2020 Seabeck Conference

East Point Peace Academy & Western Washington Fellowship of Reconciliation

are sad to announce that we have canceled current plans for the 62nd Annual NW FOR Conference at Seabeck due to the COVID-19 pandemic.  We intend to develop an alternative program that will be feasible under the health recommendations of public health officials.  Stay tuned!

Friday, July 3rd – Monday, July 6th, 2020

WWFOR’s 62nd Annual Northwest Regional Conference

Nonviolent Action for the Climate Crisis

Fierce Love — and Now We Rise

Seabeck, Washington

Keynote speaker: Kazu Haga

 

Tick tock! Young climate activists hear it loudest. Worldwide, people are rising up in support of life on earth, rising up in the hundreds of thousands. We are clear that what is needed is massive nonviolent direct action against the forces that threaten the future of all people.

Fierce Vulnerability is a modern movement, inspired by ancient traditions of nonviolence and incorporating newer thinking around trauma healing and the power of vulnerability. Its goal is to catalyze a new tradition of direct action that sees the work of resistance as an act of healing. Kazu Haga will return with a cadre of certified trainers in Kingian Nonviolent Action. They will help us root our work in traditions of nonviolent direct action, and then branch out to apply them strategically to address the existential threat of the climate emergency.

Where last year’s focus was the personal experience of FV, in 2020 we will take the next step to prepare to put FV into practice in our movement work. Together we will understand its historic roots in Kingian Nonviolence while developing skills in modern day campaign building.

After 60 years of holding annual conferences offering a choice of multiple workshops at Seaback, in 2019 we came up with a new approach.  For the first time all of our 200 attendees shared a single focus: Fierce Vulnerability. The response was inspiring and we are continuing with the same model, with programming to accommodate both first time and returning participants. 

This intergenerational training weekend takes place at the historic Seabeck Conference Center in Seabeck, Washington. Details and registration information will soon be available on this website.

What is Fierce Vulnerability?

  • How do we stop injustice in its tracks while acknowledging the interconnectedness of all people?
  • How do we protect ourselves while nurturing a relationship with our broken-heartednness?
  • How do we build a movement that can shut down a highway while creating a culture of opening up?
  • How do we build a movement with the militancy to occupy a government building and the sensitivity to see it as an act of healing?
  • How can we come to experience vulnerability as a strength, not a weakness?

Fierce Vulnerability is born of the conviction that our vulnerability is our greatest strength. Vulnerability makes us whole, and that wholeness is the only thing that can undo generations of investment in plunder and exploitation.