The act of learning itself is under attack.
Political education, organizing, and truth-telling are being criminalized and censored. Universities, media outlets, and community organizations are being sanctioned, surveilled, and suppressed. Movements for Palestinian solidarity, trans liberation, and anti-fascist resistance are all being labeled as as threats—an intentional effort to silence dissent.
In this climate, the ability to think critically, feel deeply, and act collectively is fundamental to a living toolkit for surviving and connecting in this time of suppression. In times of censorship, disinformation, and fear, learning must be rooted in curiosity, care, and connection: cultivating spaces where people can question and reimagine power together. Join the Center for Constitutional Rights and Into the Treehouse for a three-part virtual course exploring the political landscape of our time.
Rooted: A Living Toolkit in the Face of State Repression will ground participants in an understanding of the systemic tactics of dehumanization and criminalization that the U.S. empire continues to deploy against oppressed communities. Together, we will examine how to stay informed, centered, and embodied through this current escalation. Attendees will leave this course with the tools for rethinking personal and collective safety in their everyday lives.
MORE INFO | REGISTER HERE
Wednesday, February 25 | 8pm ET
Class 1: Re-Centering Community Power with J.P. Hill
Anti-capitalist abolitionist, lecturer, researcher, and mutual aid organizer J.P. Hill leads a course on resisting fascist greed. In the era of ICE, expanded attacks on dissent and escalated use of state power in multiple forms, resistance must grow locally and interpersonally. The age of the internet led millions around the globe into an over-reliance on social media and spontaneous uprising, but today the core social media platforms are almost universally owned by tech oligarchs aligned with the Trump administration. These apps are now sites of surveillance and potential repression more than ever, and our response must be to build trust and comradery locally, organize with co-workers and neighbors, and in many ways return to organizational forms that preceded the 21st century.
Wednesday, March 25 | 8pm ET
Class 2: We Take Care of Each Other with Afeni Evans and Phoenix
Co-led by Afeni Evans of Facts and Fire and Phoenix of America Hates Us, this interactive course will focus on mutual aid, community care, building power, and staying safe, both online and offline. Leave feeling empowered with tools for embodiment such as breathwork and meditation, to support you as you do the necessary work in your communities. Stay grounded with resources to help keep you going, because to sustain the movement and ourselves, we work together, we protect each other, and we take care of ourselves to continue in this fight for our collective liberation.
Wednesday, April 29 | 8pm ET
Class 3: New Media Studies with Afeef Nessouli
Taught by Pulitzer grant recipient and journalist Afeef Nessouli, this course will cover how dehumanization is employed in media to allow governments to erase people and extract their resources. Real people, who are suffering under occupation or fascism, are reduced to tropes for a reason. From Iraq to queer people to Columbia University students, manufacturing consent is often a mix of financial and ideological motivations. The only antidote to this is to respect the diversity of local and Indigenous storytellers and amplify their various perspectives.