We have been sitting together to discuss conflicts around a fundraiser that is being organized for us for the end of this month at Blitz. In the middle of possible eviction threats, it has been challenging to do so, but still we managed to find some points we find important to communicate, in order to prevent misunderstandings:
- We want to clarify that neither Knuskrigsmaskinen, nor Seduction, nor Blitz as such are organizing the event. The event is organized by some individuals and we appreciate their support.
- We stand in solidarity with sex workers and oppose any paternalisms or other discrimination against them. We are against wage work which is based on classism, and all the different forms of systemic and coercive violences that come with it, like concurrence, alienation, objectification, health damages etc. Therefore, we are of course also against sex wage work, just as we are against academic wage work, construction site wage work, office wage work and any other of them. This does obviously not mean that we are against individual workers, on the contrary, we are in solidarity with their struggles.
- People have been contacting us with accusative assumptions towards Seduction, suspecting them of controlling what workers can say publicly, “importing people” from Eastern Europe and suspecting Seduction of human trafficking. Of course we took this very seriously and talked with many people, including a person of Seduction, and all those accusations are just plain wrong. We strongly urge the people who made these accusations to reflect on what it means to spread such rumors without any evidence!, and to be more careful with this in the future. Based on these unverified accusations, people even planned a demonstration in front of the fundraiser event.
Here’s some words on the group from our comrades at Blitz as well as from the organizers of the fundraiser:
“Seduction is a strippers collective, founded by a trusted activist and sex worker, that Blitz has worked with before. Seduction consists of all-gender striptease performers, and was founded in order to organize and facilitate community support and fair working conditions for the work they provide.” “Seduction as an entity does not actually make any profit off of their bookings. Seductions goal as a group is to create safer and better working conditions for the dancers organized there. All money made through bookings stays with the sex workers who did a booking and only a small percentage is taken to cover expenses of the group (such as website hosting etc). Its main target is to enable them to work independently and self-organized. No one is making money off of the sex workers, it enables them to work for themselves better and safer. This might settle concerns about collaborating with a “commercial” group. Seduction understands itself as a sex work activist group. Of course the individuals organized there do work and want to get paid decent.” - We share pain and rage against all forms of sexism, oppressive objectification, exploitations, dehumanizing consumption culture and alike, in all areas of life. And we support all empowerment, self-determination, liberation attempts and widenings of agencies, no matter what people do, where they stand and what kind of work they do or not, as long as it happens inside an attitude of ‘we’re not free until all are free’.
- As there were concerns about whether the fundraiser would be safe enough for young people, we want to share Blitz’ guidelines for events: They include a strict ban on hard drugs, including high percentage alcohol. The event is BYOB, so there are no sales of alcohol in the house. There are continuous ‘trivsel’ (awareness) shifts during the night that make sure that any untolerated behaviour will be either consensually settled or removed from the event. Blitz has zero tolerance for sexism, racism, ableism, queerphobia, transphobia, hate against sex workers or other marginalised groups. This includes any kind of harassment, if they’re notified or notice any of these behaviours, the person responsible will be removed from the house immediately.
We guess this should clarify concerns.
For the topic of age restrictions, we imagine that people no matter the age will and can decide for themselves whether they want to see gogo dance or not. - The last point is an important “byproduct” of our last week’s discussions. To avoid misunderstandings: This part is not only about Seduction but about all the different artists contributing to the fundraiser.
In the course of our process, we realized that we don’t want to promote the profiles of entities or people whose goal it is to earn money by selling goods or services, neither those of political parties, NGOs or any other private or state institutions.
We are happy about being in solidarity with and being supported by individuals that share our struggle and support the cause we stand for. We don’t care which groups those individuals are part of, as long as they stand in solidarity with the anticapitalist, antimilitarist struggle we are fighting, joining us in our wish for freedom and autonomy for everybody on this planet, in connection and care with the nature and landscapes we are part of. In terms of groups, we only directly want to ally with other struggles similar to ours.
We believe that people who really want to support us do so without wanting anything back (like advertisement, publicity, fame), that is without exchange logic or seeking own advantages. We want to be more careful around this in the future and communicate this better, so that our instagram profile does not turn into a platform for promoting artists, but instead focuses on informing people on our struggle, as well as other (noncommercial) struggles and our mutual solidarity.
We decided for this fundraiser to just leave it up to the organizers to promote the event as they want because we don’t want to do doublestandards, compared to past collaborations. We want to take more care of those things from autumn on though, and take time to formulate some guidelines for our much appreciated supporters.
We are grateful to have a lot of different artists – tattoo, gogo dance, music art – share their art to raise funds for Avgrunnsdalen. We are grateful for all individuals supporting us since months with car rides, food supplies, water and all kinds of other help.
Let’s keep protecting this forest and prevent this war factory from being built! We’re stronger together!
Love&Rage from the forest