Organizing with Frontlines: Report from ULEX Course

What's ULEX (for me)

A ULEX course is, for its promoted long-lasting effects, like a (hand-made) shampoo. 😊

Imagine a diverse group of individuals arriving at a week-long gathering to bathe in a planet-sized web of interconnected issues.

Imagine a curious group, operating around a communal kitchen, where each of the facemask-equipped participants takes on the role of a veg-cutter; where maintaining cleanliness requires each of us to care; where you one day learn about the sites' needs, to reskill another batch of people a day later, pointing where the broom is and retelling them the how-not-to deprive the sites of drinking water.

Imagine an open mind, a collective, forming itself on the common utopia of active kinship, where each contributes to the needs of the whole.

You are in a place where another world is possible.

Community organizing: Different goals, similar steps, same fight

Around 45 trainers and participants engaged in a 7-day course to explore practices of community organizing.

Clear cases of evidence of achieving significant wins and societal progress were presented: from hyper-local initiatives to continent-wide movements fighting slavery, racial segregation, the dehumanization of women, the exploitation of workers, etc. We learned important names and concepts:

• Ella Baker, Group-Centered Leadership
• Patrisse Cullors, #blacklivesmatter
• adrienne maree brown, Emergent Strategy

At first, however, we traveled through our rivers of life, a grounding exercise where one crafts a visual self-reflection, a personal time-lapse.

We discussed the dark sides of organizing, too. Think of the current power grabs of the far-right here, "greening" capitalism, the criminal choreography of "business as usual", a carefully maintained lock-in of the Western "growth",... Think of all kinds of lies and false solutions that the powerful tie (and effectively organize) the working class with.

Designed to be easily implemented in the breadth of contexts, we studied a number of actionable steps:

• Identifying people to connect with, at the intersection between the ones 1. impacted by systemic injustices, 2. immediately impacted by the issue, and 3. whom we appear to be the closest to.
• Mapping competencies in our networks, so that they can be used to shift power, enable group-centered leadership, create common stories and narratives, and sustainably build further and deeper relationships.
• Power mapping to determine what social power to build and with whom to activate it. We exercised a power map/analysis on a fictional case to demonstrate its strength throughout the whole campaign. We worked with the matrix where the x-coordinate ranges from Oppose to Support and the y-coordinate from Most Influence to Least Influence.
• Setting up a base in the neighborhood or other regions with snowflake modeling to mobilize for common demands.

Rehearsing 1:1 dialogues to gather support for our cause was one last note-worthy activity. There is a place for both open and closed-ended questions in such dialogue. Finding the right questions might, however, require a trial-and-error approach. We learned how to ask such questions so that the ones being asked are encouraged to talk, and that we have the chance to actively listen. When it "clicks", chances are that we find common ground, and perhaps even a new buddy for the future. 😊

ULEX courses in the seasons of 2023/2024 were taking place in Catalunyan and Hungarian sites, devoted to one of these areas:

1. Organising for Engagement
2. Transformative Collaboration
3. Education of Community Leadership
4. Framing Climate Narratives
5. Regenerative Practices for Empowerment
6. Nature Connection & Ecopsychology Education
7. Strategy Training for Civil Society
8. Integral Educators Training
9. Leadership for Change

Disclaimer: Funded by the European Union. However, the views and opinions expressed are solely those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or Erasmus. Neither the European Union nor the funding authority can be held responsible.