THURSDAY 11:00 Resurrection City Morning Contemplation Session Sponsored by the Network for Spiritual Progressives - Instructor: TBA - Description: Resurrection City Free University will begin each day with an inter-spiritual contemplation session led by a notable figure from a different faith based tradition. We invite you to join us each morning by sitting with people from walks of life as a way of centering ourselves for each day events. - Course Length/Classroom: 11:00 – 11:50/ Martin Luther King Jr. Classroom 12:00pm: Nonviolence Training (MLK-1) - Instructors: - Course Length: 12:00 – 1:50 - Description: Each day at Resurrection City Free University we will be offering an introductory nonviolence-training course in order to help educate participants on the key tenants of nonviolent direct action. The course will first introduce participants to the theory and methods of nonviolent resistance, and will then move directly into role-playing scenarios that allow participants to experience firsthand how to deal with various kinds of situations nonviolently. These courses are designed to give you the tools necessary to take part in many of the various nonviolent actions that will be taking place throughout the week at the DNC. Spiritual Nihilism: An Open Dialogue on Suicide, Homelessness & Mental Illness (MKG-2) - Instructor: Randle Loeb (Editor of Ploughshare and Advocate for the Homeless) - Course Length: 12:00 – 12:50 - Description: This daily dialogue will be an open and participant based opportunity to discuss issues that are most pressing to those in attendance. Poems, personal testimonies, and other personal forms of expression will be used to facilitate each days dialogue. This class is reaching out to individuals from whom the only hope is a plan of action, to their loved ones, and anyone dealing with related hardships. 1:00pm: Let Us Rise! An honest dialogue about the strengths and weaknesses of our activism, and how to catalyze a broad-based movement for change (MKG-2) - Facilitators: DeQuan Mack, Kris Abrams, and other facilitators from Let Us Rise - Course Length: 1:00 -2:50 - Description: Please see the description for this course on Monday, August 25. 2:00pm: Media & Messaging (MLK-1) - Instructors: Samantha Miller & Nadine Bloch (National Activist Trainers from No War, No Warming) - Course Length: 2:00 – 2:50 - Description: Media is an important tool for activists to get their message out to larger audiences than they would otherwise be able to reach. In this workshop we will go over basic tools for dealing with the media and ways to construct your message in order to more effectively reach your target audience while at the same time avoiding traditional media roadblocks. Organizing at the Intersections (DD-3) - Instructor: Seth Donovan (National Street-Team Coordinator for www.flobots.org) - Course Length: 2:00 – 2:50 - Description: This is a participatory workshop that will look at what it means to be an activist, organizer, and community member who works in the intersections of various oppressions and issues. We will look closely at how organizing around single issues often keep us competing for the same resources and limits how we relate with our community. Through popular education and theatre of the oppressed exercises, we will do some work on what intersectional organizing can look like in our anti-oppression work! 3:00pm: The Zapatistas: Creating the World We Want to Live in, Right Here & Now (MLK-1) - Instructor: Sabrina Sideris (INVST Program Director @ the University of Colorado) - Course Length: 3:00- 3:50 - Description: This workshop will focus on the anti-capitalist movement that finds its home in Chiapas, Mexico and how elements of cooperation and collectivity have been crucial in establishing Zapatista communities of resistance that are autonomous from the Mexican government. Based on the experiences of a Colorado educator/activist who went to Chiapas to stay in a Zapatista caracol (center of communal and political life) with the Mexico-US Solidarity Network, or El red de solidaridad con Mexico, we will use dialogue and look at photos of murals & community art to examine how folks live in the caracoles: how justice, trade (and primarily) education function, and how & what we can learn from the memes and messages of the Zapatistas. Visioning Circle: A South African Model for Liberation Organizing (MKG-2) - Facilitators: DeQuan Mack, Kris Abrams, and other facilitators from Let Us Rise - Course Length: 3:00 - 4:50 - Description: Please see the description for this course on Monday, August 25. The History of American Labor Organizing and Labor-Busting (MLK-1) - Instructor: Jim Walsh (Professor at the University of Colorado at Denver) - Course Length: 3:00 – 3:50 - Description: This course will walk students through the history of efforts by workers to organize for more just living and working conditions in the U.S. Students will also learn the history of resistance to worker organizing, including union-busting techniques. Finally, the instructor will speak about his own experiences with theater as a community-organizing tool.