Classes
How to stop a prison, how to stop a pipeline: Grassroots abolitionist campaign lessons
Ages 18 and up
October 16–November 6, 2024
6–9pm EST, Wednesdays
Image by Jordan Martinez Mazurek
Instructor
Mariella Mendoza Cardenas and Jordan Martinez Mazurek
Pricing
$350 (tuition assistance available)
Dates
16 October - 6 November
How to stop a prison, how to stop a pipeline: Grassroots abolitionist campaign lessons explores methodologies of past movement contexts, activist strategy development and world building. In this course, participants will workshop how to build campaign teams centered in care, joy, rest, and commitment to mutual growth in even the most dire of circumstances. Interactive exercises and group conversation will focus on the power structures often present in movement spaces, learnings from past organizing experiences as well as the big question: how do we win?
This course will be held in-person at the Abrons Arts Center. All courses will gather on Thursday November 14th for a culminating share out.
For a longer course description, please visit The School of Making Thinking’s page.
About Mariella Mendoza Cardenas and Jordan Martinez Mazurek
Mariella (they/them) is an undocumented educator and organizer who has worked with schools, nonprofits, and botanic gardens as a teaching artist, preschool teacher, direct action trainer, theatre instructor, and gardening instructor. They specialize in Know Your Rights workshops in migrant settings and getting lost in the woods with their comrades.
Jordan (they/them) is an autistic, agender, Latine, grassroots organizer and abolitionist that specializes in building teams and coalitions of ordinary people that win “unwinnable” campaigns. To date they’ve worked with grassroots communities across the South to defeat over $5 billion in new prison construction.
Partnership
Designing Without Gentrifying is curated in partnership with The School of Making Thinking.
Tuition Assistance
Abrons offers tuition assistance to any student whose household makes under $50,000 annually. Through our NYCHA Arts Initiative, classes are FREE for all NYCHA residents living in zip codes 10002, 10003, 10009, and 10038.
For courses offered in partnership with the School of Making Thinking, we also offer a sliding scale for Black People, Indigenous People, and People of Color.