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SOUL contact info:
SOUL
287 17th Street, Suite 225
Oakland CA 94612

phone: 510 451 5466
email:

Want support in working with your community to raise consciousness? This process must start with how people see and understand the world we live in-but then what? If you seek to develop revolutionary consciousness, BEYOND teaching concepts/details of a particular issue-to REALLY equip folks to think and analyze this world, JOIN US!! Take back tools and frameworks to apply to your work that are based in the root causes (capitalism, white supremacy, colonialism) of our conditions (poverty, environmental racism, incarceration, wack education…) and reveal how those conditions serve as mechanism of control on land, culture, mind, body, and spirit.

• We are lacking a solidified consciousness-raising and political education model in the Twin Cities and Minnesota (also the Midwest?) that is widely known and utilized. How could developing and utilizing a framework such as SOUL’s or Sisters in Action for Power be useful and instrumental in raising consciousness and building power in more communities locally?
• Content of consciousness raising work (ex. capitalism: how to make these tangible?) It’s about pulling from people’s lived experiences and using this as the methodology.  Creating a framework that allows my people to examine an issue in a systemic and strategic way.
• “Education is never neutral.”-Paulo Freire  “Doing consciousness raising work is about being explicit about what we are doing. We are guiding people to a certain type of analysis that is based in justice.”-Malachi Larrabee-Garza
• Raised organizational development questions: need for clear political analysis that is shared with staff AND membership, leadership structure and development, creating a shared analysis with accessible language
• Moving from transformation and healing to consciousness raising work
• Learned about different models around the country who are doing consciousness raising work (FIERCE, SOUL, QTeam, Sisters in Action for Power)
• Learned the importance in developing a shared political analysis and framework that links the individual and community level of oppression and injustice to the larger context of white supremacy, capitalism, and colonialism
• The power of learning to ask the right questions to further engage folks and enable people to see larger connections without “lecturing” on what is neoliberalism, capitalism, etc…
• SOUL’s political framework: Civil Society, State, Economy (see diagram and handout for examples) Who’s interest does this serve? How does it affect my community?

• Movement Strategy Center
• Spirit in Motion
• SOUL’s training manuals and curriculum which includes Global Justice training manual, Training the Trainers manual, Support and Accountability: SOUL’s Supervision Model, Youth Organizing for Community Power: Community Organizing Skills Training Manual, Building Power, Sharpening Minds!: Political Education Workshop Manual, 2^nd edition
• QTeam, queer and trans youth of color organizing project in Los Angeles, talk with Ned
• FIERCE’s, queer and trans youth of color organizing project in New York city; look into their political education training material, talk with Bran Fenner
• Gabriella Project, Filipina advocacy, organizing, and education project in Chicago
• CAAAV’s (Committee Against Anti-Asian Violence) anti-displacement/gentrification work in Chicago and New York

Activities include Caucusing / Organizer Training event in fall 2007, in preparation for the MWSF in the summer of 2008. T

For info: http://www.forumsocialmundial.org.br/