This month’s update might seem extra long, but that’s only because we have so much amazing news to share! Please bare with us as we dive right in.

We had our official Grand Opening party at the beginning of February, with some great classes and workshops during the afternoon including martial arts, radical black history, and Cumbia dance lessons.  We were delighted to see a steady stream of people coming in all afternoon, and that number only increased when we started serving dinner! After dinner we moved into the variety show with some awesome spoken word, after which everyone promptly shook their booties to some great DJs.  We put a lot of time into outreach in the neighborhood prior to the event, going door to door to talk to folks and distribute fliers.  We saw some familiar faces, but would have liked to see more people from our neighborhood. This just reminded us of how important it is to continue to work on building relationships around us and to keep putting in this work for future events. Overall we had an amazing day and night!

The Bookstore is now open regularly.  We should have their open hours up on our website shortly under the “Collectives” section.
The bike shop is open to repairs and helping folks build bikes.  Email them at holdoutworkshop@lists.riseup.net to get in touch.
The Garden Collective is getting off the ground and is hosting regular meetings open to the public every Sunday at 5 at The Holdout. Anyone interested in plugging in should stop by.
The bookstore will have a table this year at the Anarchist Bookfair.  The event is March 31st and April 1st- the bookstore will have a table on Sunday the 1st. Also, The Holdout will be parking your bikes! So ride on over this year and say hello.
The events collective has had the opportunity to host some really exciting events over the past month.  We had an excellent Know Your Rights Training to get everyone up to date on their rights when it comes to protests, arrests, jail, and dealing with the police.  We also hosted a beautiful and creative show with Annah Anti-Palindrome and friends, which was very well attended. More recently, we hosted a film screening of the movie Black August- a film about  the political prisoner George Jackson who was shot and killed at San Quentin in August of 1971.  We were lucky enough to have TCinque, who wrote and co-produced the film, with us to answer questions afterwards.

Check out our calendar for upcoming events.  Scroll over the dates in bold to see the public events for that day.  Here’s a taste of a few of them coming up:
-Wilderness First Aid for the Streets- a look at how to apply wilderness first aid skills to situations we come across in our daily lives. This 20 hour course is open to the public and will take place over two days (March 24th and 25th).
-Weekly Classes: we have weekly martial arts classes Monday morning, Spanish and English classes happening each weekend, and a Queer Radical figure drawing class on Monday evenings. For descriptions of these courses or more information please check the online calendar on our website.
-We are also happy to announce that we’ll be hosting the A Cafe this year! That’s right,
the event that always kicks off the  Anarchist bookfair will be held with us in Oakland this year.  This should be a great way for people coming into town to check out the new space.

Lastly, if you’re interested in helping support this rad project there’s a few things we’re always
looking for:
-Supply donations: check out this part of our website to stay up to date on supplies we need, or get in touch with the bookstore regarding book donations.
-We also have a monthly donor group called FOTH (Friends of The Holdout). If you’re interested in signing up for that, check out the right side of our website for the link.
-Proposals: We’re specifically interested in having more classes and The Holdout. If you have an idea for a class you’d like to see, or a class you’d like to teach, drop us an email soon!

Thanks so much for supporting this project and helping us get off the ground.  We look forward to talking, eating, teaching, learning and dancing our butts off with you soon.

-The Holdout                        

After another busy month of decorations and preparations, The Holdout is finally ready to open its doors on February 4^th! We will celebrate with a day-long extravaganza. The afternoon will have different workshops in the space. Then we’ll have an early potluck style dinner followed by a celebration at night. We’re going to do a bunch of door to door outreach before to let folks in the neighborhood know about it. Stop by briefly or come spend the whole day with us!

January has been a bustling month at the Hold out. Even though we have not been officially open, we have hosted a variety of meetings and classes, including the weekly Spanish-English Collective, a weekend long medic training, and various Occupy Oakland tactical meetings. The Workshop and Propaganda Collectives have moved in and have also opened a bike workshop. The Bookstore also had their opening day to the public which went great. The bookstore offers a variety of radical texts, with plenty of table space to sit and read, play games, or just hang out. The bookstore is planning to be open Saturday and Sunday from 12-5 and on some weekdays, which will be posted online.

The Holdout has a lot planned for the coming month. We still need help finishing sound proofing and getting the space in perfect shape for the opening .The Propaganda Collective has been given a lot of great donations and folks are excited to get into production. The Workshop has been fixing up bikes to raise funds and is planning to start having after school open hours once per week. They already have 5 or 6 bikes built and for sale so if youre interested ask them about it! Now that the Bookstore is open, they are planning to have even more events such as game nights, book readings, and a reading group. All of the collectives are working on planning our next big fundraiser sometime towards the end of February.

We now have a calendar online, so you can keep yourself posted on this and other events planned at the space!

Finally, the Hold out would like to put a call out to those interested in holding classes, meetings, or workshops in the space. Please email us at events@theholdout.org or drop by during a work party or open hours to get in touch. We’re looking forward to having even more awesome events on our schedule and to working out all of the kinks in our process!

-The Holdout