Queer, Jewish, Anarchist, Local: An Interview With pink peacock
How do you create a cafe that promotes anarchism, queer liberation, Yiddish language learning, mutual aid, food justice, and accessibility, among other values? To the team behind pink peacock (די ראָזעווע פּאַווע), the main problem seems to be getting the builders in.
Morgan, Joe, and Mordecai the greyhound in front of pink peacock’s space
Founded in 2020 by Morgan Holleb (he/him) and Joe Isaac (he/him), pink peacock will open after COVID restrictions as a late-night, alcohol-free, pay-what-you-can space in Govanhill. Despite the pandemic putting a temporary hold on their progress, pink peacock’s team has been busy in the past year.
In the midst of the March lockdown, they began a pay-what-you-can delivery system, delivering over 100 meals to households across South Glasgow. Since then, they’ve been preparing their space for opening and devising new ways to distribute food, including a planned community fridge outside their building. Several of pink peacock’s directors have also been part of a larger effort to save the historic Langside Shul, one of very few remaining purpose-built Jewish spaces in Scotland, from development and gentrification. All the while, they’ve been funding the project with a successful crowdfunder and a host of innovative and entertaining events and merchandise.
In light of the foundering of the mainstream left, pink peacock’s action-oriented approach to their politics stands out as an example of how grassroots organizations can be drivers of material change. The list of values and detailed plans on their website for making the cafe fully accessible - including statements on sound and light levels, ableism, racism, plans for a weekly autism-friendly day, and mobility, among other things - give hope that perhaps a new standard is being set for inclusivity among progressive organizations. The board members’ backgrounds in advocacy and activism only back this up - Morgan has worked in queer healthcare advocacy and support and education on trans issues and sex work, while Jo Marius Hauge (they/them) helps run a support group for male and non-binary survivors of sexual violence.
pink peacock will also promote the learning of Yiddish, the traditional language of the Ashkenazi Jews. (The cafe’s name alludes to the golden peacock, a traditional symbol of Yiddish literature and song.) Before the Holocaust, an estimated 11 million people worldwide spoke the language. Today, that number sits at 1.5 million, most in the USA and Israel in Orthodox communities. However, the global number of Yiddish speakers is on the rise, due to growing Jewish communities and, in part, renewed interest among left-wing, progressive Jews. Currently, pink peacock shares social media posts and written communications in both languages. Those wishing to learn the language or speak it regularly can look forward to resources and opportunities when the cafe opens physically.
To hear more about pink peacock’s background and future, read on for an interview with Morgan and Joe.
G-You: I’m curious as to the community response you’ve gotten to pink peacock with regards to all the communities within Glasgow who have taken notice, whether that’s the Jewish community, the queer community, Govanhill locals, or anyone else. Have you had different responses from different groups or within different groups of people?
MH: Definitely. I think we’ve gotten probably the loudest response from diaspora Jews across the world. It's been really nice to see how Jews all over the world are excited about the project. Obviously we're based in Glasgow, but it's always been important to us that it’s not only for people in Glasgow. Even before the pandemic we've always intended to have lots of stuff accessible online so people anywhere can dial in.
The response for being IRL will be different than being online, but we've really seemed to have flown under the radar of the Nazis, which is always nice, and we've gotten extremely minimal antisemitism. We've gotten a little bit of transphobia, but it's quite pathetic. It's been very little.
We've also we've gotten a really positive response from other local food justice organizations who aren't explicitly queer or Jewish, and that's been really heartening. For instance, we asked the community if anybody had fridges that they wanted to donate to us that we could stock with free food, and we just instantly got two fridges.
JI: And someone else in the community has just offered to build a little shelter for the fridge so the fridge can be outside, so that will happen soon, which is amazing.
MH: So, soon there will be a fridge outside of our shop where anybody, at any time of day can come donate food or take food, and we’ll keep it stocked and clean. It plays into the idea of solidarity, not charity. So much of trying to feed people who need to be fed is like, “Come to this soup kitchen and have this soup that I've made,” and while that is obviously better than not feeding people, we want to give people as much agency as possible. So it will be a free fridge where you can pick what you want because you know what you and your family need to eat.
JI: The response from the Jewish community within Glasgow has been kind of interesting in that it seems that we've mostly just raised lots of eyebrows - we were really expecting more vocal reactions. There are some aspects of Jewishness which the community in Glasgow is very protective of. The most pushback that we kind of got was more with the Langside synagogue. We were part of a larger movement to try to save it.
MH: You're right, we got a much more negative response about the issue of trying to save the Shul than about anything else we've done. It seems like we're people reacted as though we were opening old wounds.
JI: There’s a sentiment of “why aren't you going to the Shuls that we have?” And the answer to that is because there are problems with them.
MH: The main thing is that they’re full of Zionism, but also we're queer, and even though lots of spaces try to be queer friendly, it's just awkward and it's uncomfortable and it's not actually welcoming, and they need to work harder on that.
JI: Because if you're presenting us with the option of either holding our noses to things like Zionism and uncomfortable queer stuff in order to have access to Jewish life, or try to build something better and make our own space, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to want to take the second option.
MH: It seems like they're afraid that by opening a Jewish space that isn't theirs, we're going to take away their Jews. But surely we should be celebrating the diversity in our community.
Meals delivered by pink peacock during lockdown in 2020
G-You: How do you place yourselves within Jewish and queer communities? Do you see it as a goal to still interact with those institutions in Glasgow? Or is it more about creating a space that’s entirely independent of them?
JI: I reckon everyone on the board would have different answers to this.
MH: Our priority is definitely on queers and Jews who aren't comfortable and welcome in those more institutional spaces because of their marginalization. We care a lot about accessibility. People don’t tend to think about accessibility beyond having ramps for wheelchair access, which of course is important, but that's not the only part of it. Access regarding money is really important to us, as well as access around race and transness. All of these things are extremely non-negotiable for us.
For instance, if you’re Jewish and you’re poor, engaging in public life is difficult because even things like being a member of a shul cost money. High holiday services cost money. And then queer life is mostly centered around going out and that costs money. So, we're here for people who are poor.
And we're here for people who have physical space access which just are not met in most of Glasgow, Glasgow's a really inaccessible city - even the subways are inaccessible. There are no lifts anywhere; most places don't have ramps. Most places don't have disabled access toilets. We will be the only space in Govanhill with a wheelchair accessible toilet and an adult-size changing table.
If you're a queer or Jewish person of color, instantly everywhere is at least a little bit hostile to you: all queer spaces and all Jewish spaces. Racial justice is non-negotiable for us; we’re always working on trying to remove barriers for people of color. It’s an access issue, because if people don’t want to come it’s not because they just don’t want to. Obviously it’s for a reason and we want to address those reasons, and broadly, the queer community and Jewish community need to be focusing on that so much more.
Trans issues are another big one. Depending on what kind of space you're in, it could be hostile to trans people, or there will be people who are hostile and they'll be excused for being TERF-y. In Jewish spaces, at best it's going to be uncomfortable and patronizing, and people will be drawing too much attention to it and asking weird questions and at worst it will just be like, “No, you're not allowed to do that. You’re sinning, or something.” And all of that sucks.
JI: But there are organizations we've talked with personally that we'd be willing to work with. It’s something that's missing on the Left: that mindset of “A single issue needs solving and we need to be able to cooperate with other groups to do so. We don't agree on everything, but we can all agree to fix this one problem.” It can be a difficult thing to negotiate and navigate, but it’s what we’re trying to do.
G-You: I’m curious about the Yiddish aspect of pink peacock. How did you guys end up learning Yiddish? Are there many resources that are accessible for those who are hoping to learn?
MH: There aren't very many resources that are accessible - That's part of why we're doing it.
I had friends that were learning Yiddish, and I was getting more into Jewish stuff. I didn't grow up with a traditional Jewish education, but even if you did, you’re not taught about Jewish anarchism, even though that was a huge part of Jewish political life in the pre-war and inter-war period. If you were in Europe or America at that time you would know Jewish anarchists because they were so they were just such a big part of political life, and in big numbers.
It’s just been so nourishing to learn my ancestral language, but it's completely inaccessible because it's so under-resourced and underfunded as a language. The institutions that teach Yiddish, their courses cost a lot of money, and aside from that, they're really rigid in the version of Yiddish that they teach - Standard YIVO Yiddish is what's taught most commonly.
There's all kinds of politics around choosing that versus choosing the Hasidic Yiddish that people are born into speaking and is the native language of millions of people. Some people do speak YIVO Yiddish, but in extremely limited circles.
YIVO Yiddish, it's an ossified Yiddish that is very resistant to change. In terms of updating its vocabulary around queer stuff and disability and race, there were a group of us on my course who were absolutely shocked and appalled at the way that teachers were discussing disability and race and to a lesser extent, queerness, because the vocabulary that they're using is stuck in pre-war times, like we don't say these things anymore because these things are just slurs. These are things that you can't say without discussing their context, but they were completely uncritically using racial and ableist slurs. So that's another level of the politics of institutionalized Yiddish.
But we're hoping to make the cafe a Yiddish learning space so people can practice their Yiddish without fear of fucking up, that we’re going to yell at them for using the wrong gender. We’ll have dictionaries available and we’ll try to make as many resources for Yiddish learning free as possible. We’ll have things like events and singing groups where we teach a bit of Yiddish and we sing in Yiddish and that's free for everybody.
pink peacock shares communications in Yiddish and English
G-You: In German, changing how we discuss gender and other issues often requires the introduction of completely new vocabulary. I was wondering how you guys are addressing the need for new language in Yiddish?
JI: I would say even in a less purposeful manner, your language changes depending on how you're using it, right? So, if we as people who have political aspirations are using it and owning it, then it's going to change to community needs and it's going to change to be more appropriate for the communities that are using it.
MH: Yeah, we're in constant dialogue with other queer Yiddishists about how they’re changing the language. Lots of people like really hate that we're doing that, because they think that it's it's precious the way that it is and that it it shouldn't be allowed to change, or that by changing it and making it more queer or less racist that we’re americanizing it. This is something that I've been accused of, that it’s American hegemony that I use the word queer in Yiddish instead of saying, like, homosexual. And it’s like, queer is an international word, people say it all over the world in lots of languages. And it's the word that I mean.
And we make real efforts to Yiddish-ify queer words. By we, I mean queer Yiddishists, because there is a good group of people doing this work. Like, we don't just say like we don't say nonbinary, we say umtsveyik, which means “un-two-ish.”
pink peacock will be situated opposite Queen’s Park in Govanhill, where in the 1930s a group of Jews, communists, and labourers stormed a rally held by British Union of Fascists leader Oswald Moseley and his party, successfully driving them out of the neighbourhood.
G-You: You’ve mentioned that there’s a historical precedent for Jewish radicalism, and it seems to me that Scotland has a history of identifying as a progressive or more egalitarian nation as well. Are there Scottish values that you guys try to incorporate into your ethos?
JI: I think the idea of Scotland as a progressive nation is an interesting thing to bring up. I think Scotland likes to go off and think it's a lot more progressive than it is, and because it's next to England, it's compared to England, but Scotland has a history of colonialism that it has yet to really reckon with.
This is something that we are keen to draw attention to, which is maybe easy for us in some ways, because neither of us is Scottish.
JI: Scotland is very white, which is something I didn't realize at first, or even after living here for a while. But there are some really cool things in terms of like Scottish Jewish history like that we like calling upon. We live in Govanhill, which has an interesting part in Jewish history.
MH: Govanhill used to be a Jewish neighborhood, and so did the Gorbals until people moved further south. But there's a moment in antifascist Jewish history, where Oswald Moseley, who was the leader of the British fascist party, was coming to Queen’s Park to do a rally, and the local Jews just stopped it. Like, they literally deplatformed him by beating up the other fascists and and running them out of the neighborhood. Glasgow’s always had a real working class, antifascist history.
JI: So, we feel happy to clamp onto that and be continuing that. But it can be difficult because you have to be very intentional with it, not just using those aesthetics, but also using the values and the practices.
MH: It's really important to us to empower our communities to help each other and to help themselves and to create their own narratives and their own culture rather than to be relying on neoliberal charities such as Stonewall and Mermaids that do not serve our interests, who are doing things like working with the Home Office uncritically, and working with arms dealers and the police. Retweeting a fucking cop with a rainbow flag.
pink peacock has begun renovating their physical space
G-You: Where is the cafe currently in terms of progress toward opening?
JI: We are in a pretty exciting bit, which is that we're building the space!
MH: We're doing building works and renovations to make it accessible and cute, because those things are equally important to us.
JI: We did a crowdfunder and that went well. That money has been spent on building works and the like. It's been going towards rent and it's been going towards getting the space nice. It's a really great space, it’s massive.
MH: It's going to be so good. We're really excited.
JI: It's on Victoria Rd, it needs proper work, but it’s happening. We've got momentum back recently.
MH: But we're also doing online events to keep a sense of community going and give people something to do during the ‘Rona. We do digital havdalah every Saturday after sundown and that's open to all Jews and people who are invited by Jews and people who are pursuing conversion at any level.
And recently we did a podcast called Coffees and Fags where we talk about queer media. Or we talk about media that we like. Good vibes only.
G-You: As a final question, is there anything you’d like to tell the Glasgow community or that you would like people to know?
MH: I want people to be empowered to start doing their own stuff as well. We don't know what the fuck we're doing and we're figuring it out as we go, and that's totally fine. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good, just start doing something if you have the energy and the desire.
pink peacock needs your support! Donate to them on paypal or patreon and treat yourself to something from their shop.
Listen to coffee and fags here! The podcast is currently only accessible to patreon supporters, but will be made available to everyone in a few months.
You can learn more about pink peacock, attend their events, send your questions, and follow their progress on:
