University of Kansas - Jayhawker Yearbook (Lawrence, KS)

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SOLIDARITY IN HE SU N FLCJWER O8 - O9 I .JAYHAWKER STAT E he living room has a warm feeling to it. There's a fireplace along one wall and bookshelves along the other. The glass coffee table is Wind- exed and nearly always smudge-free. If it weren't for the inflammatory political posters that line the walls, this could be anybodyis house. Maybe itis not what you'd expect from a group of Lawrence radicals who opened up their home to the collective public in Septem- ber 2001. Maybe youfd expect a little more chaos out of a space that identihes itself with political anarchism. I think when we first started people expected to see a lot of dirty patched up crusted punk kids, said Dave Strano, who became involved with the Mother Earth Collective shortly after it began. We've done a lot of work to dispel that image. A lot of people aren't used to the subject matter weire talk- ing about and it can be kind of intimidating. We want people to feel comfortable. ,' On any given day, residents of the Mother Earth Collective might have walked into their kitchen to find a stranger perusing the cabinets for food or, more often than not, they might have found a living room full of people enjoying a meal together and discussing politics. f'This was all right after Sept. 1 1 happenedf' Strano said. There would always be huge group discussions. People would sit on bean bags or on the floor just talking, trying to examine what was going on and tty to decide what the heck to do with this new type of world that we'd all found ourselves inf, Eventually the project outgrew its roots and moved downtown as the Solidarity! Revolutionary Center and Radical Library which now offers a free lending library of about 6,000 alternative and radical political books, free computers and internet access, meeting spaces and events for the public including speakers, Hlm showings, art exhibits and musicians. The main work at Solidarity focuses on helping out residents within the community who are struggling and to invite political spectators to become more involved with politics within their own community. The center also holds fundraisers with the aim of buying food for those who can't afford it. 'fWe want to be able to help our community survive this impending economic collapsef Strano said. We want to feed more people, house people and be able to take care of people in our neighborhoods. We already have a lot of people involved in our space that come out of middle class backgrounds who are dealing with hunger, or their land- lord being foreclosed upon. We just want to try to help each other out and help out the rest of our community. But volunteers and activists associated with the Soli- darity Center know that there's a darker, more difficult side to what they do. Strano said that a chunk of their fundraising goes to help out fellow activists facing legal trouble. He said that he has also had trouble getting jobs before because of his political and, consequently, legal history. 'fln a lot of places people might try to water down their politics for fear of being pigeon-holed and stereotyped, but we try to be up front about who we are, he said.

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