Social Justice Camp DC

A number of quotes inspired us during the planning stages of Social Justice Camp DC.

We wanted to share some with you:

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Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.

-MLK

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Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.

-Howard Thurman

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Studying creativity is not an elite distraction, but provides one of the most exciting models for living.

-Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

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I am done with great things and big plans, great institutions and big success. I am for those tiny, invisible, loving, human forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, which, if given time, will rend the hardest monuments of pride.

-William James

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For me, a landscape does not exist in its own right, since its appearance changes at every moment; but the surrounding atmosphere brings it to life – the light and the air which vary continually. For me, it is only the surrounding atmosphere which gives subjects their true value.

-Claude Monet

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As long as I can remember I feel I have had this great creative and spiritual force within me that is greater than faith, greater than ambition, greater than confidence, greater than determination, greater than vision. It is all these combined. My brain becomes magnetized with this dominating force which I hold in my hand.

-Bruce Lee

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-@ninjaclectic
Social Justice Camp DC Organizer

“I must create a system or be enslaved by another man’s; I will not reason and compare: my business is to create.” –William Blake

“The moment we are living right now, this generation, represents the largest increase in expressive capability in human history.” –Clay Shirky

While doing outreach for Social Justice Camp DC, the name Augusto Boal has kept coming up in conversations with friends and coworkers. It even appeared on a big piece of butcher paper on the wall the other day.

I had never heard of the chemical engineer turned drama director/theorist before getting involved with Social Justice Camp DC, but his ideas now seem to be following me around.

This post is my attempt to follow them back.

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Born in Rio De Janeiro in 1931, Augusto Boal devoted much of his life to developing theater techniques that empowered individuals to engage in creative resistance in the face of political oppression.

As both a theorist and practitioner, Boal did not just see the potential power of art, he was able to create a methodology that operationalized it.

Influenced by his friend Paulo Freire (author of Pedagogy of the Oppressed), Boal developed the Theater of the Oppressed, a body of techniques that ‘uses theatre as means of knowledge and transformation of the interior reality in the social and relational field.’

Boal’s technique were based on transforming the experience of the audience from that of the spectator into that of the ‘spect-actor’ so they too could play an active role in prefiguring their own reality.

This is why I think Boal would have liked unconferences.

At unconferences, there are no rigidly defined spectators or audiences.

Everyone is a ‘spect-actor.’ Everyone has value to contribute to the conversation and can steer the overall inertia of the event.

At Social Justice Camp DC, participation will be highly encouraged.

We are doing our best to create an event that moves people beyond a passive experience based on spectatorship towards a creative  experience where everyone can add value to the conversation.

I hope you will join us!

~ @ninjaclectic
Social Justice Camp DC Organizer

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Related Media:

Wikipedia: Augusto Boal, Theatre of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire, Unconference

NYTimes: Augusto Boal, Stage Director Who Gave a Voice to Audiences, Is Dead at 78

@pwthornton‘s blog post: Clay Shirky: Every time a consumer joins the new media landscape, a producer does too

Youtube Video: Mark Osborne’s animated short ‘More’

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Over the last few months, I’ve been talking to people about Social Justice Camp, and almost every person I talk to asks me, “How did this get started?”

For me, I can think back to several moments and experiences where I could say Social Justice Camp has its origins.  Usually I tell people that a few of us had a conversation one night in July or August, and that’s how it got started.

Sometimes when I’m talking about what has led me to working on SoJuCa, I tell people a story about commuting an hour to and from work for my old job last year in Texas.  I tell people that I found myself in my car thinking, “If my life doesn’t get more interesting soon, I’m going to die!”  And then people usually laugh louder than I would expect.  I’ve started telling this story more as I’ve discovered how much it makes people laugh.  I think people relate to that feeling of being disinterested in how mundane life can be sometimes.  I felt alone in my discontent, but lately, I’ve been meeting people who seem to want life to be as interesting as I want it to be.  In one sense, I can see Social Justice Camp sprouting its roots in that moment of traffic and discontent.

Another time I was listening to Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song.” He sang, “All I ever had, redemption songs.  All I ever had, these songs of freedom.”  Knowing his life and his history, I thought about what redemption and freedom meant to him.  Then I thought of Saint Paul and his words, “I have one message–Christ crucified.”  I thought about lives with something to say, these messages that come down to one word.  I asked myself what one word would express my intention, my desire.  Relief.  I want to bring relief to people who are suffering.  I want to ease the burden, lift some of the weight.  I can see Social Justice Camp sprouting its roots in that moment of definition.

Before I moved to DC, I was part of a Social Justice Task Force in Fort Worth, Texas.  I can see Social Justice Camp as having some roots in that group too.

Since people were asking me so frequently about the origins of Social Justice Camp, I started asking the other organizers how they answer that question.  For whatever reason, it seems that no one else gets asked that question.  But I asked them anyway how they would answer it.  I wasn’t surprised to hear that everyone has different experiences of how SoJuCa came to be.

In the same way that Social Justice Camp began for different people in different ways, in the same way that it hasn’t had a clear beginning, I hope that it will continue on in different ways for different people.  I hope that it won’t end at 5:00 on Saturday, January 16.

~ @ksshew
Social Justice Camp DC Organizer