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We’ve updated our Protest Safety Training Guide to address current conditions, including information on physical self-defense!
While many organizations offer valuable protest safety training online, in our experience, physical practice in a group better replicates the actual experience of protest safety work. Our hope is that this guide will allow more people to train and practice in person, with whatever size group they have, on the schedule that works for them.
The material here draws on a violence reduction method known as empowerment self-defense, or ESD. ESD is a research-based, queer-and-POC-developed holistic approach to personal, interpersonal, and community safety. It uses somatic therapies to teach you to control your own fear and anger. It also addresses structural violence as a primary cause of harm to individuals. Thus it provides a clear lens for understanding political violence, and is a powerful tool for mobilizing resistance.
The material also incorporates practice wisdom from movements including Black Lives Matter, Standing Rock, Ruckus Society, Earth First!, and the Religious Society of Friends. We are especially indebted to Bruce Hartford of the Civil Rights Movement Veterans for his expertise, feedback and encouragement.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Download the PDF.
