Highlighting the one-year anniversary since Prop 8 was passed into law, Equality Action NOW, is co-sponsoring along with Courage Campaign and 20 other organizations and individuals, Camp Courage Sacramento, November 7-8, 2009. Camp Courage is an intensive two-day training designed to teach the principles and skills of community organizing and how to become an effective activist.

Drawing on techniques honed for decades by progressive social movements and proven results used by the Obama campaign, Camp Courage teaches empowerment, team building, leadership development, and grassroots organizing skills. It is designed primarily for new activists of all ages or those who have never engaged with the broader community about social issues. While overturning Prop 8 is a current focal point of attention, Camp Courage will educate individuals to plan and implement campaigns that cover a wide array of importance to the community at large.

Camp Courage will cover basic community and political organizing skills, such as finding your voice by telling your “story of self”; leadership development; principles of successful organizing; developing collaboration and building effective teams; techniques of voter persuasion; organizing a phone bank; canvassing; tabling; throwing house parties and online organizing.

In addition to providing participants with essential activist tools, Camp Courage provides a unique opportunity for community members to meet and network with like-minded individuals and organizations which they can connect, join, and put their newly learned skills to immediate use. Trainings have already been held in Los Angeles, Fresno, Oakland, San Diego, East LA and more recent in Washington DC.

Faculty and leaders of the camp include Tori Osborn, Mike Bonin and Lisa Powell. Participants of Camp Courage Sacramento will be enlightened and motivated by speakers such as Lt. Dan Choi, a West Point graduate who was discharged from the National Guard because of “homosexual conduct” and who appealed directly to President Obama to repeal the military’s “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” rule. Also appearing is Rev. Eric P. Lee, President/CEO of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. More speakers will be announces later.

Courage Campaign, creator of Camp Courage is the online organizing hub for progressive Californians. They have a network of over 700,000 grassroots and netroots citizens empowered to leverage online tools for offline activism. Courage Campaign is a multi-issue organization that focuses on several California progressive issues, including marriage equality.

To sign up, go to: http://www.couragecampaign.org/page/s/campsacramento

Equality Action NOW is an award-winning local Sacramento grassroots volunteer organization filled with dedicated activists who fight on several civil rights fronts, one of which is the fight to repeal Prop 8. In co-sponsoring Camp Courage, EAN hopes to help make the first-ever Sacramento gay activist school a success by recruiting participants to become campers in this important event.
 

For more information about Equality Action Now visit: http://www.EqualityActionNOW.org