SERC
Organizing page for March 18th mini-SERC Somerville.
DS4SI wants to host 5-15 SERCs in the first 100 days of the Trump presidency. In support of this, our (Parts & Crafts and Public Lab's) goal is to host two events in Somerville between now and May -- a trial run on Saturday March 18, at Parts and Crafts, the second in early May, location TBD, as a more evolved version. We would love you to be a part of it!
Interested in helping us plan? March 18 is a trial run -- we're going to throw a bunch of stuff against the wall and see what sticks. Want to help us put it all together? Email contact@partsandcrafts.org
Mark your calendars!
SERC 1: Saturday March 18 10-4 pm with pizza to follow 577 Somerville Ave, Somerville (at Parts & Crafts)
What's a SERC?
In emergencies like hurricanes and tsunamis, emergency response centers exist to coordinate evacuations or provide services like temporary housing, food, and water. We want you to join us in re-imagining response centers to take on the real and pressing social emergency that we are facing today. (via DS4SI)
Social Emergency Response Centers (SERCs) will be temporary, emergent, and creative pop-up spaces co-led by activists and artists around the US. They will function as both an artistic gesture and a practical solution. As such we will need to figure out the balance, like how will we feed people--and their hunger for justice? How will we create a shelter--where it's safe to bring your whole damn self? What will reconstruction--of civil society--look like? Here is a rough diagram that we’re excited to have people add to:
Here's a diagram to help you imagine it!
Planning
Interested in being a part of it? Here's how!
Run a workshop. Workshops are food for the brain, body, or soul, and can be on anything from screenprinting to Standing Rock, decompression strategies to anti-displacement. What do you want to learn? What do you want to share?
Build a cohort. This is an opportunity for us to strengthen our collaboration muscles and build a cohort of people -- Somervillians, artists, old timers, crafty folks, educators, hipsters, and activists of all stripes -- to reach across boundaries and help to lift each other up.
Intergenerational. If you've been around the block and have seen all this a million times -- or if you're just-recently-not-a-kid and are terrified out of your mind - we want your perspective and your voice. CITS, Full Circle cohort, youth leaders, and youth organizers: you especially are invited!
Somerville local (and Cambridge, and Medford, and Arlington, you too!) Occupation, privatization, state-sanctioned violence, displacement, and disruption of everyday life: Trump didn't invent these things. Likewise, strategies for creative resistance, non-engagement, and grassroots solution have been happening right here at home for decades.
Sessions
We're looking for people to organize sessions for the day, from one to two hours each. We're hoping to have a session of each of these types running at a time:
- 1 crafts-oriented
- 1 "learn about this"
- 1 brainstorm-oriented
- downtime -- for "taking a break"
- 1 for young people (various ages)
- accessible to teens, best facilitated by teens (any good workshop should be accessible)
Currently planned sessions
- Know Your Rights workshop - by Cora V
- Drum painting - by Katie Gradowski
- Timelapse Pollution Monitoring Kit - by Jeff (@warren)
- ...more coming very soon, see below for ideas listing