Self-managed social center

[1] Uses can include an infoshop, a radical bookshop, a resource centre offering advice, a hacklab, a café, a bar, an affordable gig space, independent cinema or a housing co-operative.

They share a lineage with the radical intentional communities that have periodically surfaced throughout history[7] and are sometimes termed Temporary Autonomous Zones[6] or "free spaces", in which a counter-hegemonic resistance can form arguments and tactics.

[10] A free, or autonomous, space is defined as a place independent from dominant institutions and ideologies, formed outside standard economic relations, and fostering self-directing freedom through self-reliance.

[12] Since the 1980s,[13] young Italians maintained self-managed social centers (centri sociali) where they gathered to work on cultural projects, listen to music, discuss politics, and share basic living information.

[16] These centers operate outside state and free market control,[16] and have an oppositional relationship with the police, often portrayed by conservative media as magnets for crime and illicit behavior.

[14] In the United States, self-managed social centers primarily take the form of infoshops and radical bookstores, such as Bluestockings in New York City and Red Emma's in Baltimore.

[12] Since the 1990s, North American anarchists have created community centers, infoshops, and free spaces to foster alternative cultures, economies, media, and schools as a counterculture with a do-it-yourself ethic.

[20] For instance, as activist video grew in the 1990s, infoshops screened films and hosted discussion groups that, in turn, encouraged debate and collective action.

[19] The infoshop attempts to offer a space where individuals can publish without the restrictions of the mainstream press[8] and discuss alternative ideas unimpeded by homophobia, racism, and sexism.

They too are often staffed by their own self-selected users as volunteers[22] and like the anarchist media they distribute, operate on inexpensive, borrowed, or donated resources, such as secondhand computers and furniture.

Free schools follow a loosely structured program that seeks to defy dominant institutions and ideologies under a nonhierarchical division of power and prefigure a more equitable world.

All were invited to propose and attend classes, whose topics included: 1920s love songs, alternative economics, street art, critiques of patriarchy and how to combat violence against women.