Resources

Here are some links to other great resources and groups compiled on Lisa Fithian’s Organizing For Power Organizing For Change website. There are many resources not listed here on that site.

General Resources

Art and Action

  • Bread and Puppet Theater, based in Vermont, this group offers amazing political performances, marches in protests, offers trainings in their base in Glover, Vt. Great puppet museum and stencil art!
  • Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination, European-based site of interesting culture jamming, artistic actions and more.
  • Clandestine Insurgent Radical Clown Army (CIRCA)
  • Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre, has been using water, flour, newspaper, paint, and unlimited imagination to tell stories that explore the struggles and celebrations of human existence.
  • The Puppeteers’ Cooperative Home Page , Boston, includes sketches to show how to make large puppets and ideas for puppet processions.
  • Puppet Uprising in Philadelphia presents performances by puppeteers from all over the world. Some are full-length theatrical works that utilize puppets, other events are cabarets of several short puppet shows.
  • The Puppetry Homepage is a very comprehensive puppetry resource.
  • Spiral Q Philadelphia community based creative organizing initiative, good puppet resources
  • Theatre of the Oppressed , uses interactive theater and stories. Developed by Augusto Boal, Brazilian theatre director during the 1950’s and 1960’s to move a “dialogue” between audience and stage. The workshops are virtually a training ground for action not only in these performance forms, but for action in life.
  • Wise Fools Community Arts Bay area puppeteers that uses art and theatre as vehicles for community building, self-determination, social and political change. Great puppet-making manual!

Collective Liberation

Fundraising

Health

Legal

Magical Activism

Media Activism

  • Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), the national media watch group, advocates for greater diversity in the press, and scrutinizes media practices that marginalize public interest, minority and dissenting viewpoints. FAIR has been offering well-documented criticism of media bias and censorship since 1986. As an anti-censorship organization, FAIR exposes important news stories that are neglected and defends working journalists when they are muzzled.
  • FAIR’s Media Activist Kit includes “how-to” guides for identifying, documenting and challenging inaccurate or unfair news coverage, along with information about how to promote independent media.
  • Free Press– Free Press is a national nonpartisan organization working to increase informed public participation in crucial media policy debates, and to generate policies that will produce a more competitive and public interest-oriented media system with a strong nonprofit and noncommercial sector.
  • Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation engages in media activism, media analysis and provides resources.
  • Media Alliance is a San Francisco-based training and resource center for media workers, activist and community organizations. Promotes a diverse, accountable and ethical media.
  • Progressive Communicators Network – great online tools for media activists
  • Project Censored maintains a large list of media activist organizations.
  • The Mainstream Media Project is a resource for access to talk radio and for trainings in how to be successful in that curious medium that reaches into the midlands and mainstream. They call this training “From Advocate to Expert.”
  • The Spin Project – is dedicated to working with social justice organizations ready to deploy communications strategies for social change.
  • Smartmeme – builds movement and amplifies the impact of grassroots organizing with a new strategy and training resources, values based communication, collaborations and meme campaigning.

Permaculture

Trainers Groups and Resources

  • Alliance of Community Trainers based in Austin Texas, provides trainings on environmental sustainability, permaculture, bioremediation, strategic campaigns, nonviolent direct action and organizer skill-building.
  • Seeds of Peace Collective, A dedicated group of people who formed a collective to support non-violent direct action after the Great Peace March in 1986
  • The Action Mill – based in Philadelphia,
  • The Change Agency– an Austrialian group with a lot of great resources!
  • Rainforest Action Network based in San Francisco, good activist resources
  • The Ruckus Society based in the Bay Area, this site has training manuals for action planning, media, climbing, scouting, video taping, and hanging from a billboard.
  • SmartMeme has resources on strategic messaging and campaign work using the power of story
  • Tools for Change – based in Seattle, TFC provides consulting, facilitation, mediation and training services. 25 years of help individuals and organizations address issues of power, embrace cultural diversity and tap into intuitive and creative resources.
  • Training for Change This training organization, led by George Lakey, has descriptions of exercises to be used during trainings.