The Cuts Cafe held it first public meeting on October the 1st to to "give everyone – groups and individuals – the chance to find out more about the project and how to get involved."  The newly squatted space is a building oppened for the two weeks leading up to the Trade Union Congress demonstration on October 20th. Cuts Café will provide a radical space in Central London to build resistance to these devastating cuts, and to explore the real alternatives to austerity.

The successful meeting that was attended by around 100 people included a number of speakers such as those from Uk Uncut and the Disabled People Against the Cuts (DPAC) groups, who explained what they are doing and also how this might tie into the cuts cafe. After that, a speaker from the Cuts Cafe group spoke to a now very excited audience about the variety of events the Cafe will be holding as well as the politics and ideas behind the space. See full unedited video of the meeting.

More info about the Cuts Cafe:

The government tells us that cuts to public services and social security are needed to save an economy in crisis, but in reality the crisis is capitalism.

For the two weeks leading up to the Trade Union Congress demonstration on October 20th, Cuts Café will provide a radical space in Central London to build resistance to these devastating cuts, and to explore the real alternatives to austerity.

It will be open for all of us who are affected, whether we are people with disabilities, women, migrants, workers, pensioners, students, unemployed… or anyone else not part of the privileged elite who are enriching themselves in this ‘crisis’.

By sharing this reclaimed space, we hope people working in their community, local anti-cuts, student, or autonomous groups, as well as the trade unions, will be able to collectively and democratically build positive alternatives with which to challenge the ‘politics as usual’ forced upon us.

This will be an opportunity for connections to form outside of those groups that we may already be involved with, and to reinvigorate the anti-cuts movement at the grassroots level.

Cuts Café, being part of a movement for creating equality and real democracy, will be organized without discrimination and, as much as possible, without hierarchy. We welcome you to come and participate in the running of the space.

If you or your group would like to facilitate a workshop or skillshare, screen a film, hold a discussion, or use the space in any other way please get in touch! You can also contribute by helping to provide some of the more material resources needed for the day-today running of the space, or just by coming down to share a bit of your time.

For more information email cutscafe@riseup.net or to propose an event get us at eventscutscafe@riseup.net.

Twitter: @Cuts_Cafe
Facebook: Cuts Café