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Organizing Upgrade

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At the Action Lab, we are dedicated to fostering a vibrant organizing ecosystem through our comprehensive training, political, and popular education offerings. Our programs are designed to empower organizers, leaders, and artists, providing them with the rigorous and joyful spaces necessary for learning, creation, and capacity building. Our training is about sparking political and personal liberation.
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We offer a diverse array of workshops, strategy camps, and learning delegations that cater to the needs of high-impact organizers and movement leaders. These programs are crafted to break through the silos of culture and organizing, encouraging cross-sectoral collaborations and cultural production. We believe in the power of integrating organizing, politics, arts, and culture to create new narrative and political pathways.

The Action Lab’s training cohorts and coaching relationships are designed to catalyze ongoing innovation and growth. We support organizers in forming new, shared vocabularies and linking their initiatives in ways that nurture follow-up sessions and projects. Our strategy camps invite participants to delve deep into the history of resistance, popular education, and power building, enriching their strategic thinking and planning.

By participating in our training initiatives, organizers are equipped with an expanded toolkit of strategic methods, narrative frames, and high impact tactics. We are committed to a participatory learning process that integrates inspiring movement-building experiences into a long-term, inclusive journey towards transformational change. Join us at The Action Lab to reimagine the future and strengthen our collective ability to win.

Organizing Upgrade

Highlights

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Strategy School

As part of our commitment to strengthening community organizing, The Action Lab is launching the Strategy School in 2024. A cohort-based learning program, meeting first in April 2024, the Craft of Strategy is bringing together 20 organizers from 10 partner organizations (mostly in the New York area) to build capacity to develop and execute strategy. Today the capacity to develop and execute strategy is critical yet often overlooked, and this cohort looks to boost organizers’ core understanding while also creating space to develop strategic acuity.

The Strategy School includes foundational political education about the forces ordering our world to sharpen organizers’ analysis of the current moment and visions for the future. Participants examine the best practices for effective campaigns – our primary strategic vehicle as organizers. Finally, the cohort provides participants with the space and support to sharpen skills and experiment and design new strategies and tactics. The Strategy School will generate a shared understanding of the craft of strategy and foster experiments that expand the range of moves, tactics, and approaches organizers bring to the table in our pursuit of change.

The cohort will last six months and combine in person retreats, 1-1 support and coaching, and cultivate peer-to-peer relationships and a community of practice.

Read more and apply here

Emerging Organizer Training

In June, in partnership with the Urban Democracy Lab at NYU, TAL hosted a three day organizing and campaign training in Westchester and the Hudson Valley, New York. Participants were undergraduate and graduate students, all emergent organizers looking to learn more and connect to campaigns in New York State. Participants learned how to plan and build powerful campaigns, and about housing organizing in New York state. Students also received field training going door-to-door with Anchor Partner For the Many’s “Homes Are Not Hotels” campaign in Newburgh, NY.

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Organizing Resources

TAL is developing high quality resources for organizers. In 2023 we designed two extensive training modules around migration to New York that we are using and sharing throughout New York. In addition, we’ve been developing many resources around housing - Understanding New York’s Right to Shelter, Social Housing 101 and 202, and Tenant Power Act and the catalytic potential of mass-based tenant unions.

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Core Curriculum

Importantly, as part of The Action Lab’s Craft of Strategy and the Art of Purpose cohorts, we are developing a comprehensive organizing manual that covers all core organizing skills, an introduction to embodied organizing, an extensive set of resources, training agendas, and readings, and also foundational political education materials and model training guides for organizers. 

Tailored Support for Partners

In addition to The Action Lab’s other offerings, we are also providing tailored support to numerous partner organizations. TAL has worked with organizations to facilitate retreats, develop training curricula, rethink organizational structure and practices, design and implement organizational changes, draft educational materials, and much more.

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Our Other Power to Win Programming

Power Working Group

Law and Organizing Academy