AORTA’s Theory of Change is a working document that defines our shared vision for working towards equity and justice for all. It outlines the eight integral components that help us to ground in a our work and move in a strategic direction toward lasting change.
We are at a precipice of change that can be felt across all aspects of human life. Within the US, we are experiencing the starkest effects of racial injustice, violent repression, and health inequities, all within a context of rapid climate catastrophe, the rise of global fascism, and attacks on democracy. While it is simultaneously evident that our social movements have reached new levels of power and effectiveness and reach, many people feel individually fatigued and powerless. We must subvert the systems of oppression that influence and impact our daily lives and are institutionalized within our movement organizations; and simultaneously unlearn the horizontal violence and psychological harm that plague our movements for justice. Collectively, we can deepen practices of principled struggle, working in coalition, and collective governance, so that we are able to “build the new world in the shell of the old.”
AORTA envisions a world where people are able to live meaningful lives full of sovereignty, honest work and joy, free from dispossession, exploitation, and violence and rooted in right livelihood and relationship to place. We desire for resources to be distributed equitably and power shared, and for solidarity to be cultivated amongst people using transformative justice, bridging our common humanity, and recognizing our fundamental interdependence.
The US was founded on enslavement and genocide, and those logics have been institutionalized into the fabric of our society. Social transformation requires a massive transition towards an economy rooted in right relationship and reparations, to the land and each other, and in governance rooted in equity, self determination and cooperation. We understand that the worldview and culture necessary for these massive shifts will need to be visiblized, remembered, and reimagined. Transformation is a path we are on, not a destination.
Traditional “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” work has often been used as an instrument to support performative, superficial shifts while maintaining the status quo. Effective organizational transformation requires reckoning with and challenging entrenched power structures, both internal and external to an organization, and a willingness to examine and remake structures, cultures, and behaviors that reinforce power imbalances.
We will catalyze and sustain successful, leaderful movements composed of skilled, democratic, principled, and courageous people and organizations that are able to build collective power and work in solidarity through liberatory praxis (action, learning, reflection).
We bring an intersectional analysis of systemic oppression and movement-building into the world of consulting, facilitating, educating, and training. We help our movements renew a stronger sense of vision, goals, values, heart-centeredness, and purpose. We model and introduce liberatory structures for operations and governance so that movement organizations may align their internal practices with their externally stated values.
Our approach to facilitation, coaching, consulting, and education seeks to amplify:
We exist within the context of a wide range of national and regional left organizations; our strategies are informed by their visions and campaigns, our internal study and values, and solidarity among those working toward liberation and justice, including grassroots organizations, intellectuals, values-centered businesses, movement strategists, and others.