Re-Centering Community Power

(Times noted at the top of this page are in Central time.)

From our friends at the Center for Constitutional Rights:

I am delighted to introduce, alongside our collaborators at Into the Treehouse, an upcoming educational offering for the political landscape of our time: Rooted: A Living Toolkit in the Face of State Repression.

Right now, the act of learning itself is under attack. Political education, organizing, and truth-telling are all being criminalized and censored. Universities, media outlets, and community organizations are being sanctioned, surveilled, and suppressed. Movements for Palestinian solidarity, trans liberation, and anti-fascist resistance are being labeled as threats—an intentional effort to silence dissent.

The ability to think critically, feel deeply, and act collectively is fundamental to a living toolkit for surviving and connecting in this time of suppression. In times of censorship, disinformation, and fear, learning must be rooted in curiosity, care, and connection: cultivating spaces where people can question and reimagine power together.

Rooted: A Living Toolkit in the Face of State Repression is a three-part virtual course that will ground participants in an understanding of the systemic tactics of dehumanization and criminalization that the U.S. empire continues to deploy against oppressed communities. Together, we will examine how to stay informed, centered, and embodied through this current escalation. Attendees will leave this course with the tools for rethinking personal and collective safety in their everyday lives.

This isn’t a moment for emotional bypassing and numbness: we must be active participants in our collective future and be rooted in the knowledge that we’ve been here before. The seeds planted by those who came before us remind us how to survive. We encourage you to commit to the long arc of transformative struggle, building right where you are and right now.

Wednesday, February 25 | 8pm ET
Class 1: Re-Centering Community Power with J.P. Hill
Anti-capitalist abolitionist, lecturer, researcher, and mutual aid organizer J.P. Hill leads a course on resisting fascist greed. In the era of ICE, expanded attacks on dissent, and escalated use of state power in multiple forms, resistance must grow locally and interpersonally.

Wednesday, March 25 | 8pm ET
Class 2: We Take Care of Each Other with Afeni Evans and Phoenix
Co-led by Afeni Evans of Facts and Fire and Phoenix of America Hates Us, this interactive course will focus on mutual aid, community care, building power, and staying safe, both online and offline.

Wednesday, April 29 | 8pm ET
Class 3: New Media Studies with Afeef Nessouli
Taught by Pulitzer grant recipient and journalist Afeef Nessouli, this course will provide the foundations of media literacy as information becomes increasingly polluted and propagandized. We will also explore how dehumanization is employed in media to allow governments to erase people and extract their resources.

The Center for Constitutional Rights is as much a political organization as it is a legal-advocacy one, and engaging in educational interventions like Rooted is a mandate. In the words of Zora Neale Hurston, “there are years that ask questions and years that answer.” 2026 is forcing a reckoning, and this living toolkit is an invitation to ask questions and demand answers. Together.

See you in class!

PLEASE NOTE: Participants need only register once to attend any of the following course dates. We highly encourage folks to attend all three sessions.

Accessibility: Closed captions on Zoom will be available, as well as recordings of the courses. If you have any questions about access needs, please email events@ccrjustice.org.

After we received several messages from our community regarding the original title of our workshops, we’ve changed the name to “Rooted” in order to still reflect the ethos of the name inspired by Angela Davis’ quote, “Radical simply means grasping things at the root,” while further distinguishing that the series is not affiliated with sacred/closed African diasporic traditional religions.