George Lakey explica sus 5 etapas para los movimientos sociales. Un artículo de estratégia
publicado en el libro Globalizar la Liberación.

Globalizar la liberación: 5 pasos para los movimientos sociales

George Lakey, Talleristas por la Justicia/Training for Change (6/02)

Trad. Elsa Sánchez

Meet Andrew Willis Garcés

Interviewed by Nico Amador

I am not always against ground rules. However, ground rules as widely practiced are poorly understood and are often a waste of time. At worst they are pious rituals of political correctness designed to enforce mainstream norms. Too many facilitators limit themselves to using ground rules when other tools might work much better. Here’s why.

[ Training for Change is offering a series of articles about how trainers can model strategic thinking for activists at all levels of their training. This is the first in the series. The training tools mentioned below, plus additional articles, are all available on its website: www.TrainingForChange.org ]

“Oh no, not another anti-oppression training,” a leader in the organization complained to me, five minutes before our training was scheduled to begin. “Another training where we hear how we need to be politically correct. We have real work to do, you know.”

SECOND IN A SERIES OF INTERVIEWS OF TRAINING ASSOCIATES: Nico Amador interviews Erika Thorne, progressive activist, writer, facilitator and cultural worker since 1974. Learn more about Erika and her stories of using Training for Change, and more...

FIRST IN A SERIES OF INTERVIEWS OF TRAINING ASSOCIATES: Nico Amador interviews Matt Guynn, an organizer and nonviolence trainer with over ten years of training experience. Learn more about Matt, his stories of using Training for Change, and more...

We live in a breakthrough period for "nonviolent struggle," when pro-democracy movements are using it to overthrow dictators and human rights advocates are using it to save lives during civil unrest. In this lecture, George Lakey talks about how can this social technology be made even more powerful for achieving justice, democracy and peace?We live in a breakthrough period for "nonviolent struggle," when pro-democracy movements are using it to overthrow dictators and human rights advocates are using it to save lives during civil unrest.

"We need to educate people," is one of the most common refrains from social change activists. But what does it really mean? The rise of popular education and insights from anti-oppression movements give us major insights into how to do meaningful education. Daniel Hunter examines how pedagogy influences our social change work. An extract from "Before You Enlist And After You Say No," a counter-recruitment manual co-written by Daniel Hunter.

On April 3,06, WHYY's Radio Times with Marty Moss-Coane aired a discussion of Christian Peacemaker Teams and third-party nonviolent intervention with George Lakey. The archived broadcast is available online:

Listen to this show via Real Audio or mp3

As thoughtful people sort out the lessons of the ongoing Iraq tragedy, some look for seeds of hope. Tom Fox and his fellow hostages from Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) represent one of those seeds. Three of those captives were freed last week...

Daniel Hunter writes to US activists about lessons to keep in mind in the midst of empire. Originally written for On Earth Peace's newsletter along with Matt Guynn's article on "Reading the Signs of the Times" speaking to Christian activists.

As individuals we often feel our lack of power to affect the course of events or even our own environment. We sense the untapped potential in ourselves, the dimensions that go unrealized. We struggle to find meaning in a world of tarnished symbols and impoverished cultures...The manifesto includes a vision of a new society-its economy and ecology, its forms of conflict, its global dimensions. The manifesto also proposes a framework for strategy of struggle and change.

What to do when you can't find the right tool to help move the group forward? How to handle cross-cultural differences? How to get out of thinking of anti-oppression work as grim? TFC training associates Matt Guynn, Erika Thorne, Judith Jones, and Betsy Raasch-Gilman share training challenges and insights based on their experience of training around the world.

[Por George Lakey - Después de estar detenido en una campaña de los derechos civil, George Lakey era coautor de un publicación básico para el movimiento de los derechos civil, A Manual for Direct Action, y entonces cinco otros libros sobre la tema de cambio social. Él trabaja actualmente con Entrenar Para el Cambio en Filadelfia (www.TrainingforChange.org).

Tradução: Edda Isernhagen - 2005
George Lakey

(Em desafio a Ward Churchill, que escreveu “0 Pacifismo como Patologia.”)

Quando a violência se depara com a não-violência, qual delas vence?

A ESPADA QUE CURA

(Em desafio a Ward Churchill, que escreveu: “O Pacifismo como Patologia”)
Por George Lakey
Treinamento para Mudança
Filadélfia – USA

(NT: agora começa o texto propriamente dito)

Ward Churchill, Pacifism as Pathology: Reflections on the Role of Armed Struggle in North America

(Winnipeg, Canada: Arbeiter Ring, 1998), 176 pp.

An American activist speaks to Europeans, answering five key questions about the U.S. Peace Movement. (Read the Italian version: Siate Pazienti Con Noi)

George Lakey lays out his 5 stages of social movements, using case studies and examples. A strategy article for activists on how to create social change that is republished from Globalize Liberation.

George Lakey Training for Change (6/02)

US electoral politics are heating up in what some are hailing as one of the most important elections in US history. TFC's Strategy Project re-prints an article by Ricardo Levins Morales' on a strategic approach to the elections. Its unusual point of view includes transparency about strategic goals and objectives on a sophisticated level.

To build movements that can transform society – including its power relations – requires transformational work in the training. We work with movements whose activists are at very high risk of injury and death from police and security forces. The very minimal emotional risk we see in doing transformational work is worth taking when seen in the context of what social movements around the world do every day. The transformational opening, as we see it, is to go beneath the surface of talk going on in a workshop. The goal? Empowerment.

How the art of poetry relates to social change, with three current examples (written by Martin Wiley)

Chaotic demonstrations are here to stay -- thank goodness! They are just the breath of fresh air that the nonviolence movement needed. But that very chaos has strong implications for those of us who design and lead nonviolence workshops before the actions.

The human shields in Palestine were probably the most publicized episode yet in humanity's series of experiments in inventing a new social technique: third party nonviolent intervention (TPNI).

Masculine sexuality involves the oppression of women, competition among men, and homophobia (fear of homosexuality). Patriarchy, the systematic domination of women by men through unequal opportunities, rewards, punishments, and the internalization of unequal expectations through sex role differentiation, is the institution which organizes these behaviors. Patriarchy is men having more power, both personally and politically, than women of the same rank. This imbalance of power is the core of patriarchy, but definitely not the extent of it.

Question: What do some revolutionary soldiers in a Burmese jungle, Act Up members in New York, environmentalists in Germany, coal miners in West Virginia, and aboriginals in Taiwan have in common?

Answer: Participation in nonviolent action training workshops.

A Training for Change & Ruckus Society collaboration: a manual for the counter-recruitment movement. This 239-page training manual is chocked full of tools, handouts and articles on what is the poverty draft, how a recruiter gets your number, organizing skills, how to build a campaign, media & messaging, and more. This manual includes group dynamics exericses, strategy tools, and many more that can be useful to other movements, too.

Hundreds of training activities in detail, over 60 handouts with the content of how to defend human rights against violence, an integrated 23-day curriculum, many tips for trainers, and mini-essays on pedagogical theory -- all of this is included in the 634-page manual available from Training for Change (TFC).

A book for middle-class and owning-class activists who need a hand to understand class. Reviewer Betsy Raasch-Gilman writes, "This book is, quite simply, a 'must-read' for middle-class and owning-class activists!... the author has done an excellent job of avoiding shame and blame, and yet the subject is unavoidably challenging and painful."

The Spiritual Activist is a practical guide to individual and social transformation. It will help you create opportunities to slow down, build stronger relationships at home and at work, and embrace the world around you.

The Activist Dialogue facilitated intergenerational dialogue across gaps in the activist community. Read this manual to learn what works when leading dialogue across huge gaps.

Education through dialogue continues to be an effective and empowering technique, judging from this project. It was needed because the bruises sustained by the Philadelphia area during the Republican National Convention hadn't healed; instead, the gap between the generations threatened to become permanent. There was a further gap between campus-based activists and non-college activist youths.

Welcome to the winter edition of TFC News. In this newsletter we feature information about our new Organizing Skills Institute, an article about an alternative method to “taking stack” in a group, and a listing of our many spring workshops.

Announcing the first TFC Newsletter! This newsletter updates Summer 2009 and representative of the excitement we feel for providing more activist resources for you -- the trainers, facilitators and educators in the TFC network.

Since 1992, Training for Change (TFC) has honed and shared its cross-cultural education methods with activists and educators the world over. It has facilitated custom-designed experiential workshops in some 20 countries, on every continent. The core of Training for Change's international mission is to provide the best training of trainers methodology to build local training capacity, free from outside dependency. The TFC approach is to support and challenge activists and trainers to step fully into their power, so they can carry and share the skills they learn, on their own.

Listen to Training Elder Betsy Raasch-Gilman interviewed on the topic of Martin Luther King & nonviolence -- and how it relates to current struggles and problems

Just before Martin Luther King, Jr., Day in January07, TFC was contacted by the public radio show "Weekend America," looking for contemporary nonviolent activists to be interviewed about MLK's legacy for today. The interview was broadcast as part of their annual MLK show. The brief interview includes clips from Dr. King's speeches, with comments from TFC trainers Nico Amador, Matt Guynn, Daniel Hunter, and George Lakey.

At the end of December,06, George Lakey carried out TFC's four-year strategic plan and retired as its founding executive director. His report on the fifteen years of his leadership is on this website.

Advocate for Nonviolent Social Change to Serve as Visiting Professor

George Lakey, the head of a Philadelphia-based organization internationally known for its leadership in creating and teaching strategies for nonviolent social change, has been selected as Swarthmore College's Eugene M. Lang Visiting Professor for Issues of Social Change in06-2007.

TFC is going green. Click here to learn how renovations in our building will make our office building environmentally sustainable. (If plans are fully implemented, it'd be the first existing building to implement the level of green features they intend to use.)

Training for Change launched its strategy project a little over a year ago. Already we're hearing from participants about how they're using what they learned...

TFC's04 report, including description of The Strategy Project, The Africa Project, international training (Russia, Sierra Leone, Ghana), the evolution of the "direct education" approach, the new website, and over 1,000 participants served.

The rising debate about "humanitarian military intervention" has increased interest in third-party nonviolent intervention to support human rights and peace. †Effective training is key to successful alternatives. †For two years Training for Change has researched "best practices" in training people in this field

At TFC, 17 trainers assisted 1500 activists to move toward those qualities in03. Over0 of them were given training skills to increase the ripple effect -- so thousands more can become empowered in04 to face nonviolently these turbulent times.

TFC in cooperation with the Civic House of the University of Pennsylvania launched an Activist Dialogue Project in May01. The one-year project concluded in May02 with two tangible products...The organizers of Nonviolent Peaceforce asked TFC to draft a training curriculum for the nonviolent soldiers who would be recruited from around the world and then sent to areas of hot conflict to save lives and protect human rights...36 workshops in North American with almost 1,000 participants...

The human shields in Palestine were probably the most publicized episode yet in humanity's series of experiments in inventing a new social technique: third party nonviolent intervention (TPNI).

(the activist dialogue project ended in May02)

Through facilitated discussions, people are encouraged to seriously engage and deal with some of the conflicts and problems that prevent activists from being as effective as possible. It works to unite three specific groups of activists: community-based you activists, college activists, and older more experienced activists.