About Stonewall Youth and Stonewall Activism Summer School:
Stonewall Youth is an organization of youth, activists, and allies in Olympia, Washington that empowers lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, questioning, intersex, and asexual (LGBTQQIA) youth to speak for themselves, educate their communities, and support each other. We envision a community in which all queer, gender variant, and gender non-conforming youth have a full spectrum of choices regarding their bodies, self-expression, and legal rights.
Stonewall Activism Summer School (SASS) is a free three-day camp which will be held August 10th, 11th, and 12th in Olympia, Washington. SASS is organized by the Speakers' Bureau, the youth lead education and activism arm of Stonewall Youth. SASS seeks to support queer youth and their allies (ages 21 and under) in exchanging skills to become more effective activists in our communities, and to stand in solidarity with the movements that surround us. It is intended to be a space that not only fosters learning and the exchange of ideas, but also encourages networking and collaboration between young activists in the Pacific Northwest. This will be Stonewall Activism Summer School's 6th year.
In the past, topics that have been covered at SASS include;
- body positivity,
- learning about queer people and the prison industrial complex,
- art and activism,
- direct action as a tool for resistance,
- challenging racism and colonialism within the queer rights movement,
- workshop facilitation,
- mediation skills,
- and much much more!
In the past 5 years over 150 youth have attended SASS and have been trained as trainers themselves, gaining vital skills, knowledge and community from these trainings. Activities this year will be focused around direct action and organizing skills. Workshops include training for trainers, which help build facilitation skills and techniques, and issue-based workshops which help participants gain understanding around issues of intersectionality.
What you'll help us fund!
SASS is an integral program to our community, a launching point and platform for young activists all over the Northwest and beyond. Queer youth activists and their allies are able to find each other and build community from their time at SASS.
Because we feel SASS is so important, we do our best to make it accessible to everyone we can. Your donation will help keep SASS a FREE program for queer youth in our area and beyond. In order to do this we need to raise just over $2,000.00. Your support will help us pay youth leaders who organize the program and workshop facilitators who come from organizations and programs in the area. In addition, we will be able to provide participants with daily meals, housing and transportation to and from SASS. It’s incredible how far $2,000.00 can go towards supporting queer youth liberation!
SASS is important to queer youth!
SASS is vital because it is a youth lead program, which seeks to work with queer youth who may feel isolated and powerless to have agency and power over their own lives. It also challenges those same youth to look at the structural oppression that surrounds us and figure out how to use whatever types of privilege they may have to break down those systems.
SASS builds up leaders in our communities who have the skills to organize a movement!
Special thanks to the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence Abbey of St. Joan for their extra special support in making SASS possible!
