Movement Trainings

I have been a grassroots community organizer for my entire adult life. I learned about consensus decision-making in my campus women’s centre when I was 19 years old, and began training others in consensus a couple of years later. I have been a part of so many different kinds of collectives since then, from co-living collectives to organizing collectives, and collaborative decision-making is one of my life’s biggest passions (and nerdy interests).

When I moved to Toronto in 2011, I got connected to the movement against mining injustice, where I learned a lot of what I know today about solidarity with Indigenous communities, street theatre, and other creative, playful, and sometimes humourous activist tactics. Later in my time in the city, I co-founded a neighbourhood abolitionist collective, and organized for disability justice and COVID safety in my own workplace context.

In 2024 I moved to the country, and have been deepening my relationship to rural movements for social and environmental justice ever since. If you are a rural movement organizer in Ontario, I’d love to connect with you. You can reach me at info@remyklein.ca!

I believe that training can be a helpful way for grassroots activist groups to grow their impact and their relationships with each other. If you’re interested in having me come train your groups, please be in touch!

Here are some trainings I would be happy to do with your group:

Building Consensus: Making Group Decisions Together

Attending, facilitating, and participating in meetings are a major part of movement building. When we make decisions together in meetings, developing a transparent, structured process that focuses on building a shared understanding and making sure everyone involved has a say can mean that whatever we come up with is more creative and more supported by the whole group. Join us as we spend time exploring effective group decision-making in social movement organizations. Together we’ll discuss and share strategies for fostering good communication, embracing dissent in our groups, solving disagreements with creative thinking, and addressing informal group hierarchy through intentional, structured group process. This workshop will be especially relevant for groups who are used to using “informal” consensus (aka “basically consensus”) as an approach to decision-making, and who tend to have meetings with 3-20 people.

Get Organized to Make Change Happen!

So you’re interested in getting involved in movements for social change, starting a new grassroots initiative, or making your existing organizing more effective. What do you need to build at the foundation of your group to help you effectively win the changes you want to see in your world? This workshop will explore some of the foundational elements of getting organized as a social movement group (including an explanation of why that matters!): building a group structure, designing a shared decision-making process, setting goals, sharing power, creating institutional memory, and onboarding new members. You will walk away with some new ideas about how the structure of your group can reflect the values of the better world you want to live in.

Playful Rebellion: Humour as Activist Tactic

The injustices that face our world today are enraging, devastating, and quite often immobilizing. In our resistance and our attempts to build new kinds of worlds, we can come to take ourselves very seriously. Many of us break down, burn out, and disconnect from our communities in the process. This workshop will explore how activists can use humour, play, and satire as strategic tools to build bonds with like-minded (and not-so-like-minded) folks, to help people understand the ways that power works in our society, and to lift the spirits of our movements. Specifically, we will explore: how to wield humour respectfully (i.e. the ethics of humour); “punching up” vs. “punching down”; and case studies of satirical actions. I will provide opportunities for participants to brainstorm ways to incorporate more humour and play into their own organizing.