Radikalecker

We are a group of people with different backgrounds and experiences operating a collectively-run political vegan cafe in Berlin. Our aim is to suggest a positive alternative to the omnipresent dominance of carnistic culture, capitalist interactions and market economy.

Our vegan cafe promotes anti-speciesist and sustainable ways of living, based on compassion, solidarity, environmental awareness and non-exploitative relationships. We strive to provide delicious and affordable vegan food of good quality and fair production - as much organic, locally grown, seasonal and fairly traded goods as possible.

Being a work-collective means that we make all important decisions consensually and we aim to counter hierarchies and privileges that exist or might develop in our daily interactions with each other and our surroundings. At the same time we want to provide a safe and secure workspace for all members of the collective, while working in a self-governing and cooperative fashion.

We aim to create a counter-cultural place that is non-discriminatory thus creating a safe, comfortable space for all people. Our dream is to provide a space for: political discussion, intersectional activism, sharing, creativity, inspiration, the active exchange of knowledge and skills and bringing together both people and ideas. Our cafe is open to the neighbourhood as a meeting point for individuals, groups and projects supporting political, social and ecological change. The cafe operates on a not-for-profit basis, donating surpluses to support political causes, such as social projects, alternative economy structures, anti-spe initiatives, other work-collectives etc.

We have chosen to be a work-collective as a response to our own need for self-determination in our work life and in order to create a paradigm alternative to the capitalist concept of labour. For us our work is a part of our life where we want to incorporate our creativity and our need to be productive and joyful. We aim to create a working environment where we feel comfortable, safe, accepted, cared for and able to express our individuality. The cafe will be a work space where we can also interact as political entities able to exchange opinions and express our beliefs.

In this workspace we want to redefine work and reconnect different spheres and concepts of our everyday life that have been separated by the predominant capitalist logic. These concepts and spheres include manual and mental labour and work and leisure time. We do not want to consider our labour as a sacrifice, but as a creative occupation that responds to our own needs and preferences, where there is no pressure to perform, but space to discover what is important to us, to learn new skills and to influence directly the goals of our work.

We seek to find a sustainable way of managing a commercial activity that can maintain us within the capitalist frame we live but which we also try to change. As a work-collective we practice a positive alternative to the traditional business model, to the concept of maximum profit and continuous growth and its resulting system of violence and inequality regarding access to resources and power. In contrast to the prevalent exploitative, authoritarian and competitive relationships in the labour sector, we aim to establish a secure and cooperative working environment. Our target is to create a work place without hierarchies and competition, built on companionship, solidarity and trust. We strive for a self-defined and emancipated workspace where we have equal rights and responsibilities, we have direct participation in forming our working conditions and we make decisions in a collective, consensual way.

At the heart of our self-organization lies the statute. The statute is a social contract that we have given ourselves to ensure our functioning as a collective and radical project. Furthermore, we have regular plenary sessions that are facilitated and moderated to ensure consensual decision-making that is attentive towards privileges, mechanisms of exclusion and power-structures. We do not support or tolerate decisions of the plenum or the behaviour of single members of the collective that violate the personality rights or the human dignity of other persons.

We don't consider ourselves owners of the cafe, rather as caretakers of a place which is part of the vegan and political community of Berlin. We are working in solidarity with other collectives, projects and movements that aim for radical political, social and ecological change.