Invisible Walls: Advocacy Strategies and Skills

A. Objectives and Expectations

Objectives

1. Introduce teens to the appalling working conditions of farmworkers in the US today and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ campaign for Fair Food to address this injustice.

2. Discuss the “invisible walls” that stand between farmworkers’ lives and the tomatoes we buy and eat. Teach advocacy skills (i.e. letter writing, political street theater, and Minutes of Support) to cross these “invisible walls”.

3. Participate in several street theater actions to bring the Fair Food Campaign to the attention of the 2013 FGC Gathering. Collect signatures at FGC gathering in support of a youth letter urging a local supermarket chain to sign the Fair Food agreement. Deliver letter to local supermarket in Greeley, CO.

4. Discuss “invisible walls” that sometimes stand between teens and Quaker business practices.
Teach or review how teens can become “visible” by following a leading through Quaker business process (i.e. committee meetings, business meetings at Monthly and Yearly Meeting level) Share SEYM Youth process during from August 2012 - July 2013 to raise their concern about farmworkers in the Southeastern and wider Quaker Society.

Expectations

Teens will:
-listen carefully to farmworker stories
-help craft a letter to a local supermarket asking them to sign on to the Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ Fair Food Campaign
-help create an information packet to bring this issue back to their Monthly/Yearly Meetings
-learn how to do street theater
-find their personal comfort zone in participating in street theater at 2013 Gathering to raise awareness about the Fair Food Campaign

B. List of Specific Areas or Topics you Expect to Cover

1. Invisible Walls: How are people/social issues hidden in our communities?
History of Coalition of Immokalee Workers and unfair working conditions faced by farm workers today
Advocacy strategies
-letter writing
-political street theater (How Quakers act during direct action)
-Minutes of Support

2. Invisible Walls: How are teens hidden at times in our Quaker business process?
-Learning or reviewing how to identify and follow a leading
-Learning or reviewing how to bring a concern through Quaker business process

C. A Rough Description of the Format

20 minutes Worship Sharing/Worship
15 minutes lecture/background information
100 minutes experiential learning
30 minutes reflection/processing

D. Specific Recommendations for Advance Reading/Reading Assignments

These text resources will be available during the workshop:

"Florida Farmworkers Build Unity Through Education and Action." Bell, Beverly. Race, Poverty & the Environment, Fall 2007.
Bringing Human Rights Home (Volume 3 - Portraits of the Movement) edited by Cynthia Soohoo, Catherine Albisa, and Martha F. Davis. Chapter: "Coalition of
Immokalee Workers: "Golpear a Uno es Golpear a Todos!" To Beat One of Us Is to Beat Us All!" Greg Asbed, one of the cofounders of the CIW
“To the Young Activists of Tomorrow.” Reyes, Gerardo. In Letters from Young Activists: Today's Rebels Speak Out, edited by Dan Berger, Chesa Boudin, and Kenyon
Farrow, 201-205. New York: Nation, 2006.
Radical People’s Theater, Eugene van Erven
Games for Actors and Non-Actors, Augusto Boal
The Rainbow of Desire, Augusto Boal
Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire
Action and Knowledge, Orlando Fals-Borda
Rehearsals for Revolution, Ruston Bharucha
Call to Service, Robert Coles

E. Specific Requests for Items to bring to Gathering
No specific requests

About the leaders :
Ann Sundberg
I am an artist specializing in jumpstarting participatory grassroots electronic media projects. (MFA Integrated Electronic Arts, PhD Science & Technology Studies) Past projects include: Coordinator of a youth internet collective in an after school arts and literacy program in public housing in Troy, NY, Coordinator “They are the Trespassers, not I”, a pirate radio broadcast with the 70 year old members of Citizens Against Pollution outside a nuclear laundry in their Springfield, MA neighborhood and “Invisible Walls” project at Booker Middle School in Sarasota, FL which connected two of the Visual and Performing Arts Teachers (poetry and orchestra) with the broader Sarasota community via nine radio broadcasts on WSLR community radio. I am currently Clerk of SEYM Youth Committee and Clerk of Trustees at Sarasota Monthly Meeting. Prior to my current role, I served as Treasurer for Sarasota Monthly Meeting for 5 years.

Dustin Lemke:
I'm a full-time community college instructor in Tampa, Florida. I teach Public Speaking, Interpersonal Communication, Business Communication, and Leadership courses to students of all ages and from around the world. My institution places a strong emphasis on teaching, so I facilitate at least 5 classes each semester and actively volunteer for other student events (movie nights, ropes courses, student conferences, etc.). I've also been the faculty sponsor for the Gay Straight Alliance on my campus and plan various experiential field trips for students. I've been involved with the Southeastern Yearly Meeting (SEYM) Youth Committee for two years and have taught the junior-age students at Yearly Meeting for two years. My other Quaker service has included FGC Central Committee (and Development Committee), SEYM Nominating Committee, Florida Council of Churches, and Tampa Monthly Meeting Peace and Social Concerns Clerk.

SEYM Youth:
We also plan to use SEYM High Schoolers attending the 2013 FGC gathering as a peer to peer resource. Their process in bringing the Fair Food Campaign through SEYM monthly and yearly business meetings will be used a a working model. In the coming months they will be receiving additional training. At Half Yearly Meeting in November, 2012 SEYM youth will participate in a street theater workshop led by a trainer from the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. At our Yearly Meeting in April 2013, SEYM youth will practice doing “street theater” in the cafeteria, outside the main auditorium etc to raise awareness about the Fair Food Campaign. The youth will be trained and well rehearsed to help lead the “Invisible Walls” workshop at the FGC gathering.