We are back on the newsletter after a bit of a break (check out our instagram for regular updates!) We wanted to share some of the things we have been up to in Spring and early Summer. We are also setting out a number of ways of engaging more deeply in the RYSE for those who want to get more involved.
What we have been up to
The biggest new development for us has been we finally can live up to our name as the Radical Youth SPACE for Educations! It has been so good to be able to invite people locally and from our Global Family - to eat together and share movement updates, ideas and strategies.
Our Robin giving a quick space tour - shout out to Lavanda Films for helping!
School is a Crime Scene campaign launch
All the way back in March, School is a Crime Scene - the youth led community campaign challenging the harms of the school system - was launched in the RYSE with a weekend of sessions aimed at youth in Stroud. They focused on defining and questioning the role of school, an introduction to disobedience, investigations into the crimes of the school system, and films about other youth-led resistance movements. Since then, our meetings have been twice weekly, and began to grow form there. On Mondays we meet to move the campaign forwards, doing practical jobs and focussing on the coordination of the campaign.
On Fridays, we host consciousness raising circles, inspired by the early second wave feminist movement. At these meetings, we have covered schooling and consent, the treatment of neutrodivergence by school staff, queerness, resistictions on using the toilets, "musterings" of students and uniform rules, racism and how its perpetuated by teachers and other students.
The RYSE is providing the space for this campaign to flourish, the snacks, and the experience to hold the young people as we seek to understand our disempowerment so we can discover our power.
Anyone is welcome Fridays, 5-7PM at the RYSE Space, so come through, we'll feed you and you can find out more about this inspiring campaign!
^Not got the Zine?? You can get it on the Bustcard Etsy!^
Peace Lotus Day
On the 29th of April we gathered in the RYSE space to commemorate Peace Lotus Day. A day to reflect on the incredible internationalist anti-war resistance that supported the Vietnamese right to self-determination and triumphed in kicking the US out in 1975. We discussed Peace organising in Stroud now and in the past, shared together in a People's Assembly and announced our intention to 'Demilitarise Stroud for Planet Repairs!' check out our blog post for pictures and reflections from the day.
^our photo to show Stroud joining this Glocal Day of Action - see more on PRALER News^
Podcast launched!
We've finally got our act together and launched the The RYSE Podcast - available on Youtube, Spotify and more - it's our effort to make our internal conversations public, invite dialogue and invite you all into the deeper stories we're weaving into our work. We're looking to get an episode out at least once a month. So far we opened up with a dive in our School is a Crime Scene zine before our most recent Trust the Youth episode which launches out first series - Educational Pillars - talking through the core tenants of our educational approach. We've also uploaded a couple old episodes - Why did you go to Uni? and Why the RYSE? - so check them out as well and please give us lots of feedback!
^Podcast left - Friends of the RYSE right!^
Friends of the RYSE sessions
Engaging across generations to gather, eat together we've been continuing the process of action learning about how we weave our communities together. The last session was on the idea of People's Justice based on our current work within the PRALER network. For us it was a first chance to fully name this strategy of bringing the community back together through posing collective questions of Justice. Questions such as: what do we as a community consider moral? what activities in our town are un-just? who is on the receiving end of this? how is it affecting us all? (see the blog post for more reflections on this)
Next FotR sessions - come and get invovled!
Linking through the PRALER Network we'll be exploring Reparatory Justice and powerful answers it offers in these times of multiple crises. We'll be bringing input from our Elders at the Stop the Maangamizi We Charge Genocide and Ecocide campaign and the wider International Social Movement for Afrikan Reparations (ISMAR), to help us understand reparations before beginning to explore it within our context here in Stroud. Plus come along and get the low down on how you can come with us and visit Brixton for the Reparations Groundings on 1st August! Just next week - RSVP now!
21st August - Lauching SISTER (Stroud in Internationalist Solidarity, Together for Earth Repairs)
You might have either heard us talk a lot about or whisper about around the edges of this project. Either way, we want to use the PRALER process to bring Stroud back together as a Community of Resistance in these dire times. Come along to help create the infrastructure for doing this process, from learning together how to do Public Assemblies to coordination meetings and Public Tribunals. RSVP here.
Our Banner up in the RYSE space for Peace Lotus Day!!
Get Involved - Join the Team!
We’re looking for people (under 30 and Stroud-ish based) to join our team 😎 There are loads of potential roles from videography through to facilitating meetings, events organising, funding applications and tbh everything and more that you can imagine goes into building a radical project on a shoestring budget!
The more skills you’ve got the better but loads of room to learn on the job - check out our (admittedly a bit out of date) Work With Us page for more of an idea and email (theryse@riseup.net) us any questions - even if you're just back in Stroud for the Summer, there is laods to do some come through!
^Our Open Collective - check it out!^
Donations call out/in!
Bored of funding massive, faceless NGOs instead of your local community projects? Not given to folks before but excited/inspired by what we're trying to do? Well then have you heard that we use the Open Collective platform to take regular (and one-off) donations and that we would really love anyone who can to support us this way.
For the past 18 months we've mainly survived off the amazing donations to our Winter Crowdfunder's - huge love to all the folks who helped us raise nearly 18k this way!! - but we've also got a small group of legends who are going the consistent route and giving £5/10/25 a month through the Open Collective. This is super helpful for us to know the baseline funding we've got coming in each month + ofc making us feel super supported :))
So, if you've got those quids to give, or redirect from those bigggg NGO's who won't feed you down the Trinity Rooms once a month, then please do head over to the Open Collective and sign-up + let other folks know - Big Love from Robin (Finance Coord)!! ❤
Thanks for reading!
The RYSE team
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