This Saturday, you’re invited to a block party. It’s a block party that celebrates community and empowerment.
Q: Why Caracol? What’s the snail all about?
Caracol means ‘snail’ in Spanish. In Mayan communities and Mexican Zapatismo thought, “caracol” represents progress on social justice issues — a snail is slow, but always advances: Lento, pero avanzo. Zapatista communities call the center of their communities “caracoles,” illustrating that empowering people spirals from the participants outward into the community. And because our home base is a garden, it had a nice, earthy kind of connection, too. It’s about empowering people to come together and make a change.
Q: Where is your neighborhood? What are the defining borders?
Caracol isn’t about just one neighborhood, but many of our members live, work, or have some other close connection to the Near East Side, just a five-minute walk under the tracks and up the hill from downtown. Most of our activities center on our garden at the corner of Claim and Union Streets, which everybody has just come to call “El Jardín.”
Q: Why have a party? Is this the first one?
Block parties are just a fun way to bring people out to meet their neighbors. There will be food, live music that we hope will appeal to a variety of our neighbors, live painting, and organizations around town talking to people about the services they offer. We also hope to get more people involved in El Jardín and get people to talk about other issues or projects they want to collaborate on. It’s the first we’ve organized, but it’s hardly the first block party to ever happen in the neighborhood.
Q: When did the neighborhood organization form?
This past winter. But Caracol is not a traditional organization with strict leadership roles. It’s an autonomous, collective group in which everybody is a full participant in the change they want to effect, so the group is always changing a little based on shared goals for the community.
Q: What are your goals for the neighborhood?
We want to give our neighbors the space to come together as a community and decide what their goals are. The Near East Side inspires fierce loyalty in its residents because it’s such a lively place with a real identity. If our neighbors want more amenities, that’s what we want, if they want to work on making the neighborhood safer, that’s what we want, if they want public art, that’s what we want.
Q: Why do you care?
We care because our neighborhood gets a bad rap sometimes, but it’s really, to us, the heart and soul of this city, and the residents deserve the opportunity to really come together and make it the home they want and love.
Join Caracol for the El Jardín block party from 2 to 7 p.m. on Saturday, August 29.
