A network diagram for overlapping workshop topics at the 2010 US Social Forum. Of course this is only one representation of how issues can be linked; we will be coming together as common participants to support each other in new ways.
This coming Monday, 17 January (Martin Luther King Jr. Day), at 6:00 pm in Mary Gates Hall 206, Antechamber will be holding our launch meeting for a Social Justice Summit. We will finally be bringing together all the people from various activist groups we have been talking to around campus. We want this first meeting to be a chance for all of us to meet one another and familiarize ourselves with our respective interests and projects. This will also be our big brainstorming meeting: we will look at the basic proposal for the forum (available below) and then build on it collaboratively. Feel free to come Monday to share your ideas and learn about other socially-conscious students and their work. There will be snacks involved.
Here is the full outline of the proposal, co-written by several members who met to work on it together:
The Antechamber Collective is a group at the UW Seattle campus interested in exploring the interconnectedness of the multitude social and ecological problems as well as various local groups working in the Seattle area to address them. We want to discuss with your group the potential of participating in a social/ecological justice summit at UW Seattle. The purpose and form of this summit is multi-faceted and open to being shaped by those who choose to participate. From the perspective of us in the Antechamber Collective, the purpose is to build direct action organizing capacity through increased communications and mutual visibility and understanding among the many different groups on campus and in the Seattle area. We have no particular agenda ourselves, save promoting a culture of solidarity and humble exploration among all activists fighting for Justice. Thus, to us, the summit is to represent–in a public manner–the capacity of the People in our area to democratically manifest common action without the limiting guidance of the conventional political mechanisms.
Concretely, we will make this happen by way of an organizing committee–to meet every other week through this Winter–composed of individuals from activist groups of all kinds. We are visiting different groups to discuss this idea and to get contact information of people who are interested in being part of this committee or at least being the contact point for your group re anything to do with this organizing process.
It is important for us to emphasize that we are approaching this as a learning experience and practical networking endeavor. We hope to learn a lot about not only organizing in this process but also about the various terrains in which people are fighting for justice, the complexities of different particular struggles and especially how these different struggles are connected to each other. We hope that you will join us in working toward a climate of greater collaboration and complementarity in the fight for a better world and invite you to voice any concerns or questions you have in regard to this proposal before deciding to participate in this process.
Please contact us at antechamberuw@gmail.com.
The Antechamber Collective 
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