Knowledge, skills and perspectives to challenge oppression and create spaces of solidarity.
Our organising work sits within a global and historical system of interlinking forms of oppression. These shape the material, relational, and psychological conditions that influence every one of us. Unfortunately, as many of us will have witnessed, this means that within our groups and organisations, we are likely to reproduce mechanisms of oppression, often unconsciously. Without the skills to identify and transform those patterns, they will give rise to tensions and misunderstandings and will make our organising not aligned with the values of solidarity and empowerment we strive for. We can find ourselves reproducing the barriers to participation, empowerment and well-being that we see in the world around us. This is especially depleting for people who are already marginalised and discriminated against and needs to be addressed if our groups are to be genuinely empowering and transformative spaces.
Starting with the basic frameworks and concepts used in anti-oppression work, participants will explore ways to identify and transform the dynamics of oppression at both the individual and organisational level and understand how they relate to systemic dimensions of socio-economic injustice.
Navigating topics related to anti-oppression in our groups is not easy, often brings up trauma responses, tensions, and conflicts and leads to the erosion of trust. To move away from reproducing harmful oppression patterns, we need to learn to build cultures of care, and move away from shame and blame towards a culture of reciprocity, accountability and collective transformation.
Through this kind of work, we can become increasingly skilled in transforming harmful tensions and conflict into enriching growth opportunities, and through better working with diversity, we can include a wider range of perspectives, experiences, and histories, for more adaptable, resilient, and powerful movements that exemplify values we strive for.
Systems of oppression often sustain themselves when we are unable to acknowledge and work well with the power dynamics, social privilege and mechanisms of discrimination that exist in our groups, communities and societies. In active solidarity and empowerment training, we carefully unravel those structures, gradually building a safe ground that can support us to explore these challenging themes step by step. Although the training content and process will address a wide range of discrimination and oppression structures, the main emphasis will be on how we can work with the dynamics that exist in groups and organisations.
The course content is not aimed at giving ready-made solutions but rather opening space for exploration, mutual learning and setting intentions for a long learning journey. Methods used during the course will invite participants to engage with emotional literacy work, embracing conditioned reactions to transform collective organising patterns.
The course focuses on individual and group level interventions, acknowledging the systemic nature of disempowerment and exclusion mechanisms.
This course is aimed at those with no or minimal knowledge on the topic of solidarity and empowerment.
The learning process will be held by facilitators using exercises and activities supporting self-reflection and self-evaluation around the following topics:
Participants will be invited to challenge their views and perspectives, be open to vulnerability, share from a place of personal experience and dive into explorations of the complexity of our identities, and how power and privilege play into these dynamics.
Like all the other Ulex courses, this one will be held in the rural setting of the pre-Pyrenean mountains, enabling us to integrate some nature connection and awareness practices, working with body and mind. Those practices will help us to be more present in our training experience as well as provide the inspiration to look at our activism in a more holistic way.
The three facilitators will bring different approaches to anti-oppression work, coming from diverse cultural, activist and organisational backgrounds. Read more about them below.
The course will be delivered in accessible, international English.
Who is it aimed at?
Anyone with experience in socially engaged action addressing ecological, political and social justice issues. We embrace a broad definition of activism, including: Resistance – action preventing further damage to ecosystems and social justice; Renewal – action focused on developing and creating alternatives for healthier societies and communities; and Building Resilience – action supporting increased resilience in communities to weather the uncertain times ahead.
This course is a basic entry level course. It might not be suitable for you if you are looking for advanced practices and/or are not in a place to sit with challenging conversations about the basic anti-oppression tools and approaches.
In the solidarity economy:
(See details of our approach to radical economics here)
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Location:
Sergio (all pronouns) was born in Romania and migrated to Germany in the early 2010s. In the past, he was a social worker with homeless people and a social consultant for Eastern European migrants for various organisations. Trained as a filmmaker, he spent two years making a documentary about the ‘civic reawakening’ in Romania and the waves of protest it brought with it. In connection to this, Sergio is currently co-steering the development of an online open-source participative knowledge production platform on activism in Romania. Over the past nine years, Sergiu has offered his skills to various journalists, grassroots collectives and campaigns, mostly working within the labour rights, climate justice, international solidarity and anti-authoritarian movements in Germany and Romania. Nonetheless, his biggest focus since 2020 has been his work as an organiser with the anarcho-syndicalist Free Workers Union, where he focuses mostly on organising Romanian migrant workers on construction sites, in factories and in the agricultural field.
Location:
Jeroen (he/him pronouns) has been involved in grassroots social movements for more than two decades now, starting back when he was fifteen. Throughout the years the fights for “climate justice” and “migrant justice” have been consistently on top of the list of struggles that make his heart beat faster. A key transformative moment for Jeroen was reading Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Freire’s revolutionary pedagogy gave him a language to support the creation of emancipatory learning environments, rooted in a desire for collective liberation. Jeroen has also been exploring in depth Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed and Joanna Macy’s The Work That Reconnects among other methodologies to build his trainer’s toolkit. Inspired by the liberatory possibilities of these traditions, he started an organization with a friend, LABO vzw, based in Belgium, where he has worked as a trainer and campaigner between 2013 and 2023.
new stories: different worlds
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Tools for effective and sustainable activism
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Navigating the complex terrain of migrant and migrant-solidarity organising
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an introduction to a holistic and transformative approach to activist training and facilitation
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Go to the people, learn from them. Live with them. Love them. Start with what they know. Build with what they have – Lao Tzu
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Building facilitation capacity through participatory practices.
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a space to think critically, to ask challenging and transformative questions, and find deeper inspiration and understanding to empower social change.
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building and strengthening regenerative praxis for BIPOC organisers.
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Ulex: del latín, (tojo en castellano, argelaga en catalán) nombre.
1. Arbusto espinoso de hoja perenne y floración, con gran capacidad de regeneración y resistencia. Sus púas se abren al entrar en contacto con el fuego y vuelve a brotar de los tocones carbonizados. Planta sucesional que crece bien en condiciones difíciles. Mejora la fertilidad del suelo mediante la fijación de nitrógeno, preparando el terreno para una renovada biodiversidad.
2. Una opción tradicional para encender fuegos. Arde con intensidad y brillo.
3. Un proyecto en red que aporta nutrición y fertilidad a los movimientos sociales europeos a través de la formación
