On a wet wintery weekend in February, 34 organizers from the mountains to the coast of North Carolina came together for a three-day Organizing Bootcamp led by the Center for Third World Organizing, part of the Southern Vision Alliance and Blueprint NC Power Building cohort.
Credit: Everett
Staff and leaders from 13 different place-based groups, representing Trans*, Indigenous, Veterans, Farmworkers, and Black-led community organizations came together for fellowship, solidarity, and intensive practice sessions. The event brought together organizers at different stages of their work. Newer groups, such as the Richmond County Coalition for Justice and Black Empowerment, shared the room with leaders from Black Workers for Justice, which has been organizing in North Carolina since 1981. Participants weren’t just learning from the trainers (who were amazing!); they were learning from each other.
Credit: Everett
The organizations represented included: 7 Directions of Service, Black Workers for Justice, the NC Disaster Recovery & Resilience Network, Common Defense, Durham Beyond Policing, It’s Our Future/El Futuro Es Nuestro, NC Climate Justice Collective, People’s Power Lab, the Reparations Stakeholder Authority of Asheville, Richmond County Coalition for Justice & Black Empowerment, the Robeson County Cooperative for Sustainable Development, Students for Justice in Palestine, Symbodied, and Tranzmission.
Over the three days, participants worked through CTWO’s organizing curriculum and practiced core power-building skills — like base building, leadership development, street outreach, and member retention. On Saturday afternoon, everyone went out to leaflet for the Durham Workers Assembly’s upcoming immigrant solidarity event. It gave participants the opportunity to practice together, support a local organizing effort, and have face-to-face conversations with community members. By Saturday evening, everyone was ready for karaoke!
Credit: Everett
Looking around the room, it was clear that we are getting closer to our goal of creating a community of practice, where organizers from different backgrounds, issue areas, geographies, and years of experience can build together and learn from one another as we seek to build Power, Equity, and Belonging for our communities.
By Sunday, the organizations made commitments to experimenting with collective practice by creating “mini-tables” on the topics of:
- Youth Engagement,
- Safety & Security,
- Climate/Energy/Environmental Justice,
- Reparations/Anti-Blackness/Land-back,
- Access/Support for Neuro-Divergent Members, and
- Civic Engagement.
“By laying the foundation for collaborations and collective work, we better our chances of building the kind of lasting generational people power that will transform society,” said everett, SVA’s Co-Director of Power Building.
Credit: Rheema Caldwell, CTWO trainer
