Things are dire. They actually admit to absconding with money people gave the cafe to fix a broken window, writing bad checks and are now even working for free.Most of all we want everyone to know that as much as capitalism tries to beat us down, we’re determined to keeping pushing on!
Our finances have reached a crisis point. ...To be blunt: we are unable to make our mortgage payment on time and we’ve bounced checks to some of our vendors and staff. ...The most dramatic and immediate change is that we’ve decided to work without pay until we can turn this situation around.
And, for such an anti capitalist mob, they certainly rely a lot on the capitalist model to keep things going. Weird, no?
Perhaps it's due to their business plan.Our situation is compounded by the fact that we have never had anything near a comfortable amount of working capital. We attempted to raise sufficient capital during the fundraising drive we held when we decided to buy our building.[emph mine]
[W]e are a radical, queer-positive safer space; an important hub for many overlapping grassroots political projects, a cop-free zone, an amazing vegan restaurant, a music venue, a hangout and meeting space for Industrial Workers of the World union members, a low income collective household upstairs— the list goes on. We make most of our food from scratch which is labor intensive and because our ingredients are (mostly) organic, they are more expensive. [emph mine]
The anarchist cafe is just steps from the St. Francis Church where every lefty group claims a headquarters, including Occupy Portland. As I've reported here Occupy Portland is having difficulty paying its bills, too.
Maybe the Red and Black should look for new customers--including cops. When the anarchists refused to serve a new Portland cop who walked in one day in 2010 to get a cup of Joe, The Victoria Taft Show took coffee to the Red and Black and served them instead.
Hi Victoria,
ReplyDeleteWorker owned, vegan, and cop free, how could they miss in Portland. No corporate over lords or exploitative managers or greedy owners, they should be rolling in it. If only the city free wifi system had worked or they had a street car stop or a solar powered Randy Loos or Occupy had set up in their serving area. Couldn't happen to nicer people.
Heh. That is all.
DeleteHey friends. I've spent a lot of time at the Red and Black and at St. Francis. We are, it seems to me, working on moving very expeditiously into new socio-economic models. Sure we're going to use capital as long as it's the prevailing socio-economic system. I don't see the big contradiction in anti-capitalists, or, if you will, post-capitalists, using money, if you think about it a minute. I mean, some minimize their involvement with it by living in the relative wilderness or living as urban nomads. I tweeted a link to the Red and Black's appeal for donations and I feel fairly confident that they can pull through. Occupy is not having trouble paying bills. We just completed the first draft of the by-laws for the Friends of Occupy nonprofit, which enables us to receive check and credit card donations.
ReplyDeletethat is, Friends of Occupy Portland
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