6^th – We will meet at the doors of the BAUEN hotel with a murga and theatre group to lead a funeral procession to the office of the judge involved in the eviction order. We will be mourning the loss of the right to work while the cooperative workers present a letter of demands.
• August 9^th – Press conference at the Hotel with the culture committee of the worker cooperative. A social and political atmosphere with artists and musicians.
• August 16^th – The play “Maquinando” will be shown in solidarity with the struggle. The play is the story of the expropriation of printing factory in Buenos Aires.
• August 24^th – In the final day of the eviction notice there will be a large rally outside of the BAUEN Hotel.

I will post more of these events as they come.