Join us in Building
Liberation Movement Lab
The Inaugural Rise Up Cohort this fall is coming...
Liberation Movement Lab is more than a school; it is a Community. Join us in shaping and crafting this critical educational alternative.
Take our Community Needs Survey to help us shape Liberation Movement Lab and the Inaugural Rise Up Cohort Community School this Fall. We aren't just building a school, we're building a community of learners. Join us.
This summer, Liberation Movement Lab is piloting a Summer School to offer accessible, abolitionist, and decolonial Popular Education in community organizing, media relations, and political strategy. This risk mitigation fund helps ensure pilot program educators are paid adequately for their work.
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Lab Reports
Liberation Movement Lab's Newsletter
Building the School We Need, Not the One We Were Given
Lab Report I: Building the School We Need | Liberation Movement Lab (LML), a developing worker-owned co-op digital Movement and Popular Education school building the school we need, not the one given. | Lab Reports
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Lab Reports is the newsletter of Liberation Movement Lab (LML), a developing worker-owned co-op digital Popular Education and Movement School. Subscribe to Lab Reports for updates about our work.
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Who We Are
Liberation Movement Lab (LML) is a virtual Popular Education and Movement School and community.
We are co-creating an alternative space for learning. One that emphasizes the importance of reflecting on language and deprogramming from institutionalized practices, and of an organic process for course development that involves participants in deciding the content and format of the classes, without grades, and to build a robust community of learners.
LML's work is rooted in abolitionist and decolonial thought, Popular Education, disability justice, queer/trans movements, Black and Indigenous radical traditions, and solidarity economics.
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Who We're For
- People seeking to be a part of a strong community of learners for collective liberation.
- People who are seeking to develop new knowledge and skills outside of traditional academic paradigms, with a community of learners.
- New and seasoned movement workers who want greater skills in strategy, structure, and care.
- New and seasoned movement communications, narrative, and media workers in movement spaces.
- Unions, Co‑ops, campus and faculty groups, and grassroots organizations that are looking to skill up their people.
Why
a “Lab”?
We call ourselves a Lab because education and liberation are not static destinations; they are collaborative, dynamic, iterative processes. While we are a School committed to sharing the rich traditions of Movement and Popular Education, we recognize that the conditions of our oppression are shifting faster than any fixed curriculum can keep pace.
As a Laboratory for education, we abandon and reject the belief that there is a pre-packaged “correct” way to learn and organize in the digital era. Instead, we treat every facet of our learning community and community building, from each class, workshop, community gathering, and digital interaction, as a site of collective inquiry.
Here, we are experimenting with the community to:
- Stress-test frameworks: Taking theories of Movement and Popular Education, applying them to the messy, unpredictable reality of the modern digital era to see what holds up and what breaks.
- Prototype new structures: We are moving beyond traditional academic paradigms and non-profit hierarchies to test what a truly anti-extractive worker-owned cooperative actually looks like in practice.
- Iterate in real time: We do not treat failure as a defeat, but as vital data. We analyze what didn’t work, adjust our variables, and rebuild with intention.
In the Lab, we don’t just teach the history of capitalism or organizing; we are actively co-authoring the next chapter of Movement and People’s Education Schools through rigorous, community-led experimentation. We are building the tools we need by testing them in our collaborative learning spaces, struggling together through study, and by deploying them directly into the fire of the struggle.
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Why We're Here
Mission
Liberation Movement Lab is a developing worker-owned cooperative digital Popular Education and Movement school.
As co-learners, we support the education and training of leaderful movement building, community organizing, communications, media relations, popular education, and more. Committed to accessibility and expanding access to Popular Education and Movement outside of traditional academic paradigms, which is a community of learners. We provide the strategic tools that learners and movement workers need to transform society and the world we live in.
Vision
Liberation Movement Lab envisions a world where everyone has access to the care, support, information, knowledge, resources, and tools to live lives aligned with their values and collectively transform the world into one we all want to live in.
Values
At Liberation Movement Lab, our work is grounded in a commitment to education, abolition, justice, and collective liberation. These principles guide how we engage, how we organize, and how we show up for one another.
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How We're Getting from Here to There
From Fiscal Sponsorship to Cooperative Ownership
Currently, Liberation Movement Lab operates under the fiscal sponsorship of the Liberation Education Collective (LEC), a 501(c)(3). This is a temporary, strategic bridge. It allows us to accept tax-deductible donations and launch our pilot program quickly while we navigate the legal and financial complexities of developing a worker-owned cooperative.
Why wait? Building a worker-owned cooperative takes time, trust, and capital. So, we are using this interim period to ensure a few critical pieces are in place:
- Prove the Model: We must demonstrate that a movement school can be accessible, high-quality, and sustainable, without major foundation or corporate funding.
- Build the Community: We must gather a cohort of learners, educators, and supporters who are ready to own this community and future together.
- Accumulate Capital: We must generate the startup funds needed to buy out the cooperative shares and transition fully to worker ownership.
Why Solidarity Economies?
Building a World Within the Shell of the Old
At Liberation Movement Lab, we believe that the tools we use to fight for liberation must reflect the world we are trying to build. We cannot dismantle oppressive systems using the same hierarchical, extractive, and profit-driven models that created them. This is why we are committed to building a Solidarity Economy.
A solidarity economy is not just a business model; it is a practice of mutual aid, democratic ownership, and collective care. It is an economy where:
- Value is defined by human need, not profit margins.
- Work is dignified, and those who do the work (our educators and staff) are compensated fairly and have a say in how the organization runs.
- Resources circulate within the community, supporting those who are marginalized by society rather than extracting wealth from them.
The Necessity of This Work
We live in a world where community and movement work are often underfunded, exploited, or co-opted; a solidarity economy is a lifeline.
It ensures that:
- Learners are not customers: We share community with learners, and they are community members investing in their own liberation and our collective liberation.
- Educators are not volunteers: We pay living wages because our labor is valuable and our time is precious.
- The movement school is not a product: It is a living ecosystem of accountability, care, and shared power.
By supporting Liberation Movement Lab, you are not just buying a course. You are buying into a new way of organizing. You are helping us build the infrastructure that will allow future generations of organizers to learn, grow, and lead without the burden of debt or exploitation.
This September, We're Launching our Inaugural Rise Up Cohort Pilot Program. Join us.
We are intentionally launching this pilot with zero overhead (only utilizing free tools or those we already own) and no external grants. However, to ensure access to all learners and that our educators are paid fairly before tuition comes in, we are building a Risk Mitigation Fund. Support this critical community work today.
Countdown to Summer School
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