ES&P Lunchbag: Finding your way to resist: Gift mapping and threat modeling toward sustained resistance

<span data-sheets-root="1">Folks who deeply care about justice and want to take action often wrestle with complex questions: Can my work make a difference; will it ever be enough? How do I work through my rage, grief, guilt, without burning out? How can I engage in important work while managing risk and safety? This interactive discussion will grapple with these questions through a process of gift-mapping and threat modeling that takes stock of gifts and assets within a community and assesses likely threats and consequences present in resistance work. We are in an increasingly escalated political climate where the systemic protections available to some (having never been available to many) are being eroded. Our safety and progress lies in building our skills of mutual aid and community safety to keep ourselves and each other safe and prevent burning out. This method of gift mapping and threat modeling can help communities build collective strategies and structures of support that can both target oppressive power structures and build resilient collectives that take care of the humans doing the work. Lunch provided.
Nastasia Lawton-Sticklor (she/they) is an educator, researcher and activist. She is a core team member with the Climate Disobedience Center, focusing on research and organizing at the intersection of environmental justice, restorative justice, and youth voice and leadership in education. They approach this work with the belief that climate justice can only be reached through decolonizing and dismantling white supremacist capitalist and patriarchal systems and that our resistance to these systems lies in our solidarity and interconnectedness.
Nastasia spent ten years at the Hiatt Center for Urban Education at Clark University and is currently a part-time professor in the department of Sustainability and Social Justice, where they teach a course connecting local activism with global justice movements. She has co-authored multiple articles with educators and youth, exploring and advocating for learning spaces that prioritize social justice and multigenerational knowledge. Nastasia is co-editor for the forthcoming book Uncovering Possible: Pedagogies for Apocalyptic Times. Nastasia holds a Masters’ in Teaching and a Doctorate in Educational Leadership. She is currently pursuing a degree in Restorative Justice at Vermont Law School.