Rise for Freedom Training Introduction

The Rise for Freedom coalition (rise4freedom.org) is hosting a series of live online trainings intended for in-person groups nationwide for 6-8 weeks. The goal of the training series is to bring people together, grow & strengthen their local networks, and get ready to mobilize to demand democracy in this new challenging environment.

Why Trainings?

Trainings are critical for our movement because they:

• Engage and recruit more people into the freedom and democracy movement

• Educate and onboard new activists

• Energize large numbers of people for mobilizing and create space for local organizing and planning

• Elevate: train higher skill activists and new and younger movement  leadership

Who is Rise for Freedom For?

This training is for people who love our country and understand the threat of autocracy before us, and want to do something about it. If you're moderate politically - this is your place! You are welcome and important here. If you're a pro-democracy conservative - this is your place! You are welcome and important in these trainings. If you’re progressive, this training is for you.

Training calls will not include lengthy one way communications about the ongoing attacks on democracy and communities. That’s a space other orgs and collaboratives we believe can and will fill.

Session Topics Thursdays, from 7-9pm CST

• Thurs. March 27- First In-Person Meetings & Onboarding for New Folks: Program Orientation & Context Setting, Outreach & Digital Hygiene

• Thurs. April 3 - 1st In-Depth Training: How did we get here? Intro to organizing under creeping autocracy

• Thurs. April 10 - 2nd Training: Building to a critical mass locally (outreach) -> Apr. 5 actions

• Thurs. April 17 - 3rd Training: How to talk to people you might disagree with

• Thurs. April 24 - 4th Training: Harnessing Our Power to End Political Violence and Repression

• Thurs. May 1 - 5th Training: Mutual Aid & Structures for Stronger Local Organizing

• Thurs. May 8  - 6th Training: De-escalation & Advanced Strategic organizing skills

• Thurs. May 15 - 7th Training: Advanced Organizing Skills

An alternative to attending the meetings live

While it would be wonderful if everyone had 2-3 hours to gather in-person on a Thursday evening, it's just not possible for many of us. If you are like me, you are also overwhelmed by information and the demands on your time lately and the thought of watching a 2 hour zoom call in real time until 9 pm at night makes you want to pull out your hair.

As a alternative, I'm organizing a weekly Zoom discussion group for the Indivisible group I'm involved with where we will talk about the key speaker's message for about an hour. People can watch the recorded meeting (on a faster speed for the less important bits) and I will provide some time markers so you can skip ahead to key points. Depending on the number of people who attend, we can stay in one large group or break into focus rooms.

I figured I might as well make my timestamps and notes available for anyone who would like to replicate this group discussion format as it's a great way to get people together in person or over Zoom to talk and get to know each other.

I will post a new blog post for each meeting in the series. I hope you check them out!