Current Classes

Current and Upcoming Classes

“Alternatives to Gentrification” Reading Group

This offering, which is part of our West Oakland Reconciliation and Social Healing Project (WORSHP), is an opportunity for us to learn more about gentrification of the kind we believe threatens West Oakland neighborhoods.

How can we be in right relationship with our neighbors when we are separated by painful economic and racial divides? Might it be possible to use this moment in West Oakland (and other Oakland neighborhoods), when people of various races, ethnicities, and financial situations are living side-by-side (however uncomfortably) to do real racial and economic reconciliation and live into an alternative way of being rooted in love and solidarity? We’re not talking about feel-good, superficial, “can’t we all just get along” reconciliation, but real wrestling with the death systems that destroy our physical, spiritual, and emotional lives in the service of money and power for a few. Bring your dinner or enjoy some snacks that we’ll provide.

In the first series, which took place in May, we learned about how gentrification happens and what it looks like, using a realisitc novel about the gentrification of an Atlanta neighborhood as our guide, and we dealt compassionately with the feelings, beliefs, and assumptions that surfaced as a result of the reading. In the second series, we worked on bringing universal compassion to our own experience of becoming racialized and explored the connection between "whiteness" and gentrification. Here are the details about upcoming series:

Series 3 September 14, 21, and 28

What does James Baldwin’s classic extended essay THE FIRE NEXT TIME have to say to gentrification in neighborhoods like West Oakland?

Series 4 November 2, 9, and 13

What alternative models are being developed, and what are their strengths and weaknesses?

6-8pm each evening
Free; donations gratefully accepted
WORSHP House, 1724 Filbert Street (at 18th)
Please RSVP by emailing us

Bible Study for the Socially Aware

Religion has been called "the opiate of the masses," and certainly Christianity has sometimes served an opiating function, urging oppressed people to accept suffering and injustice in this life and wait for better times in the afterlife, or keeping people so distracted by moralistic prescriptions that they can't address systemic injustice. At FCCO and Seminary of the Street, though, we believe that there is a powerful message of liberation in the Jewish and Christian scriptures. In this bible study series, we will seek to get underneath the conventional interpretations of scripture to see what might inform our collective liberation struggles.

Saturday, September 11 Sermon on the Plain and Sermon of Fire (Luke 6 and Luke 12:1-13:9)
Saturday in October (details TBD)
Saturday, November 13 The Book of Revelation (yes, really!)

2-5pm each Saturday
**Sliding scale $10-30
First Congregational Church of Oakland
Email our registration desk to sign up

Embodied Anti-Oppression Training

Our embodied anti-oppression trainings, led by Vanissar Tarakali, Ph.D., address the deep underlying issues that cause oppression to be replicated by working right where the effects of oppression live—in our bodies, minds, and spirits.

Vanissar will offer the following this fall:

September 25 Shame and White Racial Justice Allies
October 16 Unraveling the Armor of Privilege and Denial
November 6 Trauma and Nonviolent Social Change: Embodied Practices in Support of Steve Wineman's "Power-Under" Social Justice Model

10am-5pm each day
First Congregational Church of Oakland, 2501 Harrison St.
Sliding scale $80-180/workshop; some financial assistance available
Email our registration desk to sign up

Vanissar Tarakali, Ph.D. is a healer and teacher who designs embodied healing oppression and allyship trainings and interventions for individuals and groups. She is passionate about supporting folks with privilege to unlearn oppression and use their privilege for social justice. The former Healing Oppression Project co-lead at Community United Against Violence (CUAV), Vanissar studies Generative Somatics with Staci Haines and Denise Benson, and intuitive reading with Phyllis Pay. www.vanissar.com

FREE Workshop: Be a Resource in Your Community

Would you like to learn how to become a resource in your neighborhood or community?

In this workshop you can learn basic skills in empathic listening that can support you in the following areas:

* capacity to stay present in challenging situations
* ability to reflect your understanding regardless of content
* competence in checking for understanding of deeper meaning of what is shared
* willingness to listen without trying to solve problems

Miki Kashtan, certified NVC trainer, is a founder of Bay Area Nonviolent Communication and the North America Leadership Program. Miki conducts organizational trainings, consults with private and public sector organizations and teaches NVC at workshops in the San Francisco Bay Area and around the country. Miki has been supporting global social change movements, including coaching of Peace Alliance members in their Department of Peace campaign, facilitation of the African Alliance for Peace summit in Ghana, and a global peace building and conflict transformation summit in Japan. She holds a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California at Berkeley.

Continuing Education Units are available. For information, please go to: http://www.baynvc.org/new_announcement_details.php?announcement_id=289

Note: Space is limited. Although this is a free event, we ask that you pre-register if at all possible. To register, contact BayNVC at (510) 433-0700 or register@baynvc.org. Donations accepted.

Friday, October 1, 2010; 4:30-6:30pm
First Congregational Church of Oakland, 2501 Harrison St in Oakland
See www.baynvc.org for more information

FREE Workshop: Empathy in the Workplace

Would you like to increase effectiveness and connection in your organization?

Are you tired of difficult conversations and strenuous meetings and would like some manageability in your work life?

In this workshop we plan on exploring some basic principles related to empathic communication in the workplace. We are particularly hopeful that groups and organizations will send some key individuals to this event.

The focus of this workshop is to provide an initial exposure to the following principles and practices and to the inquiry about how to bring them into the workplace:

* presence, even in the face of difficulty
* clarity of purpose when making decisions or running meetings
* attention to both parties' needs in a conflict
* providing feedback without criticism

Miki Kashtan, certified NVC trainer, is a founder of Bay Area Nonviolent Communication and the North America Leadership Program. Miki conducts organizational trainings, consults with private and public sector organizations and teaches NVC at workshops in the San Francisco Bay Area and around the country. Miki has been supporting global social change movements, including coaching of Peace Alliance members in their Department of Peace campaign, facilitation of the African Alliance for Peace summit in Ghana, and a global peace building and conflict transformation summit in Japan.

Friday, October 1, 12-2pm
First Congregational Church of Oakland, 2501 Harrison St. in Oakland
Free; donations welcome
See www.baynvc.org for more information

Contemplative Practices for Love Warriors

Contemplative practice can be a powerful component to our process of spiritual growth and connection with the Divine. These three workshops with Michelle Murrain are designed to introduce you to a variety of methods of Christian contemplative practice, from centering prayer, to lectio divina, to praying the hours and others. These workshops will be primarily experiential, with time for practice and small group discussion. There will be readings and "assignments" between weeks.

Wednesday evenings, October 13, 20, and 27
7-9pm
First Congregational Church of Oakland, 2501 Harrison St.
Email us to sign up!

Love Your Neighbor As Yourself: A Laboratory for Cultivating the Love that Does Justice

This class is dangerous. The skills and capacities for loving that we will be trying to develop together are a real and present danger to the status quo. Abuse and exploitation are only possible in the absence of real love. The abuser seeks to isolate his or her victim in order to make the victim vulnerable. When the victim is surrounded by a loving community that is willing to intervene on the victim’s behalf, abuse simply can’t take place.

We know that this is true on an intimate scale, for example in spousal and child abuse. I believe it is also true on a social scale. The systematic abuse and exploitation of human beings and of the planet is possible only to the degree that love is managed, confined, controlled, and limited. We are taught in subtle and overt ways from the time we are born whom and what we may love and whom and what we may not, who and what is worthy of love and who and what is not.

In this class, we will seek to unlearn those lessons and to experiment with loving outside the lines. My hope is that we can support each other to take risks both internally and out in the world.

Week 1: Loving Ourselves as God Loves Us

Week 2: Love, Power, and Difference

Week 3: Loving in a Culture of Individualism

Week 4: Generosity Practices

Week 5: Hospitality Practices

Week 6: Loving Your Enemies

Week 7: Loving Your Neighbor As Yourself

Week 8: Celebration and Closure

Next session in Winter 2011. Email us to receive notification of details when they are finalized.

Lessons from THE COLOR OF FEAR with Victor Lee Lewis

Many Seminary of the Street students raved about Victor Lee Lewis's Healing the Heart of Justice series last spring and summer. Victor is simply one of the most incisive, creative, lively social justice educators around. This winter, he'll be back with a brand new class based on the renowned documentary THE COLOR OF FEAR, in which he is featured along with several others. What lessons can we draw from this film for our liberation work today? Don't miss this opportunity to study the film with Victor himself.

Details coming soon!

What to Expect

Our classes are designed to invite every participant into their own full humanity and, simultaneously, into deep community. Here is some of what you can expect:

As much as possible, we seek to break down barriers between teachers and learners to become a learning community to which everyone contributes.
We value collaboration and joint investigation as ways to challenge the individualism and competition of the culture.
We value rigorous critical engagement with tradition We will not dismiss difficult material nor will we accept ideas unquestioningly. Instead, we will grapple with inherited ideas and traditions to uncover that which serves life.
We value lived experience and seek always to make learning useful in participants’ daily lives without conforming to the dominant culture.
Learning is emotional and spiritual as well as intellectual; we value creative/emotional knowledge as well as facts and reason.
Real transformation occurs in the context of relationship, so our courses devote time and energy to the cultivation of relationships across lines of difference. As I come to care about you, I care about barriers to your freedom and full exercise of your humanity and want to work to eliminate those barriers.
Oppression of various kinds has created barriers to participation in learning communities. We seek to be inclusive in all our practices and to encourage participation from those who have been silenced. At the same time, participation in any activity or discussion is voluntary.
Recognizing that self-reflection is a vital activist skill, we give frequent opportunities and encouragement for reflection in private and in community.

**Members and pledging friends of First Congregational Church of Oakland do not have to pay registration fees and may take Seminary of the Street classes on a free-will donation basis. This applies to in-house classes only, not to those sponsored by other organizations. The latter are marked with a single asterisk on this site.

*These courses are offered by other organizations but share our approach of combining inner work with outer work for social justice. Registration is through the sponsoring organization, as listed in the description.