Organizing 101: What are we fighting for?

There is strength in community. When challenges, obstacles, or systems are unresponsive to one particular person, a tactic to make change can be to rally and rely on one's community. However, powerful community organizing requires intentional and specific groundwork.

This workshop is an introduction to and an understanding of the power of working together to fight for the changes one wishes to see in their community. Using examples of past and present social movements, this workshop aims to bring people together to learn how communities of color and other communities of marginalized people are being structurally and/or systemically oppressed and how communities can work together using anti-racist organizing principles, strategies, and tactics to build people power.

The workshop is led by a multicultural group of organizers from across the state. Additional organizers to be announced. The lead organizer is Addys Castillo (pronouns: she/her/hers).

Addys has served as the Executive Director of City Wide Youth Coalition (New Haven) since 2014. She is a juvenile/criminal justice practitioner with over 20 years of comprehensive experience as a public administrator working with vulnerable populations. She has with worked with numerous state agencies and non-profits including Leadership, Education and Athletics in Partnership (LEAP), the State of Connecticut’s Department of Children and Families, Project Model Offender Reintegration Experience (MORE) Inc., the California Endowment and the Children’s Aid Society. She is a National Urban Fellow and a core trainer in anti-racist organizing for the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond (Seattle, WA).

Dinner is included.

This workshop is hosted by Connecticut Community Foundation in partnership with NVCC's Center for Racial Dialogue and Communal Transformation. It will be held at Naugatuck Valley Community College, Founders Hall, Room F101N.