Nonviolent direct action is when ordinary people ignore the No Trespassing sign and intervene directly on the stage of history. National liberation struggles, civil rights movements, labor unions, feminists, LGBTQ activists, environmentalists, and a host of other righteous folks have used creative direct action in order to win their demands for social justice. In this workshop we dig into what makes people power effective, including core principles, tools and theories such as action logic, decision dilemmas, and points of intervention... all by playing with a new activist card deck from Beautiful Trouble! Then we put the creative in creative direct action by workshoping action ideas together and learning a host of outside-the-box tactics from flash mobs to pre- figurative interventions. Get better equipped for the challenges and exhilaration of creative action in your own campaigns. Rae Abileah is a social change strategist, ritual artist, community organizer, writer, and advocate for collective liberation, environmental justice and community wellness. Rae is a trainer and contributing editor at Beautiful Trouble. She supports a just peace in Israel Palestine through her work with Jewish Voice for Peace, Interfaith Peace Builders, and the Palestinian-led nonviolent economic resistance movement. She was the co-director of CODEPINK Women for Peace for nearly a decade, followed by a two-year tenure consulting on digital strategy for social justice causes at ThoughtWorks. She now runs her own consultancy, Create Well, supporting clients to create impactful events, publish books, coordinate strategic campaigns, mark life transitions with moving rituals, and achieve their wildest dreams. Whether serving on a board, facilitating training, editing a manuscript, or standing up with social movements, she is curious and passionate about finding ways to disrupt structures of inequality and make freedom contagious in the everyday world. Rae is a contributing author to numerous books including Beautiful Trouble: A Toolbox for Revolution; Beyond Tribal Loyalties: Personal Stories of Jewish Peace Activists; Sisters Singing: Blessings, Prayers, Art, Songs, Poetry and Sacred Stories By Women; and Siddur HaKohanot: A Hebrew Priestess Prayerbook. Her articles have been published in various print and online sites from Huffington Post to Tikkun Magazine. Rae graduated from Barnard College at Columbia University with a dual degree in Environmental Science and Human Rights, and received ordination by the Kohenet Hebrew Priestess Institute. Rae's matrilineage is Dutch and Belgian; her patrilineage is Israeli and Eastern European / Ashkenazi Jewish. She is a first-generation American on her father's side. Her ancestry informs her relationship to war and oppression, and her actions toward dismantling white supremacy. She is based in Nederland, CO.
