Mutual Aid Disaster Relief Training in Durango, CO

From Saturday September 1st to Sunday, September 2nd, Mutual Aid Disaster Relief will be holding a free training in Durango, Colorado. Don’t miss out if you are in the area!

The Mutual Aid Disaster Relief (MADRelief) Training Team is visiting our community. Currently MADRelief is on a national capacity-building and educational tour. They will explain how natural storms turn into unnatural disasters through dangerous new forms of “disaster capitalism” and “extreme resource extraction,” and train diverse affinity groups on principles of grassroots direct action humanitarian aid and crisis response, covering a wide range of topics such as “Principles of ‘Solidarity, Not Charity,’” “Scouting, Mapping, and Understanding Your Community’s Resources,” “Building Power in Collaboration,” “Overcoming Trauma Together,” and “The Logic of Logistics.”

The reality of the climate chaos which is already redefining our future, coupled with rapidly escalating inequality and the civil political unrest that follows, is only worsened by a failing model of crisis management and aid programs centered around political opportunism and disaster capitalism. The time is right for developing a trained and empowered standing network of organizers and volunteers who can help communities rebuild with a vision centered on local community control, collaboration and innovation, and political, economic and social sustainability. MADRelief is developing a community of grassroots crisis responders, continually growing in size and efficacy, which will be at-the-ready to assist and empower communities to overcome natural and unnatural disasters – from hurricanes to hate rallies, from mudslides to mine waste spills – and to transform these tragedies into opportunities for collective liberation.

MADRelief envisions a new form of humanitarian aid, one that is participatory and empowering. One that exemplifies the principle of “Solidarity, Not Charity.” Founded by an already very active network of radical humanitarian aid workers experienced via Common Ground Relief, Occupy Sandy, the Standing Rock Water Protectors, and the long history of diverse movements seeking to make a better world possible, MADRelief is organizing a new network to facilitate inter-community disaster preparation and grassroots direct action humanitarian aid and crisis response . This tour is the first step in a “training campaign” that will strategically and progressively build necessary skills and shared knowledge in local groups that are a part of the rapidly-growing MADRelief network.

September 1st, 2018 – 1PM-3PM, September 2nd, 2018 – 1PM-5PM, Windom Room, Durango Rec Center, 2700 Main Ave., Durango, CO

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Further reading:

The Need for Mutual Aid Disaster Relief

Mutual Aid Disaster Relief as Antidote to Corporate Colonialism

Resistance is Disaster Relief

Dreaming With Our Hands: On Autonomy, In(ter)dependence, and the Regaining of the Commons

The Disaster is the Colony