Reimagine Sessions Agenda
The Reimagine Sessions: an Immersive Cultural Organizing Experience centered in Climate Justice
Our Mission
The NC Climate Justice Collective cultivates a multi-racial, intergenerational grassroots movement ecosystem to address the root causes of climate change. Using popular education and cultural organizing, we ignite social transformation. We center all our work in the leadership of youth, Black, Indigenous and people of color, women, low wealth people, and LGBTQI+ people to create strategic alignment. We are bringing an end to fracked gas infrastructure, coal ash pollution, industrial agriculture and forest destruction while planting the seeds of a life-sustaining, regenerative society.
Agenda
1:00 - 1:30 Welcome
1:30 - 1:40 Introduction to CJC
1:40 - 1:55 Introduction to Cultural Organizing and TapRoot
2:00 - 3:15 Breakouts I
Breakout 1 - Wisdom of Sacred
Breakout 2 - Narrative Storytelling
3:15 - 3:25 Break
3:30 - 4:30 Breakouts II
Breakout 3 - We Are Hear
Breakout 4 - Living in the Spiral
4:30 - 4:45 Debrief
4:45 - 5:00 Closing
Breakout Sessions
Wisdom of Sacred Silence
As a social and climate justice activist, you bring wisdom from your ability to listen deeply, but in an extractive society, speed and urgency are prioritized. We believe the space to deepen our capacity to listen is an act of social justice and a necessary practice in the ongoing struggle towards liberation for all beings and the planet. Experience active listening through sound, breathwork, and mindfulness with Animals Remember cards to connect more deeply to self and others in community.
The Power of Narrative
Stories shape how we understand the world, connect with one another, and inspire us to act. Narrative storytelling is a powerful tool for advancing climate justice and amplifying the experiences of frontline communities. This session examines how personal stories, community narratives, and cultural memory can challenge dominant messaging, elevate local voices, and inspire organized response. What does it mean to craft compelling stories that build awareness, strengthen community engagement, and support organizing efforts around environmental and climate justice issues? How can storytelling efforts equip communities to own their experiences, insights, and understandings? What better perspective can we gain than from those most and worst impacted by these issues?
Living in the Spiral
Living in the Spiral is a printed digital collage in two parts. The first poster uses photos from the aftermath of Hurricane Helene alongside images of environmental injustices in North Carolina to confront the ways systems of extraction, exploitation, and violence have shaped our world, resulting in extreme weather, disappearing flora and fauna, and human catastrophes. Our second poster, in the shape of a spiral, invites you to pause and meditate on images, words, and possibilities of an ecological future beyond the ones defined by colonialism, capitalist exploitation, and histories of war, slavery, and dispossession.
Living in the Spiral also includes a meditation and spiral trinket to take with you as so that you may continue to imagine a different world
Detail:
Living in the Spiral is a philosophy that encourages us to imagine and learn to (re)inhabit otherwise ways of being.
We chose the spiral because of its continuity. It is a shape with definition but no borders. Importantly, it is found throughout nature, providing structure to the living and nonliving, the human and nonhuman alike. As a teacher, the spiral encourages us to live alongside the Earth, and all that makes it their home.
Living in the Spiral aims to inspire different modes of living than the ones offered to us through extraction and disconnection. The Spiral guides us through moving fluidly with the Earth and everything that inhabits it. It reminds us that as humans, we are not dominators of the Earth; we are part of the ecosystem. We can live and build whole societies from a place of reciprocity, kinship, and balance. Our survival is dependent on each other. The Spiral represents moving beyond a transactional relationship with the Earth. It’s in our DNA.
We are Hear
An immersive multimedia experience where individuals exchange skills for resources to create a cultural sustainability that’s inclusive and just. This is a year-round process centered on work and play.
Participants explore how to sustain a community without money. The project teaches that rest positively impacts individual and family structures. It increases people’s willingness to learn skills because your skills become your value instead of your net worth.
The aim is removing defensiveness and individualism as a mentality. It moves the community towards interdependence and reinforces how it makes us stronger.
It shows the value of listening to the world around us.
This approach looks to focus on marginalized communities such as but not limited to blue-collar workers, faith leaders, healthcare, workers, trades, people, veterans, young scholars, artists, agriculture, and industrial workers, etc., in impacted areas.
