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This is the promo sheet for the workshops I give
Title:
Liberation Ecology: Exploring and Creating the Connections Between Social Justice and Sustainability
Duration: 3 – 6 hours (1 or 2 3-hour sessions)
Maximum Participants: 15-18
Description:
What would sustainability look like, if it refused to sustain white supremacy? What would liberation look like in a system headed for ecological collapse? These questions haunt the divide that runs right down the middle of the projects and communities in which we dedicate ourselves to making the world a better place. Why do we think of fundamental issues like justice and sustainability as being unrelated to each other? Now is your chance to find answers to these questions, and begin to bridge that divide in an atmosphere of engagement, excitement, and collaboration.
Integrating presentation for multiple learning styles, discussion, and small-group work, the Liberation Ecology workshops are like what most of us wish school could have been. Using the material of their own projects, aspirations, and day-to-day lives, participants are guided through a process of exploring the networks of relationship that integrate them into broader systems, in a critical synthesis of ecological, social, and evolutionary perspectives. With hands-on mapping exercises that draw out the hidden connections between power, freedom, and the flow of energy and resources across seemingly disconnected social and ecological communities, participants discover and discuss new perspectives on our situation, and new strategies for changing it.
We don’t have to settle anymore for the absurdity of choosing between social and ecological objectives in our activism – and we shouldn’t! Take this opportunity to build your theory-and-practice toolbox for making a new kind of activism – one that refuses to choose between, and sees a way forward in which justice and sustainability are woven together into a dynamic whole. Inspired, visionary, everyday folks all over the world are working together now to create that future – and naming that movement as a movement, and identifying the themes that unify such disparate people and projects, is part of the workshop, and part of the work in store for us. Rafter works with participants to create an environment rich in what is needed for the audacious task of transforming our social system: passion, collaboration, and inspired critical thinking.
Audience: This workshop is appropriate for activists of all stripes, aspiring and retiring activists, student and their organizations, educators, progressive congregations, organizers, organizees, and anyone who is interested in ecological and social action for a better world. No specialist background knowledge is required. A general knowledge of social and environmental issues is helpful.
Presenter Bio: Rafter has been active in the global justice movement for eight years as organizer, participant, and scholar. In 2003 he received certification in Permaculture Design at Gaia Ecovillage, in Argentina, while traveling in South America in search of contexts where anti-imperialism and grassroots ecological design were practiced hand-in-hand. He has been steadily teaching and studying grassroots ecological design since then. He has been a student and teacher of social project design since working with School for Designing a Society from 2004-2006. Seeing a need for a curriculum that focuses explicitly on the neglected, underlying connections between social justice and sustainability, he has been sharing and developing content for the Liberation Ecology workshop for the past three years, and has given different versions of the workshop 10 times since July 2005. In addition, he has facilitated or co-facilitated workshops on social project design, permaculture design, the economics of globalization, mycology, and wild foods and medicines. He lives and works at the Germantown Community Farm, a community food security project in its first year in the Hudson River Valley, NY. He received a BA in Anthropology from Bard College in 2001.
Testimonials:
“In his workshop on Liberation Ecology, Rafter openly engages with the overlap and interaction of social and environmental oppressions. His presentation is accessible in a way that attracts and grabs hold of your attention, and remains provocatively on your mind long after the workshop session has ended… Rafter's efforts are bringing serious analysis and action to a much-neglected connection between social-economic boundaries and environmental degradation.”
- Jen Carson, anti-racism activist
"Rafter's Liberation Ecology workshop digs to the foundation of late capitalist suicide culture more efficiently, and coherently than any other presentation I've seen. His examination of inequity is based on analysis of class, race, gender, damaged soil ecology, distributed solar energy and much more- it's all there, as of course, it has to be."
- Kevin Skvorak, Rattlesnake Mountain Farm co-founder
“Liberation Ecology opened my eyes to profound realizations and to connections I had never made before. As a novice, I found it completely accessible and absorbing.”
- Chen Tamir, student and curator
“I can honestly say that Liberation Ecology is the most exciting thing I’ve [encountered] since stumbling across permaculture; [Rafter] articulate[s] a way of examining a very diffuse nest of problems and issues that I think would resonate […] with people in a lot of different movements and circles. […] It gives us a set of ideas and a vocabulary to start with; it’s a form of conceptual empowerment.”
- David Travis, permaculture instructor/designer
“The [workshop] is providing a space for critical cross-movement work; work which I believe is integral to building our capacity for a more intentional, communicative, and dynamic revolutionary struggle for social, racial, economic, and ecological justice.”
- Maggie von Vogt, social worker and anti-racism organizer
"I continue to be amazed by the outcomes of our short Liberation Ecology workshop with Rafter. We identified some underlying issues of ecological design concerning social and economic justice, came together to create succinct design criteria to address these issues, and educated each other about existing projects that are already working to resolve them."
- Ethan Roland, permaculture designer
Liberation Ecology: Exploring and Creating the Connections Between Social Justice and Sustainability
Duration: 3 – 6 hours (1 or 2 3-hour sessions)
Maximum Participants: 15-18
Description:
What would sustainability look like, if it refused to sustain white supremacy? What would liberation look like in a system headed for ecological collapse? These questions haunt the divide that runs right down the middle of the projects and communities in which we dedicate ourselves to making the world a better place. Why do we think of fundamental issues like justice and sustainability as being unrelated to each other? Now is your chance to find answers to these questions, and begin to bridge that divide in an atmosphere of engagement, excitement, and collaboration.
Integrating presentation for multiple learning styles, discussion, and small-group work, the Liberation Ecology workshops are like what most of us wish school could have been. Using the material of their own projects, aspirations, and day-to-day lives, participants are guided through a process of exploring the networks of relationship that integrate them into broader systems, in a critical synthesis of ecological, social, and evolutionary perspectives. With hands-on mapping exercises that draw out the hidden connections between power, freedom, and the flow of energy and resources across seemingly disconnected social and ecological communities, participants discover and discuss new perspectives on our situation, and new strategies for changing it.
We don’t have to settle anymore for the absurdity of choosing between social and ecological objectives in our activism – and we shouldn’t! Take this opportunity to build your theory-and-practice toolbox for making a new kind of activism – one that refuses to choose between, and sees a way forward in which justice and sustainability are woven together into a dynamic whole. Inspired, visionary, everyday folks all over the world are working together now to create that future – and naming that movement as a movement, and identifying the themes that unify such disparate people and projects, is part of the workshop, and part of the work in store for us. Rafter works with participants to create an environment rich in what is needed for the audacious task of transforming our social system: passion, collaboration, and inspired critical thinking.
Audience: This workshop is appropriate for activists of all stripes, aspiring and retiring activists, student and their organizations, educators, progressive congregations, organizers, organizees, and anyone who is interested in ecological and social action for a better world. No specialist background knowledge is required. A general knowledge of social and environmental issues is helpful.
Presenter Bio: Rafter has been active in the global justice movement for eight years as organizer, participant, and scholar. In 2003 he received certification in Permaculture Design at Gaia Ecovillage, in Argentina, while traveling in South America in search of contexts where anti-imperialism and grassroots ecological design were practiced hand-in-hand. He has been steadily teaching and studying grassroots ecological design since then. He has been a student and teacher of social project design since working with School for Designing a Society from 2004-2006. Seeing a need for a curriculum that focuses explicitly on the neglected, underlying connections between social justice and sustainability, he has been sharing and developing content for the Liberation Ecology workshop for the past three years, and has given different versions of the workshop 10 times since July 2005. In addition, he has facilitated or co-facilitated workshops on social project design, permaculture design, the economics of globalization, mycology, and wild foods and medicines. He lives and works at the Germantown Community Farm, a community food security project in its first year in the Hudson River Valley, NY. He received a BA in Anthropology from Bard College in 2001.
Testimonials:
“In his workshop on Liberation Ecology, Rafter openly engages with the overlap and interaction of social and environmental oppressions. His presentation is accessible in a way that attracts and grabs hold of your attention, and remains provocatively on your mind long after the workshop session has ended… Rafter's efforts are bringing serious analysis and action to a much-neglected connection between social-economic boundaries and environmental degradation.”
- Jen Carson, anti-racism activist
"Rafter's Liberation Ecology workshop digs to the foundation of late capitalist suicide culture more efficiently, and coherently than any other presentation I've seen. His examination of inequity is based on analysis of class, race, gender, damaged soil ecology, distributed solar energy and much more- it's all there, as of course, it has to be."
- Kevin Skvorak, Rattlesnake Mountain Farm co-founder
“Liberation Ecology opened my eyes to profound realizations and to connections I had never made before. As a novice, I found it completely accessible and absorbing.”
- Chen Tamir, student and curator
“I can honestly say that Liberation Ecology is the most exciting thing I’ve [encountered] since stumbling across permaculture; [Rafter] articulate[s] a way of examining a very diffuse nest of problems and issues that I think would resonate […] with people in a lot of different movements and circles. […] It gives us a set of ideas and a vocabulary to start with; it’s a form of conceptual empowerment.”
- David Travis, permaculture instructor/designer
“The [workshop] is providing a space for critical cross-movement work; work which I believe is integral to building our capacity for a more intentional, communicative, and dynamic revolutionary struggle for social, racial, economic, and ecological justice.”
- Maggie von Vogt, social worker and anti-racism organizer
"I continue to be amazed by the outcomes of our short Liberation Ecology workshop with Rafter. We identified some underlying issues of ecological design concerning social and economic justice, came together to create succinct design criteria to address these issues, and educated each other about existing projects that are already working to resolve them."
- Ethan Roland, permaculture designer
How often do people acknowledge being organizees?
I don't know if anybody ever identifies as an organizee. I put it in there because I thought it would be funny. Do you think its counterproductive?
I don't think considering the 'organizee' in organizing is counter-productive.
If the conference is happening (last I heard there seemed to be some doubt), then count me in. Who do I have to email and/or sleep with?
I'm aware of, and still learning about, the amazing work being done in enviro justice. I also think it's worthwhile to distinguish it from projects that are about creating alternative infrastructure.
Community gardening is definitely a well-established alternative, sustainable infrastructure model, that sometimes manages to be anti-caste in some fashion.
I'm glad these things are going on in Urbana.