FCCAN 2019 in Review
As we transition into 2020, we invite you to celebrate with us, as we reflect on the past year, ground in the present moment, and conjure the future our community needs.
This year was filled with tough transitions, joyful gatherings and hard work for activists & engaged community members alike in Fort Collins.
“We are here. We are life-affirming. We are in community with one another.”
-Healing Justice group motto co-created at our September workshop
This will be our last blog post for the year, and we’ll be back in January as we take time to reflect and rest.
Healing Justice
We continued this year with monthly Healing Justice gatherings! Healing Justice is a program dedicated to supporting the integration of self care, inner work, collective care, real commitment to challenging injustice, and powerful action. With ancestral medicine as our guide we moved our bodies, had fire ceremony, harvested, foraged and prepared food together, had circles led by Indigenous, Black and femmes of color around farming, food as medicine, LGTBQ+ art and writing. We will be returning in Spring 2020 with community gatherings focused on artwork, embodiment and healing from whiteness.
Fuerza Latina
From the beginning, Fuerza Latina has made a commitment to work at a local, grassroots level, knowing that our families are experts on issues that impact the immigrant community in Fort Collins. In 2019, we offered Know Your Rights sessions and DACA community clinics in a time of such uncertainty, led different marches and rallies by and for immigrant families in the community. We graduated eight members from the Immigrant Workers-Owned cooperative academy to start our community’s first immigrant-owned cooperative next year! We partnered with community groups, using the power of theatre with the De Novo play to educate our community about unaccompanied minors in Fort Collins. Lastly, Fuerza Latina has amplified its hotline and continued our volunteer-led effort to assist children wishing to visit parents in detention.
Fort Collins Sustainability Group
In 2019, the FCSG successfully worked with Extinction Rebellion Fort Collins to get a Climate Emergency Resolution passed by the City Council in August. We also held two panel discussions on the City’s and the Poudre River Power Authority’s commitment to 100% renewable electricity by 2030 to educate the community about the reasons for making that commitment and the prospects for achieving it.FCSG spearheaded a project to write and deliver a letter signed by residents and business members to the Fort Collins Chamber of Commerce requesting action on climate planning. Lastly, FCSG has been making progress toward getting the City to include F-gas emissions (Industrial Process and Product Use) in its greenhouse gas inventory.
Fort Collins Homeless Coalition
In 2019 the FCHC continued advocating for public year round water fountains and bathrooms, as part of our fight for human rights in Fort Collins. We held numerous community planning meetings to discuss strategies to fight against the criminalization of poverty and homelessness in our community, led protests and rallies in against proposed Larimer County jail expansion, supported Food Not Bombs with food justice rallies, worked closely with our partner organization Denver Homeless Out Loud to begin planning legislation and measures to ensure right to rest for people experiencing homelessness. We are also the only group to collect and publish data on how many tickets are given each year from the public Camping Ban, and we supported the installation lockers at the Mennonite Fellowship, and so much more!
TimePeace Blog
This year we had over a dozen posts published on TimePeace Blog, a tribute to the newsletter that we started back in 1989, dedicated to spreading the good news of social justice progress in our city and spurring dialogue and conversation. Thank you to all the amazing volunteers, interns and writers in the community who help make our blog a source for inspiration and radical reflections. Some highlights and our favorite reads from this year include:
Acknowledging the Land and Its Indigenous Peoples
Action Items For the Start of Autumn
A love letter to white people this Halloween: Stop colonizing the lives, land, and stories of others.
Our roots, relations and the land we stand on
Salon duc Tape
In 2019 we organized community nights every other Friday where activists, scholars, and community members were invited to lead a discussion about their own work and ways for us to move towards our mission of a more socially justice and equitable community. Being in dialogue and having space to come together to learn is an important aspect of our work. Thanks to everyone who showed up and engaged with us this year at the salons, we have really exciting ones in the works for the new with one coming up on January 11th about Just Transition.
This is just a tiny sample of incredible work for FCCAN this year.
Did you know? FCCAN has been a driving force in Northern Colorado’s progressive movement for over 19 years; many of its members have been active for much longer!
We will continue to maintain our focus on coalition building, radical solidarity organizing and generative, collective healing.
