WEBVTT

00:00:14.576 --> 00:00:17.508
Before I begin I'd like to acknowledge 
that we are gathered here

00:00:17.508 --> 00:00:22.274
on the unceded territories of the Squamish, 
Tsleil-Watuth and Musqueam people.

00:00:22.274 --> 00:00:24.841
I do this with the utmost 
respect and gratitude,

00:00:24.841 --> 00:00:31.285
especially as I'm here to talk about 
community and the politics of space.

00:00:31.285 --> 00:00:34.902
I spend a lot of time thinking about 
the role that physical spaces play

00:00:34.902 --> 00:00:37.811
in building and sustaining social movements,

00:00:37.811 --> 00:00:39.618
and I've become convinced over time

00:00:39.618 --> 00:00:43.867
that the way that we create and hold space 
for each other profoundly shapes our sense

00:00:43.867 --> 00:00:48.699
of who we are, what we value, and what 
we are capable of together.

00:00:48.699 --> 00:00:52.831
Six years ago my partner Vinetta 
and I created Rhizome

00:00:52.831 --> 00:00:55.295
in the Mount Pleasant 
neighborhood of Vancouver.

00:00:55.295 --> 00:01:01.383
Rhizome is a place where people come every day
to drink coffee eat sandwiches and curry and soup;

00:01:01.383 --> 00:01:05.316
but that's only part of the story 
and I want to tell you the other part;

00:01:05.316 --> 00:01:10.426
but in order to do that I need to tell you first 
a little bit about where I come from.

00:01:10.426 --> 00:01:13.518
In 2004, I moved here from San Francisco

00:01:13.518 --> 00:01:16.979
where I had worked for a decade 
as a migrant rights organizer.

00:01:16.979 --> 00:01:23.074
I left behind a vibrant community of struggle
and a city that's good at telling its own story.

00:01:23.074 --> 00:01:25.847
Doing that work in San Francisco, 
I was always reminded

00:01:25.847 --> 00:01:29.628
that I was part of something 
bigger than myself.

00:01:29.628 --> 00:01:33.908
I think that that sense of belonging had a lot 
to do with the kind of work that I was doing,

00:01:33.908 --> 00:01:37.074
but it was also definitely fed by my surroundings.

00:01:37.074 --> 00:01:39.487
Every day I would walk to work past murals

00:01:39.487 --> 00:01:43.490
that silently told me that nothing is 
ever won without a struggle,

00:01:43.490 --> 00:01:46.851
and that collective liberation is possible.

00:01:46.851 --> 00:01:48.639
The amazing thing about these murals is that

00:01:48.639 --> 00:01:51.752
thousands of other people walked 
by them every day as well,

00:01:51.752 --> 00:01:55.140
and we all received that same education.

00:01:55.140 --> 00:01:58.216
Those murals tell stories of indigenous resistance,

00:01:58.216 --> 00:02:01.968
of migrant rights organizing
and of revolutionary struggles

00:02:01.968 --> 00:02:04.121
for racial and economic justice.

00:02:04.121 --> 00:02:08.480
They taught us that we are all 
products of a shared history.

00:02:08.480 --> 00:02:14.229
So with these murals as my guide I felt 
a deep sense of connection and possibility,

00:02:14.229 --> 00:02:16.290
but I don't think that I fully appreciated

00:02:16.290 --> 00:02:19.983
the power of this very public and 
very shared political education

00:02:19.983 --> 00:02:25.726
until after I left that city and moved 
to a place where I had no roots.

00:02:25.726 --> 00:02:29.882
When I came to Vancouver 
I felt a deep sense of loss.

00:02:29.882 --> 00:02:35.284
The forces of erasure here 
felt so powerful and so violent.

00:02:35.284 --> 00:02:38.452
The more I talked to people here 
the more I came to understand

00:02:38.452 --> 00:02:41.859
how this history and the constant 
rebuilding of this city

00:02:41.859 --> 00:02:45.348
make it very difficult for us 
to connect with each other.

00:02:45.348 --> 00:02:49.616
I wondered how many stories 
had been erased here.

00:02:49.616 --> 00:02:53.484
My partner and I had always had 
a dream of being able to create a space

00:02:53.484 --> 00:02:56.315
that would welcome people 
from diverse backgrounds;

00:02:56.315 --> 00:03:00.111
where people would be able 
to be truly seen and recognized;

00:03:00.111 --> 00:03:04.724
and where we would be able 
to help us connect with each other.

00:03:04.724 --> 00:03:06.868
We wanted to create 
a living room for all of us,

00:03:06.868 --> 00:03:10.118
and especially for those who 
had been pushed out of other spaces,

00:03:10.118 --> 00:03:12.868
and made to feel invisible.

00:03:12.868 --> 00:03:17.022
We wanted to use space to show that 
our communities face similar challenges,

00:03:17.022 --> 00:03:20.635
and that we can envision solutions together.

00:03:20.635 --> 00:03:24.363
So when we first walked into the space 
that would eventually become Rhizome,

00:03:24.363 --> 00:03:26.724
we knew that we were 
in the right place.

00:03:26.724 --> 00:03:30.949
Our new landlord showed us around 
and he showed us the place on the floor

00:03:30.949 --> 00:03:34.539
where he had laid the floorboards 
one summer back in the 1950's

00:03:34.539 --> 00:03:38.289
as a teenager during his 
summer break from high school.

00:03:38.289 --> 00:03:41.114
He pointed out the 
100 year old tin ceiling,

00:03:41.114 --> 00:03:43.536
and he told us fantastic stories

00:03:43.536 --> 00:03:45.591
of things that may or may not 
have happened

00:03:45.591 --> 00:03:47.989
in that very room over the years.

00:03:47.989 --> 00:03:52.214
For us, all of those stories 
were seeds of possibility.

00:03:52.214 --> 00:03:55.868
As soon as we opened in 2006, 
people started coming

00:03:55.868 --> 00:03:58.926
from all walks of life 
and from diverse communities,

00:03:58.926 --> 00:04:02.418
and it turned out that our personal 
need to create a shared living room

00:04:02.418 --> 00:04:05.495
was a need that many other
people felt as well.

00:04:05.495 --> 00:04:08.158
And since then we've hosted 
over 1,000 events

00:04:08.158 --> 00:04:12.330
in collaboration with 
hundreds of community groups.

00:04:12.330 --> 00:04:15.945
Many different communities 
really do now consider this space their home

00:04:15.945 --> 00:04:18.367
and have brought pieces 
of themselves to it.

00:04:18.367 --> 00:04:23.201
For example every year we host a traditional 
latin-american Day of the Dead celebration,

00:04:23.201 --> 00:04:25.918
and every year I watch 
as people meet each other

00:04:25.918 --> 00:04:29.364
while placing photos 
of their ancestors on the altar.

00:04:29.364 --> 00:04:32.286
Over the years in this space 
we've done all of the things

00:04:32.286 --> 00:04:34.081
that build community.

00:04:34.081 --> 00:04:38.230
We've been able to share our stories, 
we've learned about critical issues together

00:04:38.230 --> 00:04:40.752
through panel discussions 
and film screenings,

00:04:40.752 --> 00:04:43.856
we've argued and debated 
and planned together,

00:04:43.856 --> 00:04:47.782
we've celebrated our victories, 
and we've done all this in a space

00:04:47.782 --> 00:04:53.356
that's intentionally multi-generational, 
multi-lingual and multi-racial.

00:04:53.356 --> 00:04:56.836
Recently we've started hosting 
courses on community organizing

00:04:56.836 --> 00:05:00.451
to help grassroots groups 
become more focused and strategic.

00:05:00.451 --> 00:05:04.004
We've created space for all of us 
to be able to imagine a better future,

00:05:04.004 --> 00:05:08.329
and now to strategize 
around how to get there.

00:05:08.329 --> 00:05:11.692
Over time this really has 
become a shared project

00:05:11.692 --> 00:05:16.228
and it's way bigger than anything that 
Vinetta or I could ever have imagined.

00:05:16.228 --> 00:05:19.348
It's fully supported 
by the people who use it.

00:05:19.348 --> 00:05:24.164
We've been able to experiment with 
different economic models on a small scale.

00:05:24.164 --> 00:05:26.614
We created systems so that 
everyone can eat here

00:05:26.614 --> 00:05:28.893
regardless of how much 
money they have,

00:05:28.893 --> 00:05:32.049
and so that hundreds of people 
can contribute what they have,

00:05:32.049 --> 00:05:36.393
to be able to help maintain this 
as a shared resource.

00:05:36.393 --> 00:05:39.838
Most importantly Rhizome has allowed 
for connections between different groups

00:05:39.838 --> 00:05:44.136
that rarely come into meaningful contact
elsewhere in this city.

00:05:44.136 --> 00:05:47.329
What we do at Rhizome 
is explicitly anti-profit,

00:05:47.329 --> 00:05:51.834
it's about re-claiming cooperative values 
in a commodified culture.

00:05:51.834 --> 00:05:53.492
Continuing to hold this space

00:05:53.492 --> 00:05:56.299
has started to feel absolutely vital.

00:05:56.299 --> 00:05:57.924
Every day we're reminded that the world

00:05:57.924 --> 00:06:00.438
around us is driven by market values,

00:06:00.438 --> 00:06:02.054
and that what we do at Rhizome

00:06:02.054 --> 00:06:04.032
is fundamentally different.

00:06:04.032 --> 00:06:06.417
We've come to see that our work is part

00:06:06.417 --> 00:06:11.854
of a broader struggle to define the 
very soul of this ever-changing city.

00:06:11.854 --> 00:06:14.525
But this struggle only 
points out to me again

00:06:14.525 --> 00:06:19.321
what all of those murals in San Francisco 
were telling me all along:

00:06:19.321 --> 00:06:23.525
it takes a community working together to
create something that's worth fighting for,

00:06:23.525 --> 00:06:28.297
and then it takes a shared commitment 
to hold on to that thing.

00:06:28.297 --> 00:06:31.310
So we have our own mural 
now on the wall,

00:06:31.310 --> 00:06:34.809
and it reminds us every day 
of what brings us together.

00:06:34.809 --> 00:06:38.642
It reminds us that space like ours 
can create cracks in the system,

00:06:38.642 --> 00:06:43.784
and that those cracks can give us all 
a transformative sense of possibility.