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Stay tuned for information about 2010 Anti-Oppression programming.

Action Camp 2009

Racial Justice for Sustainable Communities

August 13-16, 2009
Kerrville-Schreiner Park, a few hours north of Austin, TX

Introduction

NASCO Action Camp, held each August, provides an intensive training retreat for leaders and members of housing co-ops, worker collectives, and other democratically-run communities. Participants will explore new approaches to transforming communities through popular education methods and Theatre of the Oppressed techniques.

Action Campers will deconstruct race and racism for two full days with the goal of developing a shared analysis of racial justice. In this process, there will be space for People of Color to discuss, process, and challenge the impacts of racist oppression as well as function as anti-racist organizers within communities of color. There will also be space for white allies to gain a better understanding of how their privilege operates, how they can hold themselves accountable, and how they can work within white communities to organize against racism. On the third day, we will explore the relationship between racism and gentrification and share strategies for community resistance to gentrification.

Although Action Camp will focus on race and racism, an intersectional analysis in which all social identities and oppressions are related is at the heart of the curriculum and training.  Participants will leave Action Camp with an understanding of gentrification and organizing strategies, allyship and leadership skills, a stronger anti-oppression analysis, popular education tools, and practices for building accountability and redistributing power in democratic communities.

Program

The camp program allows group cohesion through games, activities, and workshops, as well as free time to hike, swim in the Guadalupe River, and share music and stories over the evening campfire. Intensive skill building comes from outside trainers who bring years of experience in anti-oppression training to share with the campers.

Schedule

Action Camp should plan on arriving around 2:30 on August 13th, and camp will begin at 3:30.   On August 16, the program will end by 4:30, with time to clean-up and leave the park by 6:00.

Workshops

Training sessions are facilitated by co-op leaders and social justice activists, using a popular education framework and techniques from Augosto Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed. Specific plans for proposing changes at the organizational, community, and individual levels for cooperatives and other democratically run communities emerge from a range of group game, dialogues, and theatrical and creative exercises.

Camp participants will first investigate privilege in their own lives, then attain skills for dismantling oppression in communities, and finally strategize how to take this work home to their specific organizations to affect local culture, policy, and inter-personal dynamics.

The exercises and approaches that are offered function in three ways:
(1) by exciting and motivating membership to take interest in the issues presented,
(2) by educating membership on oppression or organizational matters,
(3) by guiding proposals to improve the inclusiveness and function of cooperative homes, businesses, and organizing collectives.