Many students and drug policy advocates have
expressed their desire to learn the skills needed to plan and
participate in successful political actions. Together,
Students for Sensible Drug Policy and Americans for Safe Access
will help activists acquire these skills through a series of trainings
that will cover topics including civil disobedience, art production,
handling police and media encounters, and political strategizing.
Participants will have the opportunity to practice the skills
they learned during the Medical Marijuana Week of Action when
activists across the nation will serve eviction notices to the
DEA, and coming out of these trainings, students & participants
will be poised to take leadership roles in these actions.
The SSDP/ASA Training Tour will hold four regional
weekend training sessions, in Ohio, Rhode Island, Las Vegas, and
Berkeley beginning January 11th. These trainings
will be held on university campuses, but non-student activists,
members of faith communities, and students from other schools
will be encouraged to attend. ASA will work with all of our member
groups to recruit as many advocates in the region to attend. SSDP
chapters on these selected campuses will secure training space
and help with regional outreach. Our goals for the training tour
include:
- Organizing & training for the February
Week of Action and Emergency Response Plan: Prepare students and
activists to organize successful local actions, which will make
activists feel empowered and whose message will be transmitted
to the public through media coverage.
- Develop skills for SSDP chapters: Skills learned
at the trainings can be carried over to further campaigns and
actions for drug policy reform.
- Coalition building: The co-sponsoring SSDP
chapters will do outreach to other campus & off-campus activists
to encourage them to attend the trainings. This will help
SSDP to form alliances with groups working on similar issues.
SSDP/ASA Training Schedule: (These trainings
will be free and open to the public.)
Ohio (OSU)- Jan. 11-12
Rhode Island (URI)- Jan. 25-26
Nevada (UNLV)- Feb. 3-4
California (UC Berkeley)- Feb. 10-11
Detailed descriptions for workshops are below
the schedule. For information, reservations, or questions, please
contact
stopDrugWarNow@cs.com
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Saturday
10 am-12 pm - Art
12 pm-1:30pm - Strategy over Lunch
1:45pm-3:45pm - Media
4 pm-6 pm - Know Your Rights
8pm - Some sort of entertainment? (this could also be
done Friday night)
Sunday
12 pm-4:30pm - Civil Disobedience
4:30pm-6:30pm - Action Planning
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Art - This workshop will teach students
how to create effective art for political actions. During
this session, students will work on art projects including banners,
puppets, and signs.
Strategy - This session will be a structured
discussion about developing political strategies. We will
focus the discussion around medical marijuana, but the process
will be useful for other political issues.
Media - In this workshop, trainers will
offer participants an overview of how the news media operates.
Discussion and strategic thinking about the newsworthiness of
direct actions, a checklist of nuts-and-bolts tasks necessary
for a successful action, and practical experience in crafting
leads and soundbites, writing press releases, pitching the story,
"spin control" and message delivery.
Know Your Rights - This workshop will
teach students how to handle police encounters, highlighting civil
rights, such as not consenting to a search and choosing to remain
silent. There will also be a focus on racial profiling.
Civil Disobedience - This lengthy session
will teach students all the information they need to know to take
part in a successful, non-violent civil disobedience action.
It will include an explanation of civil disobedience and how to
use civil disobedience tactics safely and effectively. Trainers
will also explain the importance of legal support, facilitation,
and consensus.
Action
Planning - This final session will synthesize skills
already covered and will teach students about important action
details, such as making an action accessible to the media and
how to determine when to end an action. Then, students will
spread out on the campus to scout a location for a possible action.
While students will likely plan off campus actions, this exercise
will give them practice in finding suitable locations.
