XR Western Mass is co-sponsoring Escalating Resistance: Training and Book Signing of Shut It Down. The organizers write:
Come learn strategies and tactics to impact power holders and create social disruption at increasingly larger scales.
About this Event
Lisa Fithian is an anti-racist organizer who has worked for justice since the 1970s. Using creative, strategic, nonviolent direct action and civil disobedience, she has won many battles and trained tens of thousands of people while participating in a range of movements and mobilizations, including Occupy Wall Street, Hurricane Katrina, the uprisings at Standing Rock and in Ferguson and corporate globalization protests all over the world, the climate justice movement, and more.
As part of her tour to support the release of her new book, "Shut It Down: Stories from a Fierce, Loving Resistance," Lisa will be offering training to hone our strategies and tactics to impact power holders and create social disruption at increasingly larger scales. This organizing requires attention to how we build collective power that heals and liberates us from our socialization in the dominant culture of colonialism and superiority that privileges white, male, Christian and rich people.
In addition to this exploration of power and healing we will look at: power mapping of people, economic centers, and geographies to increase impact within strategic terrains, creating calendars of engagement, organizing our people, developing solidarity response networks and how artful "props" can bolster our uprisings.
One of the goals of this training is to build a foundation for an alliance of movements with thousands of people for a coordinated mass disruption nationwide that goes beyond what we have done before.
We cannot just tear it all down, without replacing systems of oppression with systems of liberation. This is our challenge. Organizing courageous, joyful and bold rebellions rooted in solidarity with a beautiful, loving insistence that another world is possible and we are creating her every day.
You can also learn more about Lisa and her work at her Trainers Website: https://organizingforpower.org/about/about-lisa/
Let’s do this, friends!
More about the book:
A veteran activist’s guide to direct action and strategic civil disobedience as the most radical and rapid means to social change.
For decades, Lisa Fithian’s work as an advocate for civil disobedience and nonviolent direct action has put her on the frontlines of change. Described by Mother Jones as “the nation’s best-known protest consultant,” Fithian has supported countless movements including the Battle of Seattle in 1999, rebuilding and defending communities following Hurricane Katrina, Occupy Wall Street, and the uprisings at Standing Rock and in Ferguson. For anyone who wants to become more active in resistance or is just feeling overwhelmed or hopeless, Shut It Down offers strategies and actions you can take right now to promote justice and incite change in your own community.
In Shut It Down Fithian shares historic, behind-the-scenes stories from some of the most important people-powered movements of the past several decades. She shows how movements that embrace direct action have always been, and continue to be, the most radical and rapid means for transforming the ills of our society. Shut It Down is filled with instructions and inspiration for how movements can evolve as the struggle for social justice continues in the Trump era and beyond.