Grassroots struggles around the world consistently challenge dominant frameworks of destruction and control. Understanding these movements is critical to our work regionally. What kind of strategies and tactics can we borrow from these movements? How can solidarity be developed and enhanced? This stream will include both education on issues, presentations from a range of organizations, and hands-on trainings to develop grassroots organizing skills.

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Here are some of the workshops that will be part of the “Connecting Grassroots Struggles” stream:

Ability Rights & Liberation
Description: Overview of issues around disability rights and activism. This is usually left out of social justice circles. Most people, including those with disabilities themselves, are unaware of the history of disabled people in this country. Capitalism sees people with disabilities as a “burden” and they are only allowed to participate in society as much as others want them to. I hope this discussion will inform people about the realities of disabilities and how they can be better served in society.
Who: Martina Robinson and Kevin Heaton

Political Prisoners and Prisoners of War
Who: Ashanti Alston

No War, No Warming
Who: Nadine, Oil Change International

Challenging Challenging Pollution and Prisons… Down With This Rotten-Ass System!
Description: (Follow-up to the Political Prisoner workshop)
This workshop will offer participants an opportunity to connect the dots between the pervasiveness of the life-threatening systems of colonialism, imperialism, war, and death and the presence of pollution and prisons which threaten the future of the Seventh Generation. We will reflect on the movement to liberate political prisoners in the United States and Canada, and examine the inter-connectedness of freedom struggles which empower “The People” to protect our communities and Mother Earth. The goals of this workshop will be to have a candid discussion about the criminalization of dissent and to highlight the cases of freedom fighters behind the walls and in exile.
Who: Jason Corwin & Leslie Jones, Southern Tier Advocacy & Mitigation Project, Incorporated (S.T.A.M.P.)

Introduction to the Beehive Collective
Description: An introduction to the work and theories of the beehive collective - with lots of photos of their many graphic campaigns, stories of local organizing in rural maine, and descriptions of their many varied educational tours, this workshop will provide an introduction and behind the scenes look into the collective that has produced some of the best known modern social movement imagery.
Who: Tyler Norman and Noah, Beehive Collective

History of Palestine & Palestinian Resistance
Description: This workshop is an introduction for people who are not very familiar with the history of Palestine or are confused about conflicting information that they may have received. Its format would be a brief presentation, followed by discussion and an opportunity for participants to ask questions and hear directly from Palestinians about their history and experience. Since this history is constantly presented in the “United States” as a “complex situation” etc., this workshop is a chance to dispel many of the pro-Zionist myths that circulate here, even in what passes for the “pro-Palestinian” account.
Who: New England Committee to Defend Palestine

Ecofeminism
Description: An introduction into the philosophy and implication of ecofeminism, which connects the ways that patriarchal societies are based on environmental destruction
Who: Sonia Acevado

Beehive Collective: Plan Columbia
Description: The Bees take audiences on an interactive VISUAL tour of the connections between COLONIZATION, MILITARIZATION, and RESOURCE EXTRACTION in the Americas. We will be exposing the agendas of the Free Trade Area of the Americas, Plan Colombia, and celebrating resistance to the “Plan Puebla Panama” in Mesoamerica. Join in as we deconstruct the complex and overwhelming issues that are shaping our world, using bioregionally accurate depictions of animals and insects as metaphors to link cultural and ecological diversity.
Who: Tyler Norman and Noah, Beehive Collective

Confronting Zionism in Social Movements
Description: This workshop is intended for people who are already familiar with basic history and who recognize the need for a serious Palestine solidarity movement here. Its purpose is to deepen our collective understanding of how Zionism functions politically in the “United States”—especially within movements for social and political change—and to develop strategies for fighting it. Since Zionism has an impact not only on Palestine, but also on the suppression and disruption of anti-colonial movements here, this workshop also offers the opportunity for people to come to terms with the need to confront Zionist political power in order to move forward in building resistance to imperialism and the national security state.
Who: New England Committee to Defend Palestine

CORI Reform and the Prison Industrial Complex
Description:
Who: Boston Workers Alliance

No Class
Description: “No Class” is an interactive workshop about recognizing and combatting classism in its many forms. Based on participants’ personal experiences and family backgrounds, the workshop will go into the ways that class standing pushes people into different positions and perspectives.
Who: Sonia Acevado

Rainforest Action Network(RAN): Global Finance Campaign
Description: Dirty coal plants, industrial agrifuels, destructive oil extraction and pipelies, and unsustainable logging operations all depend on one thing: the financial support of major banks. By balancing boardroom negotions with grassroots direct action pressure, RAN’s Global Finance team is holding banks like CitiBank and Bank of America accountable for the climate-changing industries they finance. Don’t let Wall Street use your money to bankroll climate change. See how you can become a part of the solution.

Towards a Radical Movement for Climate Action
Description: Increasingly dire predictions of worsening climate chaos arouse both rage and despair among activists. While rage can inspire meaningful and creative action, successful social movements also need to envision a forward-looking, socially reconstructive agenda. We will explore the philosophy of social ecology, which envisions a radically transformed relationship between human societies and the rest of nature, and discuss the lessons of an earlier wave of US anti-nuclear activism that halted plans for a massive expansion of nuclear power, while advocating a decentralized and directly democratic solar-powered world. The workshop will critically examine the relevance of these models and philosophies for today’s climate action movement.
Who: Brian Tokar, Institute for Social Ecology