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The life and death of a feminist hackerspace

This is kind of a bittersweet story.

I checked out makerspaces/hackerspaces in Portland, and I found Flux. It was really cool – a nice space downtown, explicitly feminist, and complete with a zines library (even a comic by Susie Cagle!) Through the people I met at Flux, I ended up on the adventure that lead me to Right To Dream Too.

A few days after I first stopped by, however, I visited again to grim news. The new leadership of the hackerspace (who just joined up 3 weeks prior) just realized that they had a big operating deficit – and rent was due in just a few days.

There was not much to be done – they needed $800 just to keep the space, and more besides every month to get a good budget balance.

As far as I can tell, the original crew that set up the space had bailed earlier – they had wanted it to be a more “radical” space and didn’t want to deal with the hassle of recruiting outsiders to keep it financially viable. (Of course, I could be totally wrong on that. Just one story I heard).

After casting a sad look around the space, we went for pizza. I just checked their website a few minutes ago – looks like the end really did come for Flux:

What a shame.

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