Sustaining Ourselves as Activists & Organizers

Cecilia Lim

WORKSHOP OUTLINE

 

Mins

Activity

15m

Gather Team, Minis, Overview of Set-up Plan

40m

Set-up & Street Outreach  w/ Signs & Flyers (along parameters at 42nd Street)

30m

Welcome & Sign-in & Music

Engage everyone in the “Water Under the Bridge” participatory art activity

5m

Introduction

  • Land of the Lenape (Lenape means ‘people’)
  • Introduce workshop; goals of workshop; invite/thank everyone for participating in the “Water Under the Bridge” art activity
  • Ask members of workshop team to raise hands or stand to identify them as go-to folks in the workshop.
  • Talk briefly about language liberation and why we will be having 1 minute of silence every 20 or so minutes.
  • Sustaining All Life and United to End Racism are both projects of the Re-Evaluation Counseling Communities
  • Combines an anti-oppression framework with an active and deep listening practice to:
    • Gain perspective about the ways we’ve been conditioned and socialized to think and act. Rigid patterns of thought and behavior
    • Heal from the ways we’ve been targeted by oppression
    • Take action to end the oppressive systems and create the conditions so that everyone has a chance to live well
  • Living theory, always evolving
  • Need an ongoing practice and space to come together and review ideas because of the ways we’ve internalized the oppression. If tomorrow we succeed in taking apart all oppressive systems, we would continue to think and act oppressively because of the oppression we carry inside of us.
  • SAL: Focus on supporting those working to solve climate climate crisis with what we know

15m

Sustaining Ourselves as Activists & Organizers Using RC Tools

  • Introduce basic tool of SAL: listening exchange
    • Everyone thinks and acts better when they are listened to
    • (Raise hands) Who has had the experience of listening/being listened to and experienced a positive difference? This builds on what you know
    • Guidelines for listening:
      • Pleased and delighted
      • Withhold judgment, complete respect
      • Confidential listening, ask for permission to share
      • For today, no interruption
  • Set-up listening rounds / concentric circles listening
    • All who are able, stand into two concentric circles
    • Everyone should have a pair, facing each other
    • During each exchange, each person will have 1.5 minute to listen and 1.5 minute to share
    • Facilitator will call out a question during each round and call out the time to switch roles, then switch partners
    • If can’t think of answers, can notice and talk about how you feel about this set up, these questions
  • Exchange 1: What is something, big or small, that you are pleased about that has had a positive impact on our planet?
  • Exchange 2: What is a life-affirming way you sustain yourself in this work?

5m

What was it like to listen? To be listened to?

  • Reflection, sense of strength and struggle, collective struggle
  • Build system of mutual support, not extractive like our current economic system
  • 1:1 Listening Exchange our basic tool to do work of emotional processing.
  • Value of developing awareness of our experiences, process feelings, arrive at clarity of thought and action steps. [Refer to participatory art]
  • Most of us learned how to disengage, isolate, settle. What we figured out to do to survive. As activists & organizers, on frontline of struggle to change the conditions for most impacted. Many of us driven by firsthand experience of having been treated as less than
  • Emotional processing work is a way for us to stop operating in survival mode, but from a place of abundance: interest, connection, hope
  • Emotional processing is a way we can navigate our feelings. Instead of hindering us, weighing us down, our feelings become Water Under the Bridge.

5m

Activists & Organizers Panel Introduction

  • Introduce panelists, format, time, questions:
    1. What movement work have you been a part of to end the climate emergency?
    2. What is one way you’ve used emotional processing tools to support yourself or someone else in this work?
    3. What is one RC idea that’s been helpful to remember in doing this work?

30m

Panel

Each panelist (5 total) will have 3 minutes to speak, with option for an additional 30sec

Listening exchange, 1 min each. Reflect on and consider what you heard. Notice your reactions, thoughts, and feelings

5m

Cumulative: Language Liberation 1 Minute of Silence, transition time

5m

Demo

5m

Q & A & Summary

  • Reminder about confidentiality agreement

5min

Popcorn: 3-5 Key Take-aways

  • Literature
  • Interest / Contact Forms
  • Support group immediately after the workshop

Teach Closing Activities

  • Tatlong Bagsak Unity Clap

Closing: sing/chant “Everywhere we go”

 

 

 

 

 


Last modified: 2023-04-15 09:24:12+00