Before I begin I'd like to acknowledge 
that we are gathered here

on the unceded territories of the Squamish, 
Tsleil-Watuth and Musqueam people.

I do this with the utmost 
respect and gratitude,

especially as I'm here to talk about 
community and the politics of space.

I spend a lot of time thinking about 
the role that physical spaces play

in building and sustaining social movements,

and I've become convinced over time

that the way that we create and hold space 
for each other profoundly shapes our sense

of who we are, what we value, and what 
we are capable of together.

Six years ago my partner Vinetta 
and I created Rhizome

in the Mount Pleasant 
neighborhood of Vancouver.

Rhizome is a place where people come every day
to drink coffee eat sandwiches and curry and soup;

but that's only part of the story 
and I want to tell you the other part;

but in order to do that I need to tell you first 
a little bit about where I come from.

In 2004, I moved here from San Francisco

where I had worked for a decade 
as a migrant rights organizer.

I left behind a vibrant community of struggle
and a city that's good at telling its own story.

Doing that work in San Francisco, 
I was always reminded

that I was part of something 
bigger than myself.

I think that that sense of belonging had a lot 
to do with the kind of work that I was doing,

but it was also definitely fed by my surroundings.

Every day I would walk to work past murals

that silently told me that nothing is 
ever won without a struggle,

and that collective liberation is possible.

The amazing thing about these murals is that

thousands of other people walked 
by them every day as well,

and we all received that same education.

Those murals tell stories of indigenous resistance,

of migrant rights organizing
and of revolutionary struggles

for racial and economic justice.

They taught us that we are all 
products of a shared history.

So with these murals as my guide I felt 
a deep sense of connection and possibility,

but I don't think that I fully appreciated

the power of this very public and 
very shared political education

until after I left that city and moved 
to a place where I had no roots.

When I came to Vancouver 
I felt a deep sense of loss.

The forces of erasure here 
felt so powerful and so violent.

The more I talked to people here 
the more I came to understand

how this history and the constant 
rebuilding of this city

make it very difficult for us 
to connect with each other.

I wondered how many stories 
had been erased here.

My partner and I had always had 
a dream of being able to create a space

that would welcome people 
from diverse backgrounds;

where people would be able 
to be truly seen and recognized;

and where we would be able 
to help us connect with each other.

We wanted to create 
a living room for all of us,

and especially for those who 
had been pushed out of other spaces,

and made to feel invisible.

We wanted to use space to show that 
our communities face similar challenges,

and that we can envision solutions together.

So when we first walked into the space 
that would eventually become Rhizome,

we knew that we were 
in the right place.

Our new landlord showed us around 
and he showed us the place on the floor

where he had laid the floorboards 
one summer back in the 1950's

as a teenager during his 
summer break from high school.

He pointed out the 
100 year old tin ceiling,

and he told us fantastic stories

of things that may or may not 
have happened

in that very room over the years.

For us, all of those stories 
were seeds of possibility.

As soon as we opened in 2006, 
people started coming

from all walks of life 
and from diverse communities,

and it turned out that our personal 
need to create a shared living room

was a need that many other
people felt as well.

And since then we've hosted 
over 1,000 events

in collaboration with 
hundreds of community groups.

Many different communities 
really do now consider this space their home

and have brought pieces 
of themselves to it.

For example every year we host a traditional 
latin-american Day of the Dead celebration,

and every year I watch 
as people meet each other

while placing photos 
of their ancestors on the altar.

Over the years in this space 
we've done all of the things

that build community.

We've been able to share our stories, 
we've learned about critical issues together

through panel discussions 
and film screenings,

we've argued and debated 
and planned together,

we've celebrated our victories, 
and we've done all this in a space

that's intentionally multi-generational, 
multi-lingual and multi-racial.

Recently we've started hosting 
courses on community organizing

to help grassroots groups 
become more focused and strategic.

We've created space for all of us 
to be able to imagine a better future,

and now to strategize 
around how to get there.

Over time this really has 
become a shared project

and it's way bigger than anything that 
Vinetta or I could ever have imagined.

It's fully supported 
by the people who use it.

We've been able to experiment with 
different economic models on a small scale.

We created systems so that 
everyone can eat here

regardless of how much 
money they have,

and so that hundreds of people 
can contribute what they have,

to be able to help maintain this 
as a shared resource.

Most importantly Rhizome has allowed 
for connections between different groups

that rarely come into meaningful contact
elsewhere in this city.

What we do at Rhizome 
is explicitly anti-profit,

it's about re-claiming cooperative values 
in a commodified culture.

Continuing to hold this space

has started to feel absolutely vital.

Every day we're reminded that the world

around us is driven by market values,

and that what we do at Rhizome

is fundamentally different.

We've come to see that our work is part

of a broader struggle to define the 
very soul of this ever-changing city.

But this struggle only 
points out to me again

what all of those murals in San Francisco 
were telling me all along:

it takes a community working together to
create something that's worth fighting for,

and then it takes a shared commitment 
to hold on to that thing.

So we have our own mural 
now on the wall,

and it reminds us every day 
of what brings us together.

It reminds us that space like ours 
can create cracks in the system,

and that those cracks can give us all 
a transformative sense of possibility.