Mobilizing Intersectionality for Belonging
Visit our TICKETING page to get our advance ticket discount for this and all our fee-based evening events. Admission includes a hearty vegetarian dinner.
Free for Special Entry: Self-Identified Person of Color or Youth. Short scholarship request form HERE. (Once you receive confirmation of a scholarship, just provide your name at the door and mention the “Roots” List)
Our sense of belonging is deeply impacted by overlapping systems of discrimination, disadvantage, power and privilege. As we strive to create more regenerative communities and recover our connection to place, we must simultaneously dismantle systems of oppression as they show up in our everyday lives and in various communities we participate in. We will explore ways in which we simultaneously benefit and are marginalized by systems of race, class, gender, ability and more. We will practice tools for intervention and accountability through engaging with the Theater of the Oppressed techniques for bystander intervention.
*ASL Interpreter available upon request for evening event programming. To request this service, please contact Eve at wethewildyouthassistant@gmail.com
Location:
Carvlin Hall, 2408 SE 16th Ave, Portland, OR
Tickets:
Visit our TICKETING page to get our advance ticket discount for this and all our fee-based evening events.
Free for Special Entry: Self-Identified Person of Color or Youth (Provide your name at the door and mention the “Roots” List)
Many volunteers needed! Click here to volunteer, worktrade options to get a free night available.
Timing:
5:00pm - Doors Open
5:30pm - Dinner Served
5:45pm - Announcements & Framework for the Night
6:00-7:00pm - Breakout Session 1 with the GENNA Alliance
-- Stories of Class
-- Unsettling Whiteness
7:00-8:00pm - Breakout Session 2 with the GENNA Alliance
-- Rediscovering Connection to Place
-- Land Trust for Collective Liberation
8:00-9:00pm - Theater of the Oppressed
Speaker Bios
GENNA Alliance- Global Ecovillage Network North America
The GENNA Alliance is a collaborative platform for organizations and individuals serving the regenerative communities network within North America. We focus on meeting the needs of community projects within “Turtle Island,” the name given to North America in the creation stories of some indigenous peoples. The image of a turtle in our logo is meant to honor the rich cultural heritage and ecology of Turtle Island, as we work to grow community networks towards a more beautiful, just, and regenerative world. The word Alliance signifies that we are an independent “collaborative platform” designed to synergize our efforts as organizations. Collaborative platform is just one of many phrases being used to describe new ways of organizing human endeavor that are more responsive to the needs of our increasingly complex world.
Yana
Yana Ludwig is a cooperative culture pioneer, intentional communities advocate and anti-oppression activist. She serves on the Foundation for Intentional Community board, and is a trainer and consultant for progressive projects. Her book, Together Resilient: Building Community in the Age of Climate Disruption, was the Communal Studies Association 2017 Book of the Year. She organizes, lives in community and podcasts in Laramie, Wyoming.
Brenna
Brenna is a goat herding, tree loving, bike riding, community-minded, activist lawyer mama. She is a sixth-generation Oregonian with primarily Celtic and Germanic ancestry, who is working to figure out how children of settler colonialism can move into right relationship with indigenous peoples and the land.
Crystal
Crystal Farmer is an engineer turned educator from North Carolina. She became the organizer for Charlotte Cohousing in 2016 and has been involved in cohousing and the intentional communities movement ever since. She is passionate about encouraging people to change their perspectives on diversity, relationships, and the world. She owns Big Sister Team Building and teaches at Gastonia Freedom School, an Agile Learning Center.
Sarabell (she/they)
Somatic educator, mediator, and communitarian, Sarabell works with folks of all ages on the edges of comfort, stretching into new practices of embodiment and communication, and has trained and facilitated throughout Cascadia in Theater of the Oppressed techniques for over 10 years. She lives in the co-op/intentional community Foster Village in SE Portland, in a lil earthen hut in relationship with many.
Isobel
Isobel Charlé has been practicing facilitating Theatre of the Oppressed for nearly a decade and believes deeply in the power of art as a tool for social change. She lives in Portland where she is a teacher, a clown, a storyteller, a communitarian and a witch.
Programming Descriptions
6:00-7:00pm - Breakout Session 1: Presented by the GENNA Alliance
Stories of Class
Presented by Yana
Participants will be asked to tell their life story in 8 minutes (maybe less if we have a big group) through the lens of class, with the rest of the circle bearing witness. Folks are welcome to bring in race, gender or any other intersectional pieces that feel deeply connected to their class story.
Unsettling Whiteness and Cultivating Solidarity in Community
Presented by Brenna Bell
How does a majority white, cisgender, middle class land based community become a welcoming home to people of color, transgender and poor/working class community members? This is a question many of us grapple with and over the past three years, Cedar Moon - the intentional community located at Tryon Life Community Farm in Portland Oregon - has learned many lessons we are now ready to share. Acknowledging that undoing oppression and creating more equitable communities will take a lifetime, we've begun walking down that path and are ready to share stories and lessons learned as we work to ensure better access to land and community for folk marginalized by colonization and capitalism.
7:00-8:00pm - Breakout Session 2
Rediscovering Connection to Place
Presented by Crystal
Where did you come from? How do you feel about that? In this workshop, we will explore our personal stories about where we live and the feelings of guilt, grief, or joy attached to that. By listening to others’ stories, we can find shared understanding and greater empathy for each other.
The Community Land Trust for Collective Liberation
Presented by Yana
Liberation from racial, economic, gender and climate injustices are all linked at a core level. This new project seeks to use the tools of land trusts and intentional community as a liberatory tool. A core theme of conversations around liberation is land access. Without access to land, our liberation is stymied and we remain caught in intergenerational cycles of poverty and struggle. Come hear about and help shape this project to interrupt those cycles and enter into deep solidarity between poor and working class people, people of color, and the land.
8:00-9:00pm - Theater of the Oppressed
Facilitated by Sarabell and Isobel
What stands in the way of acting or speaking up when we witness micro-injustice, oppression, marginalization or harm in our communities? We can all benefit from more practice interrupting these moments! This evening, we will present the audience with a short play that features moments where oppressive dynamics such as racism, sexism or homophobia are playing out, then members of the audience will have a chance to get up on stage in place of the actors and replay the scene multiple times so it ends in more empowering ways. Drawing from Augusto Boal’s Theater of the Oppressed, this “Forum Theatre” technique allows us to practice and witness each other interrupting oppression on stage so we become more prepared to create change within these moments in real life.