Beloved community,
AORTA workers are all engaging in different actions or work today that is in solidarity with Palestine. You can join us in the Global Strike for Gaza as you're able to by participating in a local action in your community, continuing to amplify content and stories from Palestinians, not buying anything or using banks today, and/or contacting your local representatives to call for a permanent and lasting Ceasefire Now. We will be sharing resources for study, reflection, and action in our stories.
Artwork by @jessxsnow
Image description: The illustration depicts an outdoor scene. At the bottom of the image are green brushstrokes suggestive of land with the text, "Global Solidarity, End the Genocide" on either side of a flagpole holding a Palestinian flag. It appears as if the sun is rising behind the flag while the majority of the graphic is a night sky with a palette of lilac and lavender deepening into dark blues depicting twinkling stars and comets framing the text, "May every star in the universe protect Palestine."
Last training for the Spring: Join AORTA for Facilitate for Freedom on May 21st!
Whether you’re a meeting organizer, basebuilder, community tender, or a facilitator by trade, building power for our movements requires well-held meetings, gatherings, and organizing spaces. Facilitators play a crucial role in removing barriers to people fully participating in a group process from budgeting to developing campaign strategies, and everything in between.
The Facilitate for Freedom Training lays the groundwork for how anyone facilitating a meeting can make choices that guide the group towards our most liberatory values. Through dynamic storytelling and real meeting examples, this training introduces two of AORTA’s facilitation pedagogy principles: remove barriers to full participation and the practice of principled disagreement.
Learn more and sign up at the lynx in our biome. Image descriptions in alt text.
Do your meetings suffer from ‘dust clouding?’ Participants in a group may speak in generalizations that end up obscuring the focus of the meeting, sometimes unintentionally creating confusion, panic, and defeat. A group may be left wondering how to move forward. Meanwhile, the participant continues to hold an unmet need, and there may be “phantom tension” in the group– it feels real but is not actually meaningful disagreement. As a facilitator, you can guide participants to cut through generalizations and have more precise and meaningful disagreement. Over time, the group can develop the muscle and skill to recognize communication patterns that get in the way of forward movement.
Join AORTA and our co-hosts Equitable Food Oriented Development, National Network of Abortion Funds, National Young Farmers Coalition, Tenants Together on June 10th for a special 2 hour crash course training on facilitating disagreement to dig into scenarios like this and more.
We will share:
🌟 how we use foresight to anticipate disagreement in a meeting so you can set up the conversation to welcome it (being surprised makes everything harder);
🌟 tools for scanning the group for differences early and building understanding;
🌟 how to identify and stop “dust clouding” (imagine a small bird wiggling in the dust, and creating a big cloud), when an individual or group is unwittingly magnifying rifts in the group and causing confusion;
🌟 strategies for discernment between personal feedback and a disagreement that’s worth the group’s attention.
Journey to the biosphere to find out more. Image descriptions in alt text.
Are you eager to connect with other organizational leaders invested in building the democratic and shared power organizations our movements deserve? Join us for the Fall session of Tidelines: A Shared Leadership Coaching Cohort! Whether you're new to shared leadership formations or have tried out shared leadership and solo leadership models and are looking for the right fit for your group, you're welcome to gather with us.
Utilizing individual team and group coaching, storytelling, case studies, and more, we'll explore what shared leadership can accomplish for our movements, our communities, and collective imaginations. We'll surface inquiries that go beyond organizational structure and go deep into the cultural and individual terrains of change that are required to sustain a shared leadership practice.
The cohort provides leadership teams from across the movement ecosystem with space to share draft thinking, develop connection, cross-pollinate ideas and experiments, refine strategy, and clarify their North Star for their shared leadership practices. Whether it's other organizations who are trying on different leadership shapes or are zooming out to explore the importance of shared leadership in creating liberatory worlds, Tidelines is an opportunity to build among an intimate cohort of other movement organizations experimenting with and practicing shared leadership.
The program offers:
🌀Weekly live workshop sessions for a total of 4 sessions
🌀Optional coaching calls with an AORTA coach and your team
🌀Reflection and integration exercises between sessions
🌀A robust set of tried and true resources and tools teams can take back to their organizations and begin implementing right away
🌀Opportunities to connect and build with participating organizations in a private, learning community hosted on Mighty Networks
Learn more and sign up at the lynx in our biome. Image description in alt text.
Participants in a group may use distancing language in disagreement for a variety of reasons, especially if they are fearful of retaliation. Sometimes, participants adopt a learned subjugation stance, where they position themselves as having less agency or authority in a group than they actually do. This can show up as asking passive questions such as, “What do people think about such and such topic?”, instead of sharing their opinion. A facilitator can use distance closing techniques to support a group in cutting through the fogginess and getting to the meaningful disagreement that we need to move through.
Join AORTA and our co-hosts Equitable Food Oriented Development, National Network of Abortion Funds, National Young Farmers Coalition, Tenants Together on June 10th for a special 2 hour crash course training on facilitating disagreement to dig into scenarios like this and more.
We will share:
🌟 how we use foresight to anticipate disagreement in a meeting so you can set up the conversation to welcome it (being surprised makes everything harder);
🌟 tools for scanning the group for differences early and building understanding;
🌟 how to identify and stop “dust clouding” (imagine a small bird wiggling in the dust, and creating a big cloud), when an individual or group is unwittingly magnifying rifts in the group and causing confusion;
🌟 strategies for discernment between personal feedback and a disagreement that’s worth the group’s attention.
Journey to the biosphere to find out more. Image descriptions in alt text.
As we work to protect our communities and advance our resistance to systems of dominance and exploitation, many of our groups are fragmenting under the pressure, getting into stand offs in our meetings, and are finding themselves unable to reconcile our differences. Others of us are smoothing over differences for the sake of keeping the peace, resulting in watered down strategies.
Our differences are actually critical to our success. Now more than ever, we cannot afford to only work with people in our movements who agree with us. Our movements for collective liberation need to skill up in our ability to handle disagreement inside of our strategy and planning meetings so we turn towards each other, instead of turning on each other. This Crash Course on Facilitating Disagreement from AORTA is a 2 hour online training that offers practical meeting tools to surface differences early, cut through the tension, and carve out a path forward. We will share:
🌟 how we use foresight to anticipate disagreement in a meeting so you can set up the conversation to welcome it (being surprised makes everything harder);
🌟 tools for scanning the group for differences early and building understanding;
🌟 how to identify and stop “dust clouding” (imagine a small bird wiggling in the dust, and creating a big cloud), when an individual or group is unwittingly magnifying rifts in the group and causing confusion;
🌟 strategies for discernment between personal feedback and a disagreement that’s worth the group’s attention.
Join AORTA, Equitable Food Oriented Development, National Network of Abortion Funds, National Young Farmers Coalition, Tenants Together, and many others in our movements, to meet this political moment by skilling up in practical tools and approaches so we can all say yes to disagreement.
Journey to the biosphere to find out more. Image description in alt text.
Registration closes tomorrow on April 22nd! Bring your comrades, collaborators, and coworkers to this special cohort of rad movement organizers, facilitators, and space holders to skill-up your decision making processes!
This five week intensive on facilitating decision making pulls back the curtain on how to build and practice deep democracy for groups resisting authoritarianism and trying to live into our most liberatory values. Through case studies, discussion, and practice labs, you'll get simple, ready to apply facilitation tools and frameworks for clear, effective decision making processes and structures your group can implement right away. Every week will include a deep dive lesson, small group time to build and learn with other practitioners, and a practice lab for discussion and integration. We'll be joined by our co-host partners: 18 Million Rising, About Face: Veterans Against the War, Climate Justice Alliance, Dissenters, Freedom Side School, Jewish Voice for Peace, No Tech for Apartheid, and the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights alongside many other powerful organizers, facilitators, and space holders.
Topics we'll be covering include:
🍃 the distinct parts of a democratic decision making process and how long each part should take;
🍃 how to determine who makes the ultimate decision, who is consulted, when to bring people into various stages of the decision making process, and most importantly how to engage and manage different power dynamics;
🍃 how to successfully integrate democratic decision making processes into your group's structure and how to avoid common pitfalls;
🍃 how to design a meeting agenda that genuinely and effectively engages people in decision making without getting bogged down in process.
Follow the lynx in the biome to learn more and sign up. Image description in alt text.
Learn more about how AORTA is approaching disagreement in organizations and movement spaces during this current political moment. Interested in getting tools and practices for your facilitation practice? Come learn immediately applicable tools for surfacing disagreement and more at our Facilitate for Freedom training.
Swipe through for our full list of training dates this Spring. Learn more and sign up at the lynx in our biome. Image descriptions in alt text.
We'll dig into real world case studies like this one and many more during practice lab sessions as part of AORTA's upcoming Facilitating Decision Making Intensive. Learn how this group took a sticky situation and moved their decision making process forward; generate an abundance of strong, clear options alongside other practitioners; and get simple, ready to apply facilitation tools and frameworks for clear, effective decision making processes and structures your group can implement right away.
Every week of the intensive will include a deep dive lesson, small group time to build and learn with other practitioners, and a practice lab for discussion and integration. (Bonus: You can also add on a weekly practitioners circle where you can meet with an AORTA facilitator for small group coaching! Each circle includes conversation, thought partnership, and applying the week's lesson into your specific context.)
Topics we'll be covering during the intensive include:
🍃 the distinct parts of a democratic decision making process and how long each part should take;
🍃 how to determine who makes the ultimate decision, who is consulted, when to bring people into various stages of the decision making process, and most importantly how to engage and manage different power dynamics;
🍃 how to successfully integrate democratic decision making processes into your group's structure and how to avoid common pitfalls;
🍃 how to design a meeting agenda that genuinely and effectively engages people in decision making without getting bogged down in process.
Registration closes next week on April 22nd! Bring your comrades, collaborators, and coworkers. Follow the lynx in the biome to learn more and sign up.
Image descriptions in alt text.
When a group has to pick their next project or campaign, and everyone shows up with the thing they care about most, it can feel impossible to make a choice with which everyone is aligned. One person is passionate about a mutual aid project; someone else wants to focus on a policy campaign; a partner org has their own ask; and you're the one trying to help the group actually land somewhere. Instead of a collaborative decision making process, it turns into who makes the strongest case for their thing. There's a key facilitation move that changes this whole dynamic: helping the group set shared criteria before they start evaluating options.
Ready to get the skills to support your group in building shared criteria for more easeful and principled decision-making?
Join AORTA for a five week intensive on facilitating decision making where we'll pull back the curtain on how to build and practice deep democracy for groups resisting authoritarianism and trying to live into our most liberatory values. Through case studies, discussion, and practice labs, you'll get simple, ready to apply facilitation tools and frameworks for clear, effective decision making processes and structures your group can implement right away. Every week will include a deep dive lesson, small group time to build and learn with other practitioners, and a practice lab for discussion and integration.
Topics we'll be covering include:
🍃 the distinct parts of a democratic decision making process and how long each part should take;
🍃 how to determine who makes the ultimate decision, who is consulted, when to bring people into various stages of the decision making process, and most importantly how to engage and manage different power dynamics;
🍃 how to successfully integrate democratic decision making processes into your group's structure and how to avoid common pitfalls;
🍃 how to design a meeting agenda that genuinely and effectively engages people in decision making without getting bogged down in process.
Follow the lynx in the biome to learn more and sign up. Image descriptions in alt text.
Looking for inspiration and resources to support your movement work and liberation practices? Every month, AORTA curates a love note for the movement ecosystem full of resources, radical inquiries, learnings from the movement ecosystem, political education, poetry, artwork, and so much more. Each newsletter is sparked by engagement, reflection, and grappling with how we're working and practicing living into our organizational values and making moves towards our collective liberation.
Last month's newsletter was dedicated to gathering seeds for our radical emergence.
Be sure to sign up by next Monday if you would like to learn more and explore our musings for April, and in the meantime, check out these excerpts and offerings from last month’s issue.
Find the lynx in biome to get your monthly love note from AORTA. Image descriptions in alt text.
Learn more about how AORTA is approaching disagreement in organizations and movement spaces during this current political moment. Interested in getting tools and practices for your facilitation practice? Come learn immediately applicable tools for surfacing disagreement and more at our Facilitate for Freedom training.
Swipe through for our full list of training dates this Spring. Learn more and sign up at the lynx in our biome. Image descriptions in alt text.
