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on building movements: what we see, what we hear.


Resources that Move Us

6/21/2022

 
We are under a great deal of psychological stress. We spend a lot of our time in our stress responses, especially those of us enduring ethnic and race based stress and trauma. These ceaseless stressors impact our bodies in countless ways, showing up as anxiety, inflammation, and much more. Even as we aim to relax and restore ourselves to continue on, it is often difficult to find true release. We can take that stress with us even when we go to bed at night, still not finding the solace our bodies, minds, and spirits really need.
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The practice of Restorative Yoga can be a gateway to relief that can be difficult to access even in sleep. Restorative Yoga requires little physical exertion, and uses props (like a pillow, bolster, blanket) to support the full release of the body's tension. If you've taken a yoga class, it's possible that you've experienced a restorative posture towards the end of class—​with the lights turned down low, and you holding one posture in stillness, maybe lying on your back. The stillness is important. It helps our bodies move into the opposite of the stress response, the relaxation response—​where our body is able to engage its processes of long term health, like digestion of our food, strengthening of our immune systems, and processing of the traumas we otherwise have to push down. Restorative Yoga can help us begin to heal, by relearning how it feels to truly be at ease. 

​Dr. Gail Parker’s Restorative Yoga for Ethnic and Race Based Traumatic Stress and the companion workbook, Transforming Ethnic and Race-Based Traumatic Stress with Yoga are a wealth of information about how our oppressive structures wreak havoc on our nervous systems, and how we can use the practice of Restorative Yoga to heal and sustain ourselves, body and soul.

I am currently in the process of reading the book and working with its companion workbook, and am deeply grateful for the resource.  As a former direct action organizer, recovering workaholic, and a queer Black woman with a long history of inflammation-induced illness, restorative yoga has become an essential practice of mine. I hope it can offer some rest to you too.

Contributed by Asha Carter
​Certified Yoga Instructor, MM Team Member & Co-Founder of Cambium Collective
Visit Dr. Gail Parker's website.


​

New MM Report: Understanding Parent Engagement in Atlanta

6/15/2022

 
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​Understanding Parent Engagement in Atlanta

​A landscape analysis of parent organizing and advocacy work.
DOWNLOAD: PARENT ENGAGEMENT IN ATLANTA

​Georgia is one of the hotbeds of organized far-right white supremacist activity, especially in the realm of public education, mobilizing parents behind the “anti-CRT” and “don’t say gay” agenda. Organizing Black, Brown, and allied parents in response to such a stark threat is both critical and deeply challenging. We are honored by the stories that groups shared with us of their work to engage parents to bring racial equity to school systems, build deeper parent relationships, address systemic poverty, and fight back against the growing strength of the far-right.

“Understanding Parent Engagement in Atlanta" was commissioned by the United Way of Greater Atlanta in the hopes that a better understanding of parent engagement and organizing will help grassroots groups and philanthropy better support its development. We look forward to continued partnerships to support the building of true parent voice.

​For more information or to access our other reports visit our Research and Reports webpage.
​Connect with us if you have any questions.

​

What Nourishes Us

3/11/2022

 
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Sheikh Ibrahim Baba
​We often express our gratitude to Dr. Ibrahim Abdurrahman Farajajé (may his secret be sanctified), dearly known to the many who studied with him as Ibrahim Baba.
​
​​We are excited to share this beautiful album, Makam Shekhina, filled with traditional Sufi liturgies, Hebrew chants, and new creative compositions each with woven teachings from Ibrahim Baba.​
​Makam Shekhina was founded by Sheikh Ibrahim Baba and Rav Kohenet Taya Mâ Shere through their immense delight of praying together in the realms of counter-oppressive devotion.

Listen to Makam Shekhina.
Read about the artists/the Makam Shekhina community, or purchase the album.

​

2022 Community Organizing & Popular Education Institute

12/17/2021

 
Movement Matters is excited to announce the return of our weeklong Community Organizing & Popular Education Institute (OI) this Spring 2022!

This uniquely tailored and comprehensive yearly training will take place from Monday, May 2nd - Friday, May 6th at the Eaton Workshop in downtown Washington, DC and will follow COVID-safe protocols.  Given the current difficulties of travel and the safety needs of everyone, our 2022 Organizing Institute will be open only to participants from the DMV (DC, MD, VA).
Movement Matters' Organizing Institute was a major shift for me, both personally and for the direction of my work. A year later, I still keep their 'organizing framework' manual on my desk to fashion my own popular education programming and to use as a guiding roadmap. And that really just scratches the surface.

The Organizing Institute introduced me to an amazing, diverse cohort of organizers whose relationships continue to push me forward in my personal and professional growth. I really can’t say enough good things.
The necessity to continue to train organizers and popular educators is even more important as our constituents and communities are being pushed into a normalization period while their representation continues to be ignored or erased.

​Movement Matters' yearly Organizing Institute provides an instructive and challenging learning and action space that deepens participants' vision, skills, values, and capacity. As importantly it also supports cross-pollination and solid relationship building among organizers​—​a key element of successful movement building campaigns in DC and the DMV.

​
We will open our trainings to organizers and popular educators from around the nation this Summer 2022. We deeply appreciate everyone's enthusiasm and trust as we slowly return to in-person sessions. 

​We take the opening and teaching of our weeklong Organizing Institute very seriously given the safety concerns of organizers and their families/loved-ones, and as we move through another winter filled with uncertainty for them, for our communities, and for the change work we are all trying to achieve.
For more information on our Organizing Institutes or to bring an Organizing Institute to your organization or city, connect with us.

​Movement Matters is based in Washington, DC.
We work regionally with various communities and with national partners.

​

Our Stories, Our Meaning: Movement Matters’ Advanced Community Media Studio

8/8/2021

 
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MM’s Advanced Community Media Studio is ideal for cultural workers and organizers who are developing a specific media project alongside a community organization/formation. (This is not technical training.*)
Media shapes what we think is possible. It shapes our dreams while we sleep. It creates meaning we act on while awake. During this collective moment of extensive grief, anger and injustice, we as cultural workers must continue creating images, sounds, stories in ways that commits us to the future we want to wake up in; stories with memory and vision; stories that hold us, deepen us, and propel us towards action.
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graphix by karina.
Nowadays, (thankfully!), we see glimpses of it everywhere, it goes by many names and comes in many forms, but community media, liberatory media, essentially calls upon a production process that intentionally recuperates resistance memory for the sake of moving towards a regenerative future. 

Through community media, the production process becomes a way of organizing each other and connecting with other organized communities, deepening our relationship to important political work, and engaging people who would otherwise be excluded from decision-making processes. For examples and resources on contemporary approaches to community media across our movement check out our report:
Beyond Access & Representation: Media Case Studies.

​​We know all too well the rampant disinformation, silencing, and fear mongering that dominant media is unleashing onto our communities during this moment: a hyperfocus on crime and the need for police, an erasure of the real stories of excluded and “essential” workers, and mischaracterizations of campaigns that call to #CancelRent, #DefundThePolice, and #ExtendTheMoratorium.​
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​We recognize this type of media as a tactic of people in power within a larger strategy to remain in power and minimize the urgency for dissent. We recognize the impacts of this superficial and disconnected storytelling: retraumatization, memory loss, hopelessness, escapism. This tactic is not restricted to the US. We see the manufacturing of imperialist interests disguised as a call to revolution in the coverage of Cuba and other Caribbean and Latin American countries. We see a complete lack of coverage of African nations, unless there is sensationalistic violence that is reported without context. 
​
​This media strategy extends beyond news coverage and permeates movies, television, and other “recreational” media controlled by dominant interests. The same biases and intent creep into our entertainment and, as a result, creep into our understanding of ourselves, our world, and its possibilities.

​​Building on tools and frameworks from across our movement, Our Stories, Our Meaning: Advanced Community Media Studio will be an online space for content creators who are already using their craft as a tool to challenge power to focus on:
  1. Developing their story and world building for a particular project,
  2. Integrating popular education tools to assure community members can participate in story creation, and
  3. Planning for the strategic distribution of their work to advance community needs.
​
​​MM’s Advanced Community Media Studio is ideal for cultural workers and organizers who are developing a specific media project alongside a community organization or community formation. Four online studio sessions will take place between October 1st and October 29th. The first two sessions will be all-day hands-on trainings, the third session will be 1-on-1's with participants and our studio leads, and the last session will be dedicated to presenting and receiving feedback on specific projects.
​

​Advanced Community Media Studio Online Sessions:

Session 1:
Media Rituals: Exploration, creation, and deepening of personal and organizational media rituals.

Session 2:
The Stories We Tell: Tools for identifying the root values in the stories we love, approaches to communicating these stories effectively across platforms to produce media for political education and campaign advancement. 
​
Session 3 (1-on-1s):
Meet with facilitators 1-on-1 to discuss the specific media needs for campaign, check in on progress of media project, and debrief studio experience so far. 

Session 4:
Feedback Circle: Present a first draft of your media project and receive feedback from other organizers and cultural workers.

​14 online content hours + 2 hours of individual accompaniment + workbook & resources.

​Connect with us if you have any questions.
For more information on our Advanced Trainings or to bring an Advanced Training to your organization, connect with us.
​
Movement Matters is based in Washington, DC.
We work regionally with various communities and with national partners.
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​

Beyond Access and Representation in Media Making: Case Studies

4/2/2021

 
How would the shows we watch be different if writer's rooms included our community leaders and organizational members? And how would that change the way we understand the world?
Cultural workers, youth media organizations, filmmakers, public media advocates and organizers have all put in so much work for us to reach this golden age of QT-BIPOC film production, where access and representation are central tenets of equity in entertainment. 

Even as we celebrate, many of us hear the cautionary voices of our political elders telling us, “we have been here before!” And still many others hear, “there are still so many other ways and so much more we can attain!” 
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Movement Matters is pleased to announce our latest report,

Beyond Access
& Representation:

Media Case Studies. ​​

​
​As we gear up for our own productions, we've delved into five case studies of media makers challenging our understanding of how to create stories in partnership with on-the-ground movements.
​These case studies provide but a fractal of the path that lies beyond access and representation; they point to radical institutional and systemic transformation, not just surface level change. To ensure our stories are as powerful as our vision for liberation, we must also center conversations around ownership, power, class, and the right to creative experimentation.
​      Key lessons include: ​
  • The importance of building working relationships where there is mutual understanding of each person’s role and contribution to the production process. 
  • Filmmakers need to be mindful of the impact of their productions once they reach the distribution stage and their responsibility to act accordingly alongside directly impacted communities.
  • Production processes need to open up spaces for “interviewees” to contribute to and shape the story, rather than extracting information and leaving the creative work to the “artists.”
  • Holistic support, which includes money, but also professional development and network building with other filmmakers of color, is necessary for the success of films that challenge dominant narratives and also work outside production systems derived from the Hollywood system.
​​Beyond Access & Representation showcases case studies that stretch all aspects of the production process to go beyond access and representation in dominant media and create our own pathways and platforms.
Download: Beyond Access & Representation
​
​For more information or to access our other reports visit our Research and Reports webpage.
​Connect with us if you have any questions.


​

Movement Matters Advanced Popular Education Training

1/6/2021

 

Transforming Vision, Power, and Leadership:
Advanced Popular Education Online Training©
​September 9th - September 30th, 2021

Popular education is critical to the organizing process. Deep, sustainable constituency building and member development can't happen without it; yet it is often misunderstood. Movement Matters has made popular education an integral part of our week-long Organizing Institute,  but we have also realized that organizers are hungry for more and deeper opportunities to learn, practice, and cross-pollinate their skills in this area.

In our September 2021 Advanced Popular Education Training, participants will to learn how to:
  • integrate popular education into ongoing organizing practices;
  • ground ritual and culture as part of the popular education process to build internal group power;
  • develop relevant codes and workshops that deepen constituent engagement and analysis with organizing issues; and
  • Understand their own capacity and continued growth to move and center constituent engagement work.

​​Movement Matters' Advanced Popular Education Training will help participants develop the theoretical understanding and concrete skills to incorporate popular education as a foundational aspect of their community organizing practice.
This advanced training provided a variety of ideas for popular education activities and practices that I can bring back to my organization, and a framework to think about the purpose of the practice so that we are not just doing popular education for the sake of it—without moving our peoples to action. I believe I will be more creative in developing our popular education approach with our members, guide conversations way better, and also be more intentional about how I do it and why.

September 2021
​Advanced ONLINE Training

​14 online content hours + 2 hours of individual accompaniment + workbook and resources.​
This online training will combine "in person" virtual sessions with individual "homework" and "one-on-one accompaniment" to allow participants to both learn new skills and put them immediately into practice.
To apply, visit: 
​Advanced Training Series

​Application deadline: Monday, August 2nd.
​Limit 8-10 participants.
Questions? 
info@movementmatters.net
​For more information on our Advanced Trainings or to bring an Advanced Training to your organization, connect with us.
​
Movement Matters is based in Washington, DC.
We work regionally with various communities and with national partners.
​
​

Community Healing and Action Circles

11/18/2020

 
Movement Matters began offering Community Healing and Action Circles (CHACs) in the summer of 2020 with the recognition that community members leading campaigns to support and create change are lacking spaces to heal and grow together. 

Our first series of CHACs was developed for laid-off restaurant workers who continue to organize themselves as they fight for the rights of their families and communities. These community leaders asked for a space to mourn the current moment, to heal and deepen their resilience, to care for themselves and their bodies given their limited resources and access to nature, and to build their public speaking skills as community leaders at the forefront. 

We create spaces of radical joy, reflection, and trust building by using culture, expressive arts (including dance, movement and theater), breath work, self-massage, medicinal plants, ritual, story creation and story telling to center healing, self-care/self-regulation, resiliency, and the decolonizing of voice, microphones, and 'public speaking' in its entirety.

Our current series includes:

CHAC 1 & 2: Breath, Movement, & Voice

CHAC 3 & 4: Movement, Resilience, & Story Creation
CHAC 5 & 6: Healing Traditions & 
Self Care

The Community Healing and Action Circles are intentionally structured to build resilience within a community context. Participants are not just isolated individuals, but leaders of change efforts who are deeply connected to their constituencies. We mindfully cultivate each session to meet the emerging needs of the work, campaigns, and the broader membership of participants, ensuring that healing and capacity building are being integrated into the larger organizing community.

We partnered with the DC Urban Sustainability Administration and Washington Parks & People, and have been holding these live, COVID safe, physically-distanced sessions at the Columbia Heights Green garden. We thank the Junte Comunitario Virtual and its community leaders in Puerto Rico for providing us with the safest strategies for in-person sessions during COVID times. We have moved the sessions online for the winter.

The CHACs are being developed in conjunction with our Learning and Action Circles and our Dismantling Anti-Blackness Among People of Color work, both of which are oriented toward organizers and professional staff.
​
​For more information on our Community Healing and Action Circles, connect with us.
​
Movement Matters is based in Washington, DC.
We work regionally with various communities and with national partners.
​
​

Cultural Organizing While Physical Distancing: Dynamic Demonstrations

8/18/2020

 
Dynamic Demonstrations is the fourth and (for now) final online case example we created to support and inspire organizers, advocates, and community leaders during Covid19 and the current economic and racial upheavals.

Most of our tactics for change require a physical presence. As Covid19 continues to restrict our ability to gather, we have to find creative ways to put pressure on decision-makers. At the same time, we need to engage our members in actions, even when they can't be physically present. Many of our partner groups are combining limited in-person actions and artivism to create dynamic demonstrations. Layering in deeper member engagement and ownership of the arts development process can take these actions to the next level and build long-term membership and capacity alongside short-term political impact.

​We welcome questions, thoughts, and dialogue on these tools, including how to apply them to your particular initiative/campaign.  Connect with us!
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Cultural Organizing While Physical Distancing: Dynamic Demonstrations. (2020 © Movement Matters)
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​Design and layout by Karina Hurtado-Ocampo. Illustrations by Brittney Washington.

Cultural Organizing While Physical Distancing: Getting Tenants in Rhythm

8/3/2020

 
Getting Tenants in Rhythm is the third of four online case examples we created to support and inspire organizers, advocates, and community leaders during Covid19 and the current economic and racial upheavals.

Engaging community members where they live is a vital part of the organizing process. Even when we are limited in how we can gather, a building can be the cornerstone for developing community resistance and resilience. We have seen many examples of using pots and pans to create noise and show solidarity. With additional coordination, arts, and cultural elements, these actions can bring in new members, deepen constituency, and showcase the narrative of a campaign. 

​We welcome questions, thoughts, and dialogue on these tools, including how to apply them to your particular initiative/campaign.  Connect with us!
​
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Cultural Organizing While Physical Distancing: Getting Tenants in Rhythm. (2020 © Movement Matters)
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To receive this case example electronically, connect with us at: info@movementmatters.net

​Design and layout by Karina Hurtado-Ocampo. Illustrations by Brittney Washington.
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