Diversity of Tactics and Care: Community Organizing and Sustainability

We live in a time where our bodies are in a constant state of survival. Communities who are at the forefront of organizing and mobilizing towards social change are not exempt from enduring the impact of collective and past trauma. Organizers of color have distinct experiences and struggles that are worthy to be addressed and processed while envisioning and building towards collective liberation. DRUUMM believes in a world where all our communities thrive and experience justice.

In this session, Gabes facilitates a session on trauma-informed ways to organize and mobilize, especially during an ongoing pandemic, climate catastrophe, the hyperstimulation from ever-changing social media content, and so forth.

This session will focus on but will not be limited to questions like, 

• How does my past trauma affect the ways I imagine and build the world I want to live?

• How do shame and dissociation show up in organizing spaces and the relationships I have within these spaces?

• How am I allowing myself to be human and finite in these relationships and processes?

• How is my sense of hope doing at this moment in time?

• How can ancestral trauma and healing embolden us towards a world that could be?

The call for more movement work demands a call for more care.

Speaker Bio:

Gabes Torres (she/they/siya) was born and raised in the colonized islands of the Philippines, and comes from an ancestral lineage of freedom fighters, musicians, educators, and community organizers.

As a person who has experienced a great deal of geographical movement, Gabes aims to teach the message of international solidarity and global liberation from imperial forces and cultures. She is a therapist, singer-songwriter, and organizer whose work pays attention to community care and safety, and anti-colonial ways of healing and (un)becoming.

Gabes founded and co-facilitates the Heritage Workshop, a virtual workshop for the people of the global majority, where they collectively explore and bear witness to ancestral lineage, stories, and medicine.

https://gabestorres.com/about/