The Action Lab's Strengthening Capacity Team is offering individuals a year-long series to strengthen the leadership, sustainability, and effectiveness of their organizing. The series pairs two tracks. Embodied Purpose uses breathwork, movement, storytelling, and role-play to help leaders move from reactive to responsive, set clearer boundaries and requests, give and receive care, and practice principled struggle. All practices are optional and consent-based. Political Education builds the analysis organizers need to sharpen strategy, through collective study of change and contradictions, movement history, racial capitalism, anti-colonial and anti-imperialist organizing, and feminist organizing. Together, these sessions help leadership teams deepen their purpose, analysis, and resilience for the work ahead while building close community and comradeship.
Sessions:
- Opening Retreat: The Process of Change · September 28–29, 2026 · The Action Lab. Core Anchor Partners came together to assess the patterns and contradictions in how we relate to ourselves, each other, and our work, and to commit to acting on shared values and political goals.
- EP 1: (Over)Extension & Accountability · Thursday, October 22, 2026. Exploring how we use, overuse, and underuse our capacities, and practicing habits that build accountable collectives.
- PE 1: Change & Contradictions · Friday, October 23, 2026. An introduction to dialectics as a framework for reading political forces and organizing for intentional change.
- EP 2: Making Requests, Saying Yes, Saying No · Thursday, November 12, 2026. Practicing how to ask for support, delegate, offer proposals, and say yes and no with clarity.
- PE 2: Racial Capitalism · Friday, November 13, 2026. The history and mechanics of the system that organizes us, and what it means for our vision and long-term strategy.
- EP 3: Facing Contradictions · Thursday, December 3, 2026. [Description TBA]
- PE 3: Anti-Colonial & Anti-Imperialist Organizing · Friday, December 4, 2026. Learning from Global South movements and integrating international solidarity into local organizing.
- EP 4: Embodied 1:1s for Organizers · Thursday, January 21, 2027. Rehearsing the listening, assessment, and vision-sharing skills behind stronger one-on-ones.
- PE 4: Feminist Organizing · Friday, January 22, 2027. Core feminist interventions that ground organizing in care and the realities of the people making change.
