Community Workshops

Community Workshops

People's Justice League provides violence prevention workshops for a wide array of audiences including middle and high school classrooms, sororities, fraternities, college classrooms, boy scout troops, community groups, bartenders, teacher trainings, peer educators, community events, and more. See below for a list of workshop topics, and contact us anytime with questions, comments, concerns, or to schedule a workshop. Most workshops are conversational in nature and include slides, videos, and activities that seek to create a dialogue rather than just tell you how it is.

THE WORKSHOPS: We are ever adapting these to meet people where they are at and give everybody what they want. This is a sample list.

Supporting Survivors: Learn what to do when a friend or even a stranger confides in you that something terrible has happened. Learn what active crisis stage looks like. Learn effective methods to help talk a person through active crisis and back into functioning/get through the day mode. Learn what to say and what not to say to avoid victim blaming and communicate sincere care, as well as a few key, simple things you can do to support a survivor through their immediate recovery and the long haul of their healing process.

Media Literacy: Develop an ongoing critical analysis of the media you consume. Media representations of weak, submissive, dehumanized femininity, animalistic and oversexualized people of color, and aggressive, violent masculinity create a slippery slope toward real worlld violence. We are all funneled into it from birth by forces outside of our control, but we can work to change our habits of mind and change the media too.

Non-Violent Communication: Non-violent communication is an international movement to end violence started by Marshall Rosenburg in the 1960s. Marshall ascertains that people are not naturally violent and that they only act out in violence when they feel dis-empowered and see no effective non-violent conflict resolution strategy readily at hand. He has created a conflict resolution model that seeks to honor the needs of all parties involved and works to end violence through widespread education on this model. In this workshop, we pose the model as a healthy relationship skill and an effective way to meet people where they are at when we disagree in conversations about the things we care about.

Empowerment Self Defense: BYOB—Be Your Own Bodyguard! Learn how to harness the power your mind, your voice, and your body to fend off would-be assailants. This workshop covers how violence exists and moves along a continuum and how to nip it in the bud before it escalates. We will explore why it is so hard to stick up for ourselves, how society raises women to be victims, and how to switch from feeling helpless to bad ass! We will also learn how assailants choose their targets, how to set firm boundaries by being assertive, and how to physically fight back in an effective manner. While the subject matter is heavy, the workshop is fun and low pressure. Participants report feeling energized, confident and empowered. No martial arts experience is required, and you do not need to be in shape to participate! We will have pads to practice striking and kicking, so be sure to wear comfortable clothing.

Bystander Intervention: Active bystanders are SO AWESOME! In violent situations, we often think of only two parties, the victim, and the perpetrator. In this workshop, we harness the power of everyone else, the bystanders!!! Learn about the bystander effect, the five-step process that takes you from passive to active, and a lot of really cool techniques to be a badass bystander, stand up for ourselves and each other, and make a positive difference in someone’s unpleasant situation.

Meeting Facilitation and Consensus-Based Decision Making for burgeoning new groups: If we are organizing to create a world free of all oppression, we need a way to be sure that we are not letting systems of oppression play themselves out in the way we organize with each other. Consensus-based decision making is a specific, tried and true, non-hierarchical method and set of tools for doing just that. In this workshop, we provide hand-outs and manuals, and teach specific techniques.