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Below are descriptions of few of the workshops we’ve designed.

Creating and Sustaining an Anti-Oppressive Community: Beginning the Journey (first in a multi-part series)

Anti-oppression and liberation work begin with an analysis of power, an understanding and ability to recognize what is and is not oppression, and ongoing evaluation of our progress. The interlocking, mutually-reinforcing systems of oppression we live in function on multiple levels simultaneously: in the everyday thoughts, words, and actions of ourselves, our colleagues, our places of work and play, the communities we serve, and overall culture and society. When we can begin to understand our socialization into systems of oppression, we can more clearly identify and enact support for clients, colleagues, and others in our larger communities.

This workshop will present basic frameworks of oppression and liberation. Together, we will critically examine our individual socialization as players in a larger system meant to disconnect and isolate us. Participants will learn fundamentals of social justice and begin to explore how we have collectively and individually been taught to be agents/oppressors and targets/the oppressed in a larger system of oppression. Attendees will also consider actions that we can take on personal, cultural, and institutional levels to create a more equitable organizations, institutions, and communities.

2-Day Facilitation Skills Workshop: Facilitating Difficult Conversations with Groups and Individuals

Our current social and political climate makes challenging conversations nearly unavoidable in both work and daily life. We are confronting oppression related topics that can be difficult to discuss across a range of identities and circumstances. Many of us tend to shy away from these conversations in an effort to preserve our connections, but we often leave these interactions—and sometimes these relationships—feeling hollow, defeated, and drained. How can we address oppression, live in alignment with our values, and have and maintain healthy, interdependent connections that truly create change for ourselves, our work, and our communities?

This two-day interactive workshop will provide participants with a supported space to explore how we can most effectively enter and engage difficult discussions on inequity and oppression. We will examine oppression and our socialization into systems of oppression as a root of conversation challenges, and participants will be encouraged to explore the difference between “safe” and “comfortable” conversations. Attendees will learn how to push through discomfort to navigate difficult dialogues, leveraging them as learning opportunities with youth, clients, colleagues, and communities. We will use both lecture and small and large group processing to explore and practice leaning into difficult interactions, interrupting oppression, and deepening our skills to connect with each other as we explore ways to exist in interdependent and supported communities.

Calling In in a Call Out Culture: Skills to Effectively Interrupt Oppression

Engaging best practices and facilitating interactions clients and colleagues can be challenging, especially when we are working to operate and uphold social justice values. It is common for those in the larger community to be aware of issues like racism, sexism, heterosexism, classism, etc., but it becomes more difficult to figure out how to move outside of these systems in and out of work.

Understanding colonization as the root of US-based systems of oppression helps us to identify how we have internalized oppressive colonial values and why we act upon them, thereby upholding constructed systems inequity. Considering this layer of our socialization and isolating colonialism as foundational to all systems of oppression changes the container of the conversation, allows for more agency and collaboration within our discussions, and helps us co-create a liberatory vision that can serve more of us the more unpacking we do. How might we share our power when we understand ourselves and each other on a different level? What might it be like to more effectively engage with one another and our clients in anti-oppressive, interdependent, and liberatory ways? To work collaboratively with our colleagues and in our larger communities?

This day-long workshop will provide participants with room for guided examination of our socialization with a concentration on the impacts of colonization, and how this influences our work. 

Taking Action for Equity: Finding the Love in REVOLution

What does it mean to engage in rEVOLution: to truly dismantle colonization and systems of oppression and to love one another? How do we identify our values and act in solidarity with them, instead of with what we were taught from colonial systems of oppression? How do we learn how to love, share power, and tell the truth with compassion? What would change if we were love one another? How might that change what we do and how we respond when others face harm?

When our hearts enter the spaces that our bodies and minds currently occupy, we begin to move and engage with people, places, and spaces differently. This is the beginning of change. Knowing what to do when we encounter discrimination or oppression can be challenging. It can be difficult to trust what we experience, to take what we know and transform our knowledge into action, or to even know what actions to take. When we understand that the feelings that keep us stuck are part of the very systems of oppression we are hoping to change, we can begin to make different—often more liberatory—choices. Whether you’re new to the learning and unlearning process of social justice work, or you’ve been engaged in the process for a while, this workshop will help ground and center participants in love as we learn about systems of oppression and everyday actions we can take to interrupt them.

Centering love, we will examine how our socialization within systems of oppression hold us back from equity and liberation. We will discuss barriers to action, as well as share some of the ways we have been socialized to conspire with of oppression rather than challenge it in the name of equity and social justice. If we are brave and vulnerable enough to care about, and maybe even love the people with whom we interact, we can build community and enact true liberatory change.

Beyond Black and White: Understanding Colonialism and Our Roles as Non-Black POC Resisting Anti-Blackness and Championing Liberation

When we as non-black POC witness anti-blackness, we have many of the same feelings of uncertainty that white folks do about how best to respond. We may freeze and be unsure what actions to take. Sometimes we get caught up in racial-hierarchy identity politics, worrying that supporting black liberation efforts somehow takes away from our identity-specific anti-racist efforts. We non-black POC have been socialized to play a particular role within the system of racism, one that was intentionally created when the United States was founded as a colony in order to reinforce a racial hierarchy that is founded on black identity. Dismantling anti-Blackness begins with understanding our position and the roles we play that ultimately serve systemic racism.

When we begin to examine how our understanding of race has been shaped by colonialism, we can begin to see more clearly how we as non-Black POC have long been leveraged to support and maintain a system of anti-black racism. This day-long workshop will provide attendees with language, historical knowledge, and a safe space for guided examination of our anti-black socialization. Together, we will explore how systems of colonization have impacted each of us both within and beyond our understanding of our own racial and ethnic identities. Attendees will also be supported in considering ways to support black liberation in order to develop interdependent connections and community both within their own identities and across identity-based (and other!) differences.

Understanding Intersectionality and the Heightened Impacts of Intersectional Oppression

“Intersectional theory asserts that people are often disadvantaged by multiple sources of oppression: their race, class, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, and other identity markers. Intersectionality recognizes that identity markers (e.g. “woman” and “black”) do not exist independently of each other, and that each informs the others, often creating a complex convergence of oppression.” (YW Boston)

All systems of oppression are mutually-reinforcing, and while we can pull them apart and examine one at a time in order to understand each identity and its associated oppression better, we are living under all of these systems of oppression at once in our daily lives. What happens when you are oppressed in more than one identity?

This workshop will review the foundations of our current social system in the US to understand the function of race and racism in the maintenance of our society, as well as how all systems of oppression work together. We will discuss how having multiple targeted identities creates more and different opportunities for harm that are greater than the sum of their parts and why it is important to use this lens in our work. Attendees will have an opportunity to begin thinking about their early learnings and socialization with respect to the various identities they hold, and begin to consider how holding space for all aspects of ourselves begins to create the changes we are hoping to see not just with respect to racism, but also as we work toward a more liberated society for us all.

Interested in a Workshop?

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