Curious comment from Andy Meinke on the Freedom Collective, Friends of Freedom & the OFIN program:
'THE Freedom Collective does not rent out any of the
property. We're a Collective of Anarchists who work in the building and
on various Freedom projects such as publishing, website, news sheet. Everyone
involved pays what they can to keep the project going. Freedom is run by a
Collective that has meetings every month open to anyone in the movement. You
get to join the Collective by turning up and doing stuff. The 'Friends
of Freedom Press' are a company who owns the building in trust. As you
might guess from their name they are 'friends' (editorial emphasis in bold) of the
Collective. Mostly former Collective members and generally good eggs. If we
need a group called 'Annoying Dicks who want to fuck up Freedom
Press' (editorial italics and bold print) we'll leave (sic - let?) you know on 'Who is David?' post below.'
NV Editorial Reply to Andy Meinke:
ANDY Meinke above writes: 'If we need a group called "Annoying Dicks who want to fuck up Freedom Press we'll let you know".'
CAN this be the same Andy Meinke, who in 2014, wrote in the Freedom free-sheet words to this effect: 'Kropotkin started it (Freedom newspaper) but we fucking finished it (Freedom)' ?
CAN this be the same Andy Meinke, who in November 2012, banned a northern regional anarchist publication from the Freedom Bookshop?
CAN this be same Andy Meinke, who in the Summer of 2012, verbally abused the photo-journalist, David Hoffman, over a claim he had raised with Freedom about the theft of intellectual property? Resulting in Mr. Hoffman having to pursue a formal complaint the consequence of which was that Freedom Press had to pay him a large sum of money?
CAN this be the same Andy Meinke, who in late 2012, allegedly failed to pay the insurance on the property belonging to Freedom Press? The consequence being that the insurance cover on the building ran out and some two weeks later a fire occurred resulting in extensive damage and further cost to Freedom Press?
Need we go on further? What is the position pray regarding the insurance of the property now? Will the building pass fire regulations? Will anyone insure the property owing to the earlier mismanagement? What happens if there is another fire at Freedom and it takes the Whitechapel Art Gallery together with the current Barjeel Art collection*, with it?
HOW many tens of thousands of pounds will it take to bring the Freedom building at 84B, Whitechapel High Street up to standard, so that it meets all the regulations required of it? Who will take responsibility? The Friends of Freedom Press, or will it be Andy Meinke and his mates who turn up for a drink and enter the revolving door of the Freedom Collective? As Andy apparently lives with his parents and is seemingly an employee who manages the Freedom bookshop, perhaps in event of a crisis he will escape legal liability.
Need we go on further? What is the position pray regarding the insurance of the property now? Will the building pass fire regulations? Will anyone insure the property owing to the earlier mismanagement? What happens if there is another fire at Freedom and it takes the Whitechapel Art Gallery together with the current Barjeel Art collection*, with it?
HOW many tens of thousands of pounds will it take to bring the Freedom building at 84B, Whitechapel High Street up to standard, so that it meets all the regulations required of it? Who will take responsibility? The Friends of Freedom Press, or will it be Andy Meinke and his mates who turn up for a drink and enter the revolving door of the Freedom Collective? As Andy apparently lives with his parents and is seemingly an employee who manages the Freedom bookshop, perhaps in event of a crisis he will escape legal liability.
* The Barjeel Art Foundation holds an extensive collection of art from the Arab world.
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3 comments:
I note the incisive, finely calibrated comments from the rabble. New to me that FFP exists to befriend the "collective". The name defines FFP as "Friends of Freedom Press", an altogether different concept m'lud.
Judging from everything written so far the collective seem to have lost any sense of perspective. Now Andy and Adam are deploying flimsy, baseless claims towards those who are understandably calling to question the collective's chronic negligences.
Word is the shop struggles to get five customers on any given day. By that measure Freedom is more of mausoleum than anything else. It certainly feels like one, but only more miserable. Five customers a day won't even pay staff wages never mind any of the other bills. The place must be losing money every week. Considering this situation has been allowed to operate like this over years it can only mean Freedom must be eating into the last of their financial reserves.
Put this into context:
-The shop is losing money.
-The collective let out spare space upstairs to groups who are unable to pay rent.
-The collective seem incapable of carrying out the basic requirements of any form of book shop, never mind the compulsory condition of doing a newspaper. So what on earth have they been doing in Freedom over the last few years?
Speaking of newspapers the two editions of the freesheet would never have been produced if Northern Voices hadn't embarrassed both FFP and the collective but so far the task has so far been an embarrassment. Andy's referring to the quantity of freesheets being offloaded onto several venues is merely a numbers exercise. It bears no relation to the number who will eventually read the rag, never mind who will get anything from doing so. I can only assume it's an administrative exercise to barely keep within the governing documents to keep everything technically legal. That wouldn't be so bad if the product wasn't one of the poorest reads in the anarchist milieux. There's nothing in either version that couldn't easily have got elsewhere to a better standard. If the collective intend to squander even more of Freedom's reserves doing another edition it would be more honest of them to rename it Landfill -because that's all it is.
Back to my original point. Never met any of the NV people but Adam's accusations of them being being nothing more than pale white males seems bizarre once you see him in the flesh. Adam is himself a pale, white male. Andy too. Neither of whom could be called spring chickens either. To top it all it only takes a few seconds comparison to realise his writing is nowhere near being in the same league as NV. It's evident from the context of this situation that the original doss house remark is made at the Freedom collective yet in an attempt to draw the tenants upstairs into the situation on this he implicates them in it. Adam also calls the writer"unanarchist".
Andy is keen on saying to people that Freedom is there to support "the movement". How is that possible when they produce terrible print/online content and no customers in the shop?
So what exactly has the collective been doing over the last few years? Putting all of the above together the term doss house looks like an understatement. Overall it looks like the collective hasn't got a leg to stand on.
Who needs the SDS ('evening all) to sabotage the movement when the collective is doing their job for them? Now that's really unanarchist as you can get. It's time FFP and/or OFIN got rid of those ponces.
The only reservation I have regarding the OFIN's proposal is one that Freedom has signally fallen short on. No consultation with the broader anarchist milieux.
There's no use kvetching about the pseudonym either. Freedom Paper has tradition of using them.
Judging from everything written so far the collective seem to have lost any sense of perspective. Now Andy and Adam are deploying flimsy, baseless claims towards those who are understandably calling to question the collective's chronic negligences.
Word is the shop struggles to get five customers on any given day. By that measure Freedom is more of mausoleum than anything else. It certainly feels like one, but only more miserable. Five customers a day won't even pay staff wages never mind any of the other bills. The place must be losing money every week. Considering this situation has been allowed to operate like this over years it can only mean Freedom must be eating into the last of their financial reserves.
Put this into context.
The shop is losing money.
The collective let out spare space upstairs to groups who are unable to pay rent.
The collective seem incapable of carrying out the basic requirements of any form of book shop, never mind the compulsory condition of doing a newspaper. So what on earth have they been doing in Freedom over the last few years?
Speaking of newspapers the two editions of the freesheet would never have been produced if Northern Voices hadn't embarrassed both FFP and the collective but so far the task has so far been an embarrassment. Andy's referring to the quantity of freesheets being offloaded onto several venues is merely a numbers exercise. It bears no relation to the number who will eventually read the rag, never mind who will get anything from doing so. I can only assume it's an administrative exercise to barely keep within the governing documents to keep everything technically legal. That wouldn't be so bad if the product wasn't one of the poorest reads in the anarchist milieux. There's nothing in either version that couldn't easily have got elsewhere to a better standard. If the collective intend to squander even more of Freedom's reserves doing another edition it would be more honest of them to rename it Landfill -because that's all it is.
Back to my original point. Never met any of the NV people but Adam's accusations of them being being nothing more than pale white males seems bizarre once you see him in the flesh. Adam is himself a pale, white male. Andy too. Neither of whom could be called spring chickens either. To top it all it only takes a few seconds comparison to realise his writing is nowhere near being in the same league as NV. It's evident from the context of this situation that the original doss house remark is made at the Freedom collective yet in an attempt to draw the tenants upstairs into the situation on this he implicates them in it. Adam also calls the writer"unanarchist".
Andy is keen on saying to people that Freedom is there to support "the movement". How is that possible when they produce terrible print/online content and no customers in the shop?
So what exactly has the collective been doing over the last few years? Putting all of the above together the term doss house looks like an understatement. Overall it looks like the collective hasn't got a leg to stand on.
Who needs the SDS ('evening all) to sabotage the movement when the collective is doing their job for them? Now that's really unanarchist as you can get. It's time FFP and/or OFIN got rid of those ponces.
The only reservation I have regarding the OFIN's proposal is one that Freedom has signally fallen short on. No consultation with the broader anarchist milieux.
There's no use kvetching about the pseudonym either. Freedom Paper has tradition of using them.
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