Cream City Collectives

Cream City Collectives hosted the Mathilde Anneke Infoshop, the Milwaukee Screenprinting Collective, the CCC Gallery,[1] and other groups that shared the space for meetings and events. It opened with a storefront in October 2006. The infoshop was named after the German radical Mathilde Anneke, one of the Forty-Eighters who founded the first feminist newspaper in the United States in Milwaukee.[2] It hosted a lending library which contained thousands of books, primarily non-fiction titles on anti-authoritarian radical politics. There was a substantial collection of anarchist and anti-authoritarian books for sale, as well as free literature. Discussions, speaking events, workshops, pot lucks, shows, dance parties, dinners and other events were frequently hosted at the space. It was shut down on October 31, 2012.

The CCC regularly hosted block parties in the summer. One typically on May Day, also known as the anniversary of Haymarket, and another scheduled around the anniversary of the opening of the space. The first May Day block party, in the tradition of the anti-capitalist holiday also featured an organized Really Really Free Market, in which a gift economy is put into practice. People brought things to share and everything was free. The Really Really Free Market as event and social practice was taken up by the Milwaukee Network for Social Change who now distributed free clothing in the winter and hosted free events in the summer. The block parties were often full of games and mischief. At the end of one there was a water balloon fight that encouraged the entire neighborhood to participate and included 1,500 water balloons. [3]

• Official website