CARE in Community

Spring Break

The Practice Lab will be back and transformed in April 2023!

CARE in Community

Lab Lessons

Schedule of Events:

Note: All Lab Lessons will be released on-demand at the times listed below. The Synthesizing Workshop will still be live, online.

Strategies for Liberating Care from Ableism
Date: Tuesday, February 7, 2023
Time: 11:00am MT - 12:30pm MT (10am PT, 12pm CT, 1pm ET)
Location: On-demand webinar

Strategies for Liberating Care from Carcerality
Date: Wednesday, February 8, 2023
Time: 11:00am MT - 12:30pm MT (10am PT, 12pm CT, 1pm ET)
Location: On-demand webinar

Strategies for Liberating Care from Capitalism
Date: Thursday, February 9, 2023
Time: 11:00am MT - 12:30pm MT (10am PT, 12pm CT, 1pm ET)
Location: On-demand webinar

Synthesizing Workshop
Date: Friday, February 10, 2023
Time: 11:00am MT - 1:00pm MT (10am PT, 12pm CT, 1pm ET)
Location: Live, online interactive workshop

Lab Lesson Descriptions:

Strategies for Liberating Care from Ableism

Going beyond accommodations and accessibility, this Lab Lesson explores the white supremacist and colonial roots of ableism, how it manifests in the mental health industrial complex (MHIC) and paths toward abolishing its presence in your life and work. We’ll explore how ableism intersects with other systems of oppression. Participants will be invited to learn, adopt and elevate the mad, mentally ill and disability justice and liberation movement principles.

This Lab Lesson is designed to disrupt conditioned power dynamics, cure paradigms and “professionalism” inherent in the MHIC as we re-center client sovereignty, body autonomy, consent and wisdom.

We'll explore how ableism is the crux of how mental, emotional and relational "illness" and "wellness" are defined, acquired, treated and weaponized. We'll explore the notion that without ableism, the DSM would not exist, and how we can construct liberatory alternatives.

Strategies for Liberating Care from Carcerality

Prison Abolition, healing justice and liberation movement members have been mapping stories and incidences of the presence and impact of carcerality in our medical and mental health systems for generations. The prison industrial complex (PIC) and the web of carcerality is so tightly wrapped around the systems that authorize care providers it can feel overwhelming to determine our individual roles in liberating care systems from this web. Since carcerality is not just an external system we can address the carceral constructs we have in our personal and relational ideologies and dynamics as we partner with one another to identify how we can begin to detach our businesses, ethics and care practices from the carceral norm. We have a long lineage of past and present abolitionist practitioners to learn from and engage with. This Lab Lesson is intended to reveal the hard truths about carceral care tactics that have been normalized within the MHIC so that we can shine the light on the pathways leading us out. We will not engage in a historical accounting of carceral care, though participants will be given resources for learning more. We encourage folks to do a bit of research ahead of time if they are unfamiliar with carcerality and the role it plays in mental health care, healing and health.

Strategies for Liberating Care from Capitalism

Capitalism is more than an economic structure. Capitalism is a psychology with a specific set of relational norms that dictate how we situate ourselves and others in the larger context of a “functioning civilized society.” The goal of this Lab Lesson is to contextualize capitalized care with other systems of oppression such as colonization, white supremacy, classism and ableism. Participants will learn more about the psychology of capitalism, how it functions in the MHIC and liberatory alternatives. Since we live in a colonial capitalist society, it is important for participants that liberating care from capitalism is highly nuanced and will not be perfect. Radical imagination, flexibility and intentional adaptation are essential companions for the journey!

Important Details:

Registration fee: We offer a pay what you can pricing model for LAB WEEK of $75, $95 or $105. Our goal is to offer a high value and transformative service at a low barrier price. Those with greater access to wealth that wish to contribute toward the cost of someone else to join is welcome to pay the Redistribution Rate of $155. This would allow us to offer a $50 scholarship via mutual aid to those with lower access to wealth.

Each LAB WEEK! is capped at 60 participants

Cancellation policy: Full refund up to 7-days before the Open Lab Session begins. No refund is given if cancellation is made within 7 days of the session. However, we do know that emergencies and unexpected events do happen, so we are willing to allow people to transfer their payment (one time) to another LAB WEEK! for emergency situations if the refund deadline is missed. The cancellation policy supports the technology and labor of the LAB WEEK! facilitator, trainer, support team member(s) and other contributors leading up to the program, which is largely based on number, knowledge base and skill level of registrants.

Language access: Lab Lessons and Synthesizing Workshops are held on Zoom in spoken English with English automated captions. Any pre-recorded video content created by Ominira Labs or our contributors will have closed captions. Specific access requests can be made on the registration form.

Recording & replay: Each live Lab Lesson is recorded. Participants are not required to leave their videos on. Lab Lesson replays will be made available to registered participants for 90-days.

CARE in Community

Lab Lessons

Schedule of Events:

Allegiances & Liberated Care
Date: Tuesday, January 10, 2023
Time: 11:00am MT - 12:30pm MT (10am PT, 12pm CT, 1pm ET)
Location: Live, online webinar

Harm Reduction for Liberated Care
Date: Wednesday, January 11, 2023
Time: 11:00am MT - 12:30pm MT (10am PT, 12pm CT, 1pm ET)
Location: Live, online webinar

Transformative Justice in Liberated Care Environments & Practices
Date: Thursday, January 12, 2023
Time: 11:00am MT - 12:30pm MT (10am PT, 12pm CT, 1pm ET)
Location: Live, online webinar

Synthesizing Workshop
Date: Friday, January 13, 2023
Time: 11:00am MT - 1:00pm MT (10am PT, 12pm CT, 1pm ET)
Location: Live, online interactive workshop

Lab Lesson Descriptions:

Allegiances & Liberated Care

Identifying what our values, principles and intentions are when it comes to developing our personal and professional approach to liberatory care needs to inform how we show up to ourselves, our healership, our community and the movement. Part of this involves becoming firmly rooted in who and what we are committed to. What we are willing to risk for liberation. What we need in place to have enough safety and connection to release ourselves from white supremacist colonial constructs of care.

This Lab Lesson in Allegiances & Liberatory Care is designed to be a bit jolting to the scaffolds you have constructed. We are addressing this right from jump because our commitments and allegiances absolutely inform the decisions we make about who and what we protect, how we re-imagine CARE in Community, what we leave behind and what we carry forward into the next (r)evolution of care, support and healing.

Harm Reduction for Liberated Care

Liberatory Harm Reduction (created and utilized by generations of multiply marginalized BIPOC communities) described by Shira Hassan is “a philosophy and set of empowerment-based practices that teach us how to accompany each other as we transform the root causes of harm in our lives…Liberatory Harm Reduction is true self-determination and total body autonomy.” This Lab Lesson tells the story of the true origins and purpose(s) of harm reduction, why it’s an essential aspect of liberatory care in community and how to begin developing liberatory harm reduction ethics and strategies in your care/healing work.

Transformative Justice in Liberated Care Environments & Practices

Defensiveness, the tension of the innocence - guilty binary and fragility can impede true accountability, responsibility and agency measures. Our approach to implementing Transformative Justice (TJ) principles and strategies into our personal and healership endeavors provides a framework for remaining grounded in humanization, connected to process and oriented toward just and liberatory solutions. The truth is that we all play a role in the maintenance and abolition of oppressive ideologies, systems, structures and relational dynamics. We are all responsible. TJ helps us learn how to change the conditions that led to harms, violence and injustice in our communities, relationships and care/healing professions. This Lab Lesson illuminates a path forward for accountable, community-centered, decolonial care praxis. You will learn some TJ fundamentals and essentials to begin using immediately.

Bonus Healing Justice Content!

More details to come.

Important Details:

Registration fee: We offer a pay what you can pricing model for LAB WEEK of $75, $95 or $105. Our goal is to offer a high value and transformative service at a low barrier price. Those with greater access to wealth that wish to contribute toward the cost of someone else to join is welcome to pay the Redistribution Rate of $155. This would allow us to offer a $50 scholarship via mutual aid to those with lower access to wealth.

Each LAB WEEK! is capped at 60 participants

Cancellation policy: Full refund up to 7-days before the Open Lab Session begins. No refund is given if cancellation is made within 7 days of the session. However, we do know that emergencies and unexpected events do happen, so we are willing to allow people to transfer their payment (one time) to another LAB WEEK! for emergency situations if the refund deadline is missed. The cancellation policy supports the technology and labor of the LAB WEEK! facilitator, trainer, support team member(s) and other contributors leading up to the program, which is largely based on number, knowledge base and skill level of registrants.

Language access: Lab Lessons and Synthesizing Workshops are held on Zoom in spoken English with English automated captions and live ASL. Any pre-recorded video content created by Ominira Labs or our contributors will have closed captions. Specific access requests can be made on the registration form.

Recording & replay: Each live Lab Lesson is recorded. Participants are not required to leave their videos on. Lab Lesson replays will be made available to registered participants for 90-days.