Localize This! A Camp for Progressive Changemakers

This Wednesday, about 100 young activists and changemakers from all across the United States will converge outside Seattle, on Vashon Island, to attend Backbone Campaign’s 5th annual Localize This Action Camp. The camp is hosted and organized by the Backbone Campaign, a nonprofit organization which focuses on artful activism and engaging progressive activists in the strategic use of creative tactics such as festival arts, flash mobs, music and other theatrical forms of nonviolent direct action. For a week, Localize This attendees will have access to amazing workshops and panel discussions led by experienced organizers and progressive leaders.

This year, available workshops will train camp attendees in artful activism and creative tactics, nonviolent direct action, strategy campaign design, silk screening, community building, how to use projection as protest and many others. Panels will cover eviction protection, youth incarceration, the fight against coal power and fracking, and building power and leaders through community organizing. Campers will also build connections and train alongside allies working on a variety of progressive issues including: labor rights, eviction protection and foreclosure defense, economic justice and austerity resistance, immigration reform, fracking and fossil fuel extraction resistance, and student debt.

Student debt is one issue that the Backbone Campaign has used creative messaging and artful activism to organize around. Last year, Backbone played an instrumental role in organizing “Occupy Graduation” which attracted media attention from the New York Times, Yahoo News, The Thom Hartmann Show, The Nation, The Blaze, and many others. Graduating seniors at campuses all across the country attended their college graduation wearing their total graduating debt on their caps and gowns and carried a ball and chain to symbolize the weight of their student debt. In another creative direct action, Backbone organized a student debt protest in Washington, DC in which protesters wore chains which were attached to a massive 11 foot-wide ball of student debt. These student debt slaves then delivered the massive $1 trillion ball of student debt to Sallie Mae and to the Department of Education.

For those interested fighting for student loan reform or another progressive issue, join with other changemakers from all over the country at this year’s Localize This Action Camp. To attend or to make a donation to the Localize This Scholarship Fund, visit LocalizeThis.org.