Fall 2025 Community Trainings

For Community By Community

At REP, we are committed to building and deepening practices rooted in Dakota and Anishinaabe cultural lifeways. The seeds of our work are in Dakota soil—the traditional homelands of the Dakota people, also home to the Anishinaabeg.

REP in 2025

Rep has just hit its fifth year this past June. In the past 5 years, we have learned a lot about building  work that has very minimal blueprint. We have grown, we have transitioned and we have had long and wide conversations about our role in this moment of the world. REP’s work continues to be supporting a network of community members showing up for others in moments of crisis or urgency, with care and respect for the full dignity and autonomy of each other.

Honoring the land and the people for REP means reversing the practice of disposability & isolation. To us, honoring is not passive. It is about actively shifting systems and structures that deny autonomy, repair harm, and show up. The way we do that at REP is by creating a space of generous offering and practicing the things we collectively have been doing within our communities for a long time, even before REP.

The Training

This training was first envisioned in early 2020, in the midst of the Twin Cities uprising after the murder of George Floyd. It began as a way to prepare community members to run a community hotline, and in the last five years it has grown and deepened. Yet the central practice remains the same: when we are supported to turn toward each other in moments of crisis, the likelihood of state violence is minimized.

At REP, this means:

  • Rooting in the land we are doing this work on, and how that affects each of our positions as neighbors.
  • Building awareness of how we personally respond to crisis and stress.
  • Practicing skills for de-escalation and responding to mental health crises.
  • Gaining clarity on basic legal rights and copwatch.
  • Recognizing where these skills are most needed, including in moments of intimate partner violence, work place conflict & intervening on behalf of our  immigrant neighbors.
  • This training is not meant to be life-changing or revolutionary— none of this is new. Instead our trainers are community members just like you who are committed to showing up and doing the work together. 

This training is for you if: 

  • You are already showing up for your family, friends – whoever you consider to be your community to support in moments of mini or big crises.
  • You are someone who would like to show up more, but would like more actionable and concrete tools that make that possible. 
  • You are looking  for a  space to practice and to build relationships with others who are also practicing showing up for others

We also invite you to reflect on your role as a community member: What and who are you accountable to when you show up in a moment of crisis? How do you distinguish between what supports those in crisis versus what aligns with your own sense of “rightness”? This training is meant give us the time to pay attention to our own capacity for saviorism, “fix it all”  and resist the belief that we know what someone else needs at all times

Finally, our commitment is to practice these skills with everyone—not only with those we agree with or who share our politics. Liberatory community means ensuring that all of us have access to safety and respect, no matter who we are.

TRAINING OVERVIEW

ALL sessions are planned to be IN PERSON.

Session #1 – Orientation, accountability, time travel, risk assessment & positionality 
Date: Sunday October 19th, 9am – 4 pm 
Session #2 Pod 101, building pods, pod scenarios, troubleshoot clinic, and sex work literacy campaign
Date: Sunday October 26th, 9am – 4 pm 
Session #3– Cop Watch/Know Your Rights/Legal
Date: Saturday November 8th, 9am – 4 pm
Session #4 – MHFA ( Mental Health First Aid)
Date: Sunday November 9th, 9am – 4 pm 
Session #5 – New IPV content & scenarios practice
Date: Saturday November 15 , 9am – 4pm 
Session #6– Scene safety, risk & desescalation 
Date: Saturday November 16th, 9am – 4pm 
Session #7- ICE history ,how to show up & be in solidarity,  contemporary raids, criminalization today & Closing
Lead Facilitator: MIRAC 
Date: Saturday November 22nd, 9am – 4pm  
Session #8 – Graduation & Celebration
Date: Saturday November 23rd or 29th, 11am – 3pm 

TAKEAWAYS 

  • Be introduced to REP and the people who built it.
  • Root into the purpose of this training and set intentions for relationship-building throughout the sessions.
  • Practice pod-making through real-time mock scenarios—including space for you to bring your own scenarios to work through together.
  • Learn the history of Cop Watch and its role in community safety.
  • Build practical, adaptable skills for observing and documenting police encounters.
  • Learn practical strategies and tools for offering mental health first aid.
  • Introduce protocols and scenarios for identifying a crisis, assessing situations, and de-escalating conflict.
  • Practice live scenarios focused on situational awareness and de-escalation, ensuring participants leave with concrete tools and strategies to use in their own communities.
  • Learn key context and statistics about people who experience and survive intimate partner violence (IPV)
  • Learn the basics of safety planning and practice putting it into action.
  • Share real life resources and best practices for intervention & solidarity by folks that are working on the ground 

INFO SESSIONS:

Info sessions are a chance to cover the culture of this training, the people that are convening this space & answer logistical questions you may have before applying for this series. You must attend one info session to receive an application for the training. We are not offering 1 one 1 sessions this year.

*We will add even more info session time slots next week depending on demand!

REP Trainings: Cost & Labor:

At REP, our commitment to economic justice is inseparable from our abolitionist practice. We know access to money is shaped by histories of dispossession and oppression, and we want to shift the focus from dollars to labor, energy, and collective care.

In our first four years, we were able to provide stipends for participants. As we enter our fifth year, funding for Black-led collective safety projects has decreased drastically. This means fewer people carrying more labor—and fewer resources to support community participation.

To sustain these trainings, we’re asking participants who are resourced to contribute on a sliding scale ensuring accessibility while allowing those with more access to help cover the costs for others.