This year’s Rural Caucus & Strategy Session on Saturday, May 12 is looking to be the best yet! With a whole weekend of tours, conversations, and activities, there are exciting new ways for organizers to connect with each other, share stories, and shape statewide strategy for the next year! Space is limited for some of these activities – register now to save your spot!
Check out the 5 things you should not miss at the 2012 Rural Caucus & Strategy Session!
1. ROP’s Founder Marcy Westerling and PCUN Union President Ramon Ramirez will keynote! Come see Marcy and Ramon interview each other about this exciting organizing moment, the work that built up to this explosion of organizing, and on where rural Oregon is going next!
2. Responding to Assaults on Rural Democracy Talk Show: come hear rural leaders from across the state discuss the assaults they are facing in their communities and how they are fighting back. Hear from leaders from around the state on queer and gender justice, immigrant rights, economic justice, post offices, and much more! ROP Director Cara Shufelt and ROP Founder Marcy Westerling will facilitate.
3. Skills Clinics: learn new skills to bring home and use in your community organizing! Clinics will include consensus decision making, recruitment and building a base of supporters, a Know Your Rights training from our allies with the Civil Liberties Defense Center, media skills, and more!
4. Occupy Rural Oregon Breakfast convening: On Sunday morning, Occupiers from across the state will discuss how we can support each other, how we can build rural power, and what unified tactics and strategies could look like! Then we will do some literal building at the CAPACES Leadership Institute.
5. Viernes Comunitario: Every other Friday, PCUN members and community gather at PCUN to discuss a topic relevant to the community. In May, they’ll open their doors to us in this grassroots event. We’ll start with the film “Chicano! History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement”, a film that “encompasses a broad cross section of issues—from restoration of land grants, to farmworkers’ rights, to enhanced education, to voting and political rights”. After the film we will engage into an open discussion looking at the links between our struggles of today.
We will be doing a lot of strategic thinking, connecting with each other, and shaking our tail feathers together on Saturday evening at the PCUN-organized party! We will be camping together in the PCUN Union Hall or staying overnight with local hosts.
Do not miss out on this full weekend of relationship building! Check out the full schedule of events for the Caucus weekend here!
We need to get our final count in by Tuesday, May 1st, so register now for this incredible Caucus!
See you soon!
Warmly,
Jessica