Hashtag to Headlines

For the past century AFSC has taken a clear stand against militarism and its ultimate manifestation: enlistment and conscription of youth. From its formation in support of Conscientious Objectors to WWI, through the draft resistance to the Vietnam war, countering recruitment efforts targeting marginalised populations, until today supporting military refusal in Israel. In this workshop we will be looking at Conscientious Objection as a personal form of non-cooperation with war, as well as a political tool. We will also look at ways in which we are all asked to cooperate with wars in different ways in our lives, and how we can refuse to cooperate with these. We will look at different examples of daily non-cooperation with war people can choose to be engaged in on a personal, community and social change level.

With every new executive action, press statement or late night tweet, the lives of millions of children across this country are being broken by unjust policies and practices. This is most clearly evident in the plans and actions to incarcerate or detain more and more people via immigration and criminal justice actions. AFSC has and must continue to push back so our children might be healed. In this workshop, we’ll explore our children’s brokenness and begin our push with challenging roleplay and spirited responses. We’ll hear from those impacted; envision a way forward and speak truth to power.

Based on the book Building a Movement to End the New Jim Crow, this workshop will explore how to build effective coalitions that enable action to rise from the people most affected by an issue. The violence of mass incarceration, and the centuries old punishment system in which we find ourselves, permeates our thinking, our everyday reactions to events, and our understanding of what is possible.We will use interactive exercises to help people analyze the roles they play in social action work and the pillars of power that prop up the existing system. What could replace these pillars to move us toward a healing paradigm? What lessons are we learning from those directly affected by the carceral system: formerly incarcerated people, family members, and survivors of violence? What does being a good ally look like?

AFSC has accompanied land based peoples of New Mexico in the protection of land and water and works to build alternatives to the exploitative food system. Using photos and stories, participants will learn about a non-Western understanding of humans' relationship to land and water. Participants will have a new analysis of current environmental movements and how to prevent replication of colonial, racist frameworks for environmental work.

This workshop provides historical context of the US-Mexico border militarization by illustrating how US immigration policy has militarized the border region, criminalized migrant workers, and worsened the human rights of border residents. Participants will learn how organized border communities resist and challenge the for-profit militarization, detention, and deportation character of US immigration policy.

A facilitated conversation bringing together leaders of the BDS movement in the U.S., Mike Merryman-Lotze of the AFSC, Ali Abunimah of the Electronic Intifada and Alissa Wise of Jewish Voice for Peace. The presenters will discuss BDS as a strategy and as a movement, its successes and achievements, challenges and controversy, and debate new ideas for this political moment. Discussion will open to the group, allowing workshop participants to share their thoughts.

The workshop will use participatory approaches (Participatory Learning and Action) of engaging the participants (youths) to look at their community and what they can change in the community in whatever small ways to ensure peace and social justice. The participants will be expected to form youth groups that are able to influence other youths to embrace peace, peaceful coexistence, and participate in national healing and reconciliation. The training will emphasis on building bread and blocks. Bread will be a source of income while the blocks will be right attitude, good morals, appreciating oneself and keeping hope alive.

AFSC Arizona will provide a participatory workshop experience that demonstrates the multiple layers of advocacy for prisoner rights and working against mass incarceration. Through role-play, workshop attendee participation, and interactive demonstration of strategies, AFSC Arizona staff will engage participants in the nuanced approaches to systemic change such as changing sentencing laws, challenging prison expansion and privatization, improving conditions of confinement, and changing the narrative in Arizona around criminal justice issues.

This workshop will look at the history of AFSC in Palestine, outlining how that work has developed and shifted our work from relief efforts to human rights advocacy and social political change. Utilizing audiovisual and interactive resources developed for the centennial by the AFSC staff, we will look back at past work in both the Palestine and the U.S as we consider how we have contributed to shifting the narratives for social change. We will conclude with information about our current AFSC campaigns on child detention and on Gaza and how participants can support these efforts and other campaigns in the U.S.

What is a narrative? What does it mean to say "we're changing the narrative"? How do we set goals, develop strategies, and find out if our efforts are working or not? In this workshop, we will walk participants through the narrative change model for social justice work. Using AFSC’s research and work on Islamophobia, participants will gain a concrete understanding of what narrative change is and isn't. Participants will leave with practical tips for getting involved in AFSC's ongoing narrative change efforts.

This workshop is based on a constructivist pedagogical model and popular education, where participants learn from a process of building personal – collective experiences, differences and contexts. This will address the methodology used in Guatemala to build local peace networks, which seeks to promote join efforts between actors, public authorities and key organizations for the development and implementation of non-violent actions within a community, in order to promote lasting and sustainable peace through youth leadership. The workshop will have 4 phases: 1) Introductory presentation/Generation of trust, 2) theoretical principles, 3) technical and methodological aspects, 4) reflection/action process. These will be developed through participatory and playful activities, which are used with youth from the project. The phase 3 will have an interactive element: the story telling puzzle. The complexity of the puzzle requires at least 4 people to guide the activity. At the end of the workshop we will expect that participants recognize the methodology, as a powerful and practical tool for building sustainable local peace networks, which are essential to integrate efforts for social justice and lasting peace. The engagement strategy will be based on the invitation to contribute to the on-going development of this project. This invitation will be done through the phase 3 of the workshop.

Outraged by Anti-Muslim policies and rhetoric? Inspired by all of the protests but wondering what to do next? This mini version of our 6 hour training, participants will get a sense of how AFSC's new narrative change project, Communities Against Islamophobia, is training new allies to the Muslim community in several cities across the country. Participants can expect to: unpack the dominant myths and narratives around Muslims/Islam, develop an analysis of Islamophobia and the levels of harm created, rethink allyship, and leave the training with action steps and questions for further study.

This workshop will introduce Quaker social change ministry and lead participants through a process to consider how to center the voices and experiences of people of color or those most impacted by injustice in our work for just peace. Participants are invited to reconsider how to bring mystics and activists together to work for social justice while practicing the spiritual discipline of accompaniment.

Workshop will be interactive with content and images via power point. It will: approach economic justice work as removing obstacles to human potential, well-being and thriving; examine the human toll of poverty and inequality; describe three phases of the work as immediate assistance, building capacity and alliances and engaging in struggles to change, defend or improve policy; outline a social-science based approach to policy change; and conclude with tips based on history and experience.

How to engage with corporations involved in harmful activities? Are there corporations we would not engage with? Can corporations become a power for peace and justice? How can civil society influence corporate behavior effectively? This workshop presents case studies from Cambodia, China, Myanmar, Israel and the U.S., and discusses some of the lessons learned from the work of AFSC’s Business and Peace program in Asia and the Economic Activism program in the U.S. In very different settings we find unexpected similarities, vital connections and shared understandings. The workshop will bring together different stakeholders for a moderated round table discussion, leading to a conversation with the audience.

Participants can connect their own history with the history of the U.S. Criminal “Justice” system since the era of Convict Leasing. This era started at the end of slavery, is the era of Chain Gangs, and lead to the era of Mass Incarceration. Participants will understand the current landscape of Criminal Justice system in the US., focusing on the incarceration of immigrants and how private prison complex makes millions of profits with the suffering of Immigrant families. We will also cover how allies and supporters can help the Prison Divestment Campaign, end bed quotas and stop the lobbying power of this industry so that humane and common sense reforms are possible in criminal and immigration policy.

Learn about the state of immigrant rights in our country, what has changed with the new administration while focusing on what we can do to respond to the current crisis and create lasting change in support of migrant justice. We will explore the multi-faceted work of the AFSC around migrants' rights, which uniquely combines legal services and organizing and advocacy. We will share strategies and tools for emergency preparedness, deportation defense, community empowerment and engage in interactive exercises to build our capacity for accompaniment. You will leave this workshops with tools to engage in sanctuary everywhere.

In this workshop, 67 Sueños youth discuss how they are using art and poetry to bridge Black and Brown solidarity in Oakland, CA. They will discuss some of the methods used to raise consciousness around the stories of Afro-Latinos and why we need to challenge and overcome anti-black racism in Latino communities for real solidarity to be achieved.

We will discuss themes of race and racism, the history behind the specious classifications of people, and how that historical injury informs the way that we interact with one another today. Beyond the individual experiences of racial bias, we will illustrate how systemic racism is woven into the fabric of our contemporary society. At our workshop, participants will be encouraged to engage fully with the presenters. They will be encouraged to share personal experiences, respond to reflective questions from the presenters, and to accompany us as we tease out an organizing definition of race and racism.

In this interactive workshop, we will discuss the impact of the new presidential administration and its policies on targeted communities including undocumented immigrants, refugees, Black folks, Muslims and LGBTQ individuals, and how Quakers and others can be in solidarity with resistance movements through AFSC’s new Sanctuary Everywhere campaign.

This workshop will be based on a constructivist pedagogical model through popular education. Participants will learn how the local peace network methodology has been effective to young people living in violent conditions in Guatemala. The workshop will address how young people have personal changes that allow them to build together with AFSC, a sense of community working on the promotion of collaborative efforts between community leaders, young leaders, public authorities and key organizations that support peaceful coexistence in their communities. We will develop activities that can show to the attendees how AFSC with vulnerable youth are working to implement non-violent actions in order to promote lasting and sustainable peace through innovative tools based on inclusive work methodologies.