From demos and protests, to anti-immigration raids, eviction prevention, to navigating nightlife and workplaces, self- and community defence have been important techniques for the empowerment of communities facing daily violences along the axis of race, gender and class. This occassional series will engage contemporary facilitators, practictioners, students and teachers of community defence in the broadest sense, while accessing and growing the archival holdings at MayDay Rooms. The first session will be in collaboration with Bender Defenders.

Bender Defenders is a queer and trans community organisation. They provide 4 free and low cost muay thai classes for queer and trans people per week, and also run community-focused self defence workshops.

Bender Defenders take a holistic view of self-defence, remembering that keeping people safe means more than avoiding danger in the moment – it means creating community systems to heal from the harm hate crime causes in the long term.

This session will be a run as a workshop, in which will explore examples from the MDR archive, share perspectives on concepts of self defence and what that means in practice, and then go through some games and drills.