A Story of Rhizome

Rhizome was a café, community space and social justice hub located in the Mount Pleasant neighbourhood of Vancouver, Coast Salish Territories. It was created to be a shared living room, a safe(r) space, and a support space for social justice work. It also was a full-service cafe, offering healthy, fresh food. In the time it was open, Rhizome:

- Supported social justice struggles by hosting events (like film screenings, panel discussions, performances and fundraisers) in collaboration with community groups that work to end oppression in all of its forms, and to advance youth empowerment, indigenous sovereignty, environmental justice, and a more just, sustainable world for all.
- Encouraged dialogue and mutual learning, by making its Community Meeting Room available for workshops, meetings, and other small gatherings.
- Built community by providing people with a space to socialize with each other, share our common resources, and celebrate our victories–crossing many divides including age, orientation, ability, race, and gender.
- Helped marginalized voices be heard, and highlighted visual and performing arts that can help us achieve a better understanding of our communities and our world.
- Helped develop strategic, powerful community groups and movements through the programming of the Rhizome Movement Building Centre, a pilot program to provide training for community groups on strategic campaign development, base-building, and the forging of lasting alliances.

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Captions courtesy of the Radical Access Mapping Project,
Un-ceded Coast Salish Territories of the Skwxwú7mesh, Musqueam, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples.
To learn more, see: http://radicalaccessiblecommunities.wordpress.com/subtitled-videos/
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Before I begin I'd like to acknowledge
that we are gathered here

on the unceded territories of the Squamish,
Tsleil-Watuth and Musqueam people.

I do this with the utmost
respect and gratitude,

especially as I'm here to talk about
community and the politics of space.

I spend a lot of time thinking about
the role that physical spaces play

in building and sustaining social movements,

and I've become convinced over time

that the way that we create and hold space
for each other profoundly shapes our sense

of who we are, what we value, and what
we are capable of together.

Six years ago my partner Vinetta
and I created Rhizome

in the Mount Pleasant
neighborhood of Vancouver.

Rhizome is a place where people come every day
to drink coffee eat sandwiches and curry and soup;

but that's only part of the story
and I want to tell you the other part;

but in order to do that I need to tell you first
a little bit about where I come from.

In 2004, I moved here from San Francisco

where I had worked for a decade
as a migrant rights organizer.

I left behind a vibrant community of struggle
and a city that's good at telling its own story.

Doing that work in San Francisco,
I was always reminded

that I was part of something
bigger than myself.

I think that that sense of belonging had a lot
to do with the kind of work that I was doing,

but it was also definitely fed by my surroundings.

Every day I would walk to work past murals

that silently told me that nothing is
ever won without a struggle,

and that collective liberation is possible.

The amazing thing about these murals is that

thousands of other people walked
by them every day as well,

and we all received that same education.

Those murals tell stories of indigenous resistance,

of migrant rights organizing
and of revolutionary struggles

for racial and economic justice.

They taught us that we are all
products of a shared history.

So with these murals as my guide I felt
a deep sense of connection and possibility,

but I don't think that I fully appreciated

the power of this very public and
very shared political education

until after I left that city and moved
to a place where I had no roots.

When I came to Vancouver
I felt a deep sense of loss.

The forces of erasure here
felt so powerful and so violent.

The more I talked to people here
the more I came to understand

how this history and the constant
rebuilding of this city

make it very difficult for us
to connect with each other.

I wondered how many stories
had been erased here.

My partner and I had always had
a dream of being able to create a space

that would welcome people
from diverse backgrounds;

where people would be able
to be truly seen and recognized;

and where we would be able
to help us connect with each other.

We wanted to create
a living room for all of us,

and especially for those who
had been pushed out of other spaces,

and made to feel invisible.

We wanted to use space to show that
our communities face similar challenges,

and that we can envision solutions together.

So when we first walked into the space
that would eventually become Rhizome,

we knew that we were
in the right place.

Our new landlord showed us around
and he showed us the place on the floor

where he had laid the floorboards
one summer back in the 1950's

as a teenager during his
summer break from high school.

He pointed out the
100 year old tin ceiling,

and he told us fantastic stories

of things that may or may not
have happened

in that very room over the years.

For us, all of those stories
were seeds of possibility.

As soon as we opened in 2006,
people started coming

from all walks of life
and from diverse communities,

and it turned out that our personal
need to create a shared living room

was a need that many other
people felt as well.

And since then we've hosted
over 1,000 events

in collaboration with
hundreds of community groups.

Many different communities
really do now consider this space their home

and have brought pieces
of themselves to it.

For example every year we host a traditional
latin-american Day of the Dead celebration,

and every year I watch
as people meet each other

while placing photos
of their ancestors on the altar.

Over the years in this space
we've done all of the things

that build community.

We've been able to share our stories,
we've learned about critical issues together

through panel discussions
and film screenings,

we've argued and debated
and planned together,

we've celebrated our victories,
and we've done all this in a space

that's intentionally multi-generational,
multi-lingual and multi-racial.

Recently we've started hosting
courses on community organizing

to help grassroots groups
become more focused and strategic.

We've created space for all of us
to be able to imagine a better future,

and now to strategize
around how to get there.

Over time this really has
become a shared project

and it's way bigger than anything that
Vinetta or I could ever have imagined.

It's fully supported
by the people who use it.

We've been able to experiment with
different economic models on a small scale.

We created systems so that
everyone can eat here

regardless of how much
money they have,

and so that hundreds of people
can contribute what they have,

to be able to help maintain this
as a shared resource.

Most importantly Rhizome has allowed
for connections between different groups

that rarely come into meaningful contact
elsewhere in this city.

What we do at Rhizome
is explicitly anti-profit,

it's about re-claiming cooperative values
in a commodified culture.

Continuing to hold this space

has started to feel absolutely vital.

Every day we're reminded that the world

around us is driven by market values,

and that what we do at Rhizome

is fundamentally different.

We've come to see that our work is part

of a broader struggle to define the
very soul of this ever-changing city.

But this struggle only
points out to me again

what all of those murals in San Francisco
were telling me all along:

it takes a community working together to
create something that's worth fighting for,

and then it takes a shared commitment
to hold on to that thing.

So we have our own mural
now on the wall,

and it reminds us every day
of what brings us together.

It reminds us that space like ours
can create cracks in the system,

and that those cracks can give us all
a transformative sense of possibility.