STRONGER TOGETHER: COALITION PRACTICES FOR NAVIGATING TENSION AND DISAGREEMENT

Coalitions bring together organizations with different interests, access to resources, and relationships to power to work on a shared campaign. These organizations are stronger together and more prone to disagreement. This workshop supports participants to dig into questions of purpose, strategy and decision-making, among others, to get clarity about why they’ve experienced disagreement in their coalition. Participants will have time to learn tools to disagree well and navigate tension in ways that are generative and instrumental in advancing our collective efforts to win big and shift conditions for our people.

WHAT TO EXPECT

1 hour Orientation
- Join us on zoom to meet fellow organizers and members of The OC training team, set learning goals, and make plans for achieving them over the course of our journey together.
2-3 hours of Self-Paced Learning
- on your own schedule, dig into videos, readings and worksheets to learn the basic concepts. At the end, submit the questions you want to answer, the challenges you are facing, and what you want to practice during the live practice & coaching session.
- During independent learning you will have the option to focus on one, or more, areas including:
  - What your coalition chooses to work on together
  - Why organizations join your coalition and what capacity they have to offer
  - How your coalition makes decisions and who gets to make them
  - How you treat one another, navigate power, build relationships and share responsibility
2 hour Live Practice Session
- you will practice and strengthen the skills you learned in the previous weeks with feedback from experienced organizers. Be prepared to be on camera, practice, and receive feedback. Having a computer with strong internet connection and the ability to connect to video will ensure the best experience.

By the end of this workshop you will have:

Identified common challenges faced by coalitions and the root causes of disagreement and conflict
Learned tools that support groups to make decisions and disagree, build cultures of shared responsibility and cooperation, and navigate power dynamics and conflict
Developed next steps for your coalition with these building blocks in mind

WORKSHOP DATES

Dates are for live sessions with trainers; videos, worksheets and readings will be available in between to explore at your own pace

June

June 5th - 12pm- 1pm | Orientation

June 26th- 1pm- 3pm | Live Practice

September

Sept 4th - 12pm- 1pm | Orientation

Sept 25th- 1pm- 3pm | Live Practice

*Spanish interpretation available with 2 weeks' notice

October

Oct 9th - 12pm- 1pm | Orientation

Oct 30th- 1pm- 3pm | Live Practice

*Spanish interpretation available with 2 weeks' notice

Janelle Lapointe

she/her

Janelle Lapointe is an Afro-Indigenous climate justice and Indigenous rights organizer from Stellat’en First Nation, a small Indigenous community in so-called Canada. With years of experience in grassroots organizing, policy advocacy, and political education, she is deeply committed to building strong, leaderful movements that challenge the status quo. Janelle’s work centers on the power of multi-racial and multi-national solidarity, ensuring that climate and Indigenous rights movements are intersectional, justice-driven, and impossible to ignore. She brings a wealth of experience in campaign strategy, coalition building, climate policy, Indigenous rights, and community-led resistance, always with a focus on power-building and collective action. As a trainer and facilitator, she is passionate about equipping communities with the tools they need to fight for a just future. She is currently based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Camilo Sol

he/him

Camilo Sol is the national organizer of membership at The Rising Majority, a national coalition of cross sectoral, multi-class and multi-racial organizations building collective power and alignment across our movements. Prior to this role, he was at Seed the Vote helping grassroots organizations build their base, win elections, and build political power in battleground states. His formative years were spent as a housing rights organizer at Causa Justa :: Just Cause where he was trained as a transformative organizer and played a key role in building local, regional, and statewide coalitions with a local base of working class Black and Latinx immigrant tenants. He held roles in steering committees of multiple coalitions, including the Right to the City national alliance. He served as the deputy director of programs before transitioning out. Camilo helped lead and win two key ballot initiative campaigns that brought the strongest tenant protections yet to Oakland, and played leadership roles in San Francisco Rising Action and Oakland Rising Action Funds helping elect local community champions. He’s proud of his trans, queer, first generation immigrant, and SF Nicoya identities. Some of his passions are coaching and helping other organizers reach their full potential - and making playlists and kayaking! You can find him on a porch in his new home in the South.

Jennine Miller

she/her

Jennine has over 25 years of experience organizing with affordable housing, economic justice, and voter rights movements. Jennine’s coalition-building skills support campaigns to strengthen their reach and amplify the voices of those most impacted by discriminatory laws and policies. Jennine is a co-founder of the Training For Change Organizing Skills Institute. As a gleaner and gardener, she finds joy sharing food with neighbors and friends.

Clarise McCants

she/her

Clarise has been in movement work for over 10 years playing many roles including campaigner, digital organizer, narrative strategist, and facilitator. Being moved by her own family experiences with the carceral system, Clarise started with mobilizing campaigns in defense of criminalized survivors & victims of police violence. She cut her teeth working with community organizations across the country on campaigns around prosecutor accountability and ending cash bail; rooted in a commitment to an abolition. In that work, she fell in love with the extension of possibility that happens when organizations come together to do something bigger than any one org ever could. She currently lives in her hometown of Philadelphia and works as a facilitator and strategist at the Movement Alliance Project to build infrastructure that can support & sustain Philly's movement ecosystem.

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