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.

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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​​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. 
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​​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.

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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 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.
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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!” 

​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.

​​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.

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

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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.

​For more information on our Advanced Trainings or to bring an Advanced Training to your organization, connect with us.
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Movement Matters is based in Washington, DC.
We work regionally with various communities and with national partners.
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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.
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​For more information on our Community Healing and Action Circles, connect with us.
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Movement Matters is based in Washington, DC.
We work regionally with various communities and with national partners.
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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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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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Strengthening Networks is the second of four online case examples we created to support and inspire organizers, advocates, and community leaders during Covid19.

​Engaging new members of loose networks and building relationships of trust and action with them and among them are key to creating a long lasting, active constituency; one that shares values, a vision for change, and the energy and focus to lead in making that change.

​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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As we continue to work closely with campaigns and other organizing projects during Covid19 we have been advising groups and organizers on how to adapt cultural organizing and deep constituency building to current physical distancing requirements—ensuring that the voices and leadership of community members are at the forefront of demands, actions, and solutions.

We developed our newest online tool to support and inspire groups during a critical time; to animate ideas that lean on creativity and perseverance so we can continue building  constituency and grassroots power to make change. Cultural Organizing While Physical Distancing: Petition Drop is the first of 4 case examples we will be sharing over the next month.

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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