Salon Mazal is an infoshop

Infoshop

An infoshop is a storefront or social center that serves as a node for the distribution of political information, typically in the form of books, zines, stickers and posters. Infoshops often serve as a meeting space and resource hub for local activist groups....

 in Tel Aviv

Tel Aviv

Tel Aviv , officially Tel Aviv-Yafo , is the second most populous city in Israel, with a population of 404,400 on a land area of . The city is located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline in west-central Israel. It is the largest and most populous city in the metropolitan area of Gush Dan, with...

, Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

. Its purpose is to spread information and raise awareness of issues related to social change, including human rights

Human rights

Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...

, animal rights

Animal rights

Animal rights, also known as animal liberation, is the idea that the most basic interests of non-human animals should be afforded the same consideration as the similar interests of human beings...

, the environment, globalization

Globalization

Globalization refers to the increasingly global relationships of culture, people and economic activity. Most often, it refers to economics: the global distribution of the production of goods and services, through reduction of barriers to international trade such as tariffs, export fees, and import...

, social and economic oppression, consumerism, feminism

Feminism

Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...

 and gender issues. It is run by an open, non-hierarchical collective of volunteers at 32 Yitzhak Sadeh Street, Tel Aviv.

Activities

Salon Mazal has a lending library

Library

In a traditional sense, a library is a large collection of books, and can refer to the place in which the collection is housed. Today, the term can refer to any collection, including digital sources, resources, and services...

, a shop and a space for meetings, lectures, workshops and film screenings,.. Occasionally there are other projects on various topics of interest, such as youth group meetings, Arabic lessons, DIY workshops, a reading group of anarchist texts.

The lending and reference library

Reference library

A reference library does not lend books and other items; instead, they must be read at the library itself. Typically such libraries are used for research purposes, for example at a university. See List of closed stack libraries...

 stocks several thousand books on subjects related to social change, of which roughly half are in English. The idea behind it is to enable people to read books without encouraging them to buy, thus creating an alternative to the existing consumer culture. Salon Mazal prints and publishes materials on a variety of subjects, including a DIY guide, a guide on wise consumerism, a translated booklet on permaculture

Permaculture

Permaculture is an approach to designing human settlements and agricultural systems that is modeled on the relationships found in nature. It is based on the ecology of how things interrelate rather than on the strictly biological concerns that form the foundation of modern agriculture...

, translated anarchist texts, booklets on feminism for men and women.

Workshops, lectures, film screenings, group discussions and meetings on different subjects are held several times a week, open to the public and are free of charge. Salon Mazal also provides a space for study, organization, meeting, planning and working on initiatives and projects for social change, free of charge. Groups who have used the space over the years for their meetings include Anarchists Against the Wall

Anarchists Against the Wall

Anarchists Against the Wall , sometimes called "Anarchists Against Fences" or "Jews Against Ghettos", is a direct action group composed of Israeli anarchists and anti-authoritarians who oppose the construction of the Israeli Gaza Strip barrier and Israeli West Bank barrier. The AAtW calls the West...

, Indymedia, One struggle, Woman for Woman, Kelaf (The Lesbian Feminist Community), A garden for Peace, The Coexistence Forum in the Negev, The Community Advocate, Shatil - Mixed Cities Project, The Center for Alternative Knowledge and The Committee against House Demolition, the Alternative youth summer camp, New Profile.

Store

Salon Mazal is one of the distribution points for fair trade

Fair trade

Fair trade is an organized social movement and market-based approach that aims to help producers in developing countries make better trading conditions and promote sustainability. The movement advocates the payment of a higher price to producers as well as higher social and environmental standards...

 products in Israel (coffee, cocoa and olive oil), which is sold at the shop. The market for these products is still very small in Israel, mainly due to lack of awareness. They also offer olive oil

Olive oil

Olive oil is an oil obtained from the olive , a traditional tree crop of the Mediterranean Basin. It is commonly used in cooking, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, and soaps and as a fuel for traditional oil lamps...

 from Palestinian

Palestinian people

The Palestinian people, also referred to as Palestinians or Palestinian Arabs , are an Arabic-speaking people with origins in Palestine. Despite various wars and exoduses, roughly one third of the world's Palestinian population continues to reside in the area encompassing the West Bank, the Gaza...

 farmers in Tul-Karem and olive oil soaps from Palestinian farmers in Budrus

Budrus

Budrus is a Palestinian town in the Ramallah and al-Bireh Governorate, located 31 kilometers Northwest of Ramallah in the northern West Bank. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics , the town had a population of 1,399 inhabitants in 2007."Budrus" is Arabic for "Peter" and in...

. The products are imported by Green Action

Green Action

Green Action is an environmental organization based in Zagreb, Croatia and the national member of Friends of the Earth. Based with a full-time activist group with thirteen members back by a larger number of volunteers, the organization works on topics related to biodiversity, energy, climate...

 and their production avoids the exploitation of workers or environmental degradation

Environmental degradation

Environmental degradation is the deterioration of the environment through depletion of resources such as air, water and soil; the destruction of ecosystems and the extinction of wildlife...

. In addition, they distribute flyers and booklets on fair trade and hold lectures on the subject.

The infoshop is one of the only places in Israel where self-made products and self-published books can be distributed. People are encouraged to sell their products, including artwork, books, poetry books, homemade jams, deodorants, self made political t-shirts and other products made by individuals. In this way the infoshop encourages local, non-industrial production and supports local independent producers.

External links

• Salon Mazal's official Blog
• "Anarchists, Idealists and Ecologists" - article from The Green Prophet