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Dear Friends:
As you may know, the tenants of the A-Zone have formed a cooperative and are working towards collectively purchasing the building, and we are requesting your financial support.
The A-Zone Co-op is launching the OWN THE ZONE campaign, and we need your support! OWN THE ZONE is an international fundraising campaign to secure the down payment for 91 Albert Street. We are sending out letters to all of our supporters in advance of the Own The Zone Telethon, which is taking place over 24 hours on May 14th to 15th.
The Old Market Autonomous Zone, or the A-Zone, has provided affordable space to activist collectives, worker cooperatives, and small businesses since 1995. Beyond access to space, the A-Zone has brought together a diverse and complementary range of people and organizations with commitments to ethical, equitable, and sustainable business practices, the cooperative movement, radical organizing, anarchism, and grassroots cultural projects and events.
We are a meeting place, a training site, a work site, and hub of political organizing, discussion and debate. We aim to foster values such as non-hierarchical organizing, anti-racism, workplace democracy, solidarity with Indigenous peoples, feminism, refugee support, anti-police brutality work, and prisoner solidarity. For this, we’ve become known locally and internationally as an inspiring site of leftist dissent, collective organizing, and resistance to all forms of oppression and exploitation.
In the autumn of 2009, we, the tenants of 91 Albert Street were presented with the opportunity to collectively own and manage the A-Zone. Natural Cycle Courier, Natural Cycle Cycleworks, Winnipeg Copwatch, Canadian Dimension Magazine, Anarchist Black Cross, Mondragon Bookstore & Coffeehouse, the Rudolph Rocker Cultural Centre, and the Junto Local 91 radical library, among other tenants, have come together to form a non-profit, democratically-run tenant cooperative.
We come together as a diverse set of organizations that, in different ways, provide energy and spirit to Winnipeg’s radical community. We aim to build a co-op that fosters self-sufficiency and mutual aid – not only for ourselves, but for a larger local and global commons. We hope to strengthen new and broaden existing social movements by continuing to make space available for public discussion, political organizing, and everyday mud-rucking.
The A-Zone needs your support! We are embarking on a 4-month international fundraising campaign to raise the funds needed for the downpayment. Donations of any amount are gratefully welcome. In-kind donations are also welcome.
Ready to donate? Cheques can be made out to “Winnipeg Parecon Worker Council”, and sent to the address and post box listed below. Please put our name in the notes section of the cheque.
Old Market Autonomous Zone Co-op
Events
24-hour International Fundraising Telethon, May 14-15
We are holding a 24-Hour A-Zone International Fundraising Telethon, May 14 – 15, presented in conjunction with Winnipeg’s 2011 MayWorks Festival. The telethon will begin at 3 pm of the 1st and continue until the next day with non-stop live and virtual entertainment by local comedians, performance artists, musicians and poets at Mondragon on the A-Zone’s main floor. The event will conclude with a special Sunday brunch fundraiser. Streamed live, here, at a-zone.org.
Contact us
For further information about the A-Zone Co-op Project or the fundraising campaign, please contact us at azonefundcom@gmail.com.
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