Oppression, Movement Building and our Relationships as Activists Workshop (OMBRA)

This workshop has been widely run throughout XR, both in the U.K. and around the world.

Overview of the workshop

The purpose of this workshop is to build a solid foundation for understanding issues of oppression and division to help to build and protect our movement.

Progressive movements have often been impeded by the divisions that arise when issues of oppression go unaddressed, or are not addressed well. These divisions may be internal or external. Internal division is when sections of a movement become so preoccupied with their difficulties with each other that they lose focus on their original mission. External division is when a movement forms, but the movement doesn’t know how to engage with or relate to the wider population, so it remains narrow and limited.

Mistreatment and oppression break trust and break relationships (between individuals and between groups) and so get in the way of us working together towards common goals.

This workshop explores the relationships between emotional hurt, mistreatment, oppression and division – and how these have come to form a self-perpetuating system. The workshop shows how we have all been co-opted into this system, and why a culture (or tone) of punishment and blame around these issues is part of what locks the system in place. The workshop shows how we can begin to create the conditions necessary to undo this confusing tangle, so we can work together to dismantle an inhuman system which serves no-one's real interests.

Please email ombraworkshop@gmail.com if you would like to find out when this workshop is running or if you are interested in being mentored to run this workshop.