CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE TRAINING
Organized by SURJ Westchester
Date:
Saturday, February 3rd from 12 noon to 5pm
Location:
White Plains Presbyterian Church -39 N Broadway, White Plains, NY 10601
Time:
12-5
Info. on the Training:
It is about five hours long (including a bathroom break and a 45-minute lunch break) with a variety of role plays, and covers the following basics:
1) the philosophy and strategy of nonviolence
2) civil disobedience as one method of direct action
3) affinity group organizing, and the role of support
4) arrest and consequences
5) tips for the day-of an action
Cost:
$10, but no one will be turned away for a lack of funds
Lunch will be provided
The Trainers:
Bios for Alexis DanzigandJamie Bauer
Jamie's first arrest was in the City Council Chambers in 1982 when the NYC City Council voted down the gay rights bill. Jamie's pronouns are they/theirs. A picture of Jamie getting arrested was printed in the New York Times, and they were hooked.
Jamiewas active in anti-militarism work with Women's Pentagon Action, and was one of the NYC and Washington DC trainers for the mass CD at the Supreme Court after Bowers vs. Hardwick was upheld by the Supreme Court in 1987.
They were working with War Resister's League in 1987 when a call came in requesting assistance from a new group forming to do direct action to raise awareness about the AIDS crisis. Jamie joined ACT UP and provided civil disobedience trainings, demonstration logistics, marshaling, police liaison work, and support for the group (and with various affinity groups) for the next eight years.
Alexis grew up going to anti-Vietnam War marches with her mother, and took part in anti-rape feminist actions and anti-nuclear organizing at college. After her father died of AIDS in 1988, Alexis joined ACT UP and was trained by Jamie to take part in her first CD, at the FDA in Rockville, MD, where Jamie and Alexis were members of the same affinity group. Jamie and Alexis worked on the logistics/CD-training team with ACT UP, helping to plan and run demonstrations together during the almost five years that they overlapped in ACT UP.Alexis was part of the marshaling team for the Dyke March attended by 20,000 lesbians and bisexual women planned by a national coalition of Lesbian Avengers that took place the night before the 1993 Lesbian Gay and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation March on Washington.
Jamie and Alexis have worked with and have provided demonstration logistics and marshaling support to Queer Nation, Lesbian Avengers, WHAM! (clinic defense for Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers under attack by Operation Rescue), RUSA-LGBT (an LGBT Russian-speaking human rights group), GO Brooklyn,religious and sanctuary groups,and other ad hoc direct action organizations.
Together and separately, Jamie and Alexis have trained hundreds of people in NYC and up and down the East Coast in the American tradition of principled nonviolence, direct action, legal protest, marshaling techniques, and civil disobedience.