Speakers and Trainers Bureau
What's an organizing training?
New activists usually think that if they work really hard as individuals, affecting their own consumption or habits, they will change the world. Other times activists think that just telling those in power about the injustices they see will get them solved ("If only they knew..."). Still other well-intentioned people will pick up trash every Saturday, only to have that trash return the next Saturday--never asking where the trash came from in the first place, or why it is in one neighborhood and not another. While all of these things are admirable and may be a sign of virtue or concern, they do little to challenge the structure of problems and do not create longterm or widespread change.
Organizing trainings are about getting beyond that. SEAC organizing trainings show your group how to cultivate power for itself, to maintain that power, and to use it for progressive social and environmental change. ROAR!
Who speaks?
Mostly young people, and we're trying to work towards it being all young people. There are some adults on the Speakers' Bureau, but younger speakers are offered preference. We think it's really important that young people take leadership in the movement, including speaking.
With that in mind, we need speakers from SEAC's grassroots. If you think you can speak about organizing, anti-oppression, or a cool campaign, email workshops@seac.org.
What does anti-oppression have to do with my group? We're doing a clean energy campaign.
Anti-oppression has a LOT to do with your group. Racism, sexism, classism, and heterosexism in our groups subtly and sometimes greatly affect the work that we are capable of accomplishing together. Environmental movements have historically been more in collusion with these societal problems than organized against them. It is imperitive to those who care about real change to make themselves accountable to those who are most affected by environmental destruction--who invariably are also those who are affected by the broader social maladies of our society. SEAC maintains that unless the structure of our groups, our campaigns, and the society as a whole are made unoppressive, environmental destruction will continue unabaited.
