SOLIDARITY IN THE FACE OF MAGA
An online training series for the road ahead
Facilitated by David Dean | Open to all
Guest Teacher: Bill Fletcher Jr.
“Even in the darkest of times—during hateful backlashes, ecological disasters, bloody wars, and genocides—a subterranean current of solidarity persists… With practice and patience, we can strengthen this current so that, over time and like countless streams and torrents before it, our solidarity can wear down and topple even the most seemingly impervious obstacles.”
— Astra Taylor & Leah Hunt-Hendrix
Solidarity in the Face of MAGA is an online training series and learning community for all those seeking to cultivate resilience and political clarity in the aftermath of the November elections. Together, we will work to understand how we have been divided by the powerful, how to build the transformative alliances we need to fight back, and how to find purpose and belonging in the work of social change today. Amidst the heartbreak and disorientation of this moment, we will learn about the practice of solidarity-based organizing, one that instructs us to place our faith not in billionaires or exalted leaders, but in each other and in the movements that we build together.
All sessions include curated study materials, engaging lectures, and opportunities to share, reflect, receive support, and get grounded together in small and large group settings.
Learn about the core themes of our four Monday evening sessions here:
We will begin by learning a framework for building powerful coalitions. We'll come to understand racism, sexism, transphobia, xenophobia, and Christian nationalism not solely as harms in and of themselves, but as tools of the elite to divide, disorient, and weaken the collective power of everyday working people. We'll discuss how we can build movements based in an anti-oppressive, class solidarity more capable of challenging the far right than anything on offer in the political mainstream.
The rise of MAGA didn't happen in a vacuum, but is the product of a decades-long, highly strategic, business-backed, right-wing political project and a corporate Democratic establishment that has been unable to counter it. Participants will learn about the historical development of each of these forces in the US, global parallels, and how these insights can guide our work for change today.
With particular focus on Palestine, we'll discuss how the rich and powerful have for centuries used settler colonialism as a weapon to divide and rule over the global 99%. Through this, we'll come to see how all of our well-being depends on decolonization and Palestinian freedom, and we'll consider how this truth can serve our activism amidst new threats posed by Trump.
In our final session, we will learn about the "Block and Build" strategy being employed by many organizations to block the authoritarian Trump agenda while building a broad and welcoming progressive movement that can challenge the billionaire class and lead this country. Participants will then be supported to find a sense of community, belonging, and home in independent political organizations doing this work today.
In this final session, we will be joined by our guest teacher, Bill Fletcher Jr.
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Though much of David's work involves educational programs to support white people's engagement in multiracial movement building, this training series is designed for and open to all. To learn more about how we are holding this course, please read our Course Structure and Community Agreements document.
Meet the Facilitator:
David Dean is a political educator, writer, and speaker working to support the growth of transformative alliances in our social movements – solidarity that undoes the centuries-long project of reactionary elites to divide and rule. He leads trainings for organizers seeking to deepen their strategy and resolve as well as for groups of white people striving to engage in multiracial movements with emotional strength, political clarity, and fierce purpose.
David teaches independent courses (like this one) and is also a contributor and former Associate Director at White Awake, a racial and economic justice education center. Over the past decade he has taught courses for more than 5000 people and trained activists throughout the country. Learn more about David’s work at davidbfdean.com or sign up for his newsletter, Toward Solidarity, to receive regular writing from him.
Meet our Guest Teacher:
Bill Fletcher Jr has been an activist since his teen years. Upon graduating from college he went to work as a welder in a shipyard, thereby entering the labor movement. Over the years he has been active in workplace and community struggles as well as electoral campaigns. He has worked for several labor unions in addition to serving as a senior staff person in the national AFL-CIO.
Fletcher is the former president of TransAfrica Forum; a Senior Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies; and in the leadership of several other projects. Fletcher is the co-author (with Peter Agard) of The Indispensable Ally: Black Workers and the Formation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, 1934-1941; co-author (with Dr. Fernando Gapasin) of Solidarity Divided: The crisis in organized labor and a new path toward social justice; author of ‘They’re Bankrupting Us’ – And Twenty other myths about unions; and author of the recent novels The Man Who Changed Colors and The Man Who Fell From the Sky. Fletcher is a syndicated columnist and a regular media commentator on television, radio and the web.
A Thank You Note from David to Course Participants: As a full time, independent political educator and writer without broader academic, foundation or organizational backing, your financial support as course participants makes my work possible. A support base of individuals like you (rather than larger elite foundations) also allows me to offer unencumbered, uncensored education in which I direct participants toward social movements that are challenging global capitalism and imperialism, seeking to repair racial and colonial harm, and that are based in the multiracial working class. Thank you for making this a reality.
Start your course registration form here.
Photo credits: Jack Rottier, Paulo Fabre Ruiz, Gage Skidmore, JVP NYC, Down Home NC, Kairos Center.