Community Protection & Resilience

Community protection is a growing concept and reality that’s still fairly difficult to define or operationalize. Communities should be protected from harm -- yes! But what protection entails, who it involves, and the extent to which “protection” should be extended is still not clear. Ultimately, every community must decide for itself who and what within it is worth protecting, and the best protection strategies to use.

That said, this project aims to provide a short-range roadmap that individuals and groups, fueled by their desire for community care, can use to help them begin their journey through the creation of community protector teams.

Community protector teams are small affinity teams of 5 to 20 people who work together autonomously to develop collective skills, resources and plans toward providing a specific function within communities and movement spaces. These community spaces are meant to be the embodiment of the Political Healers core commitment -- to build power that’s tangibly and energetically grounded in relatedness and healing, and to take action in ways that repair and develop our communities. This is the hope and opportunity of our base building work.

Community Protection Training

We provide nuts-and-bolts training — facilitated by protection experts — in a variety of protection areas, including:

Alternatives to Policing: Community Rapid Response

Mental Health Support & Resources
Climate Mitigation & Relief
Accessing Abortion Care Support
Radical Hospitality
Protecting our Political Allies
Direct Action Protection
Protecting Our People from the Criminal Legal System

Find out about and sign up for our upcoming community protection training!

Community Protectors Toolkit

Start your community protection journey by downloading our community protectors toolkit. It’s filled with stories, advice and protocols for creating your own protection team in your community.

Community Protectors Leadership Development Cohort

The Community Protectors Leadership Development Cohort is a year-long leadership development program that aims to train and develop community leaders and movement builders to establish and manage local protection teams around issues where their communities are most vulnerable. Leaders who participate in this cohort will be developed, utilizing the 4 Pillars PIES practice of story sharing, healing practice, political education, and call-to-action, or more specifically through the following regular agenda items:

Peer support & accountability teams (spiritual)
Healing practice & emotional intelligence development (emotional)
Training & political education (intellectual)
Strategy breakouts (physical)

Training & political education will be an intersection between the following development areas:

Power building/base building & managing teams
Issue cutting/campaign development
Healing & trauma-informed practice