a container for experimentation, deep space visioning and learning.
BlackOUT Collective builds organizations’ capacity to execute creative and effective direct actions in service of their organizing and advocacy work.
BlackOUT Collective is a radical full service direct action organization.
BlackOUT Collective is a radical full service direct action organization.
Who we Are
We build organizations’ capacity to execute creative and effective direct actions in service of their organizing and advocacy work by providing personalized direct action trainings and on the ground action support. We see ourselves as a “Liberation Lab”- a container for experimentation, deep space visioning and learning.
BlackOUT Collective addresses “anti-Blackness” and views direct action as a critical movement strategy to achieve this outcome both in terms of internalized oppression as well as historic and contemporary of white supremacy.
Using direct action training and support as a vehicle, we help organizations craft strategies that win; in addition to training newly formed formations comprised of politicized Black people. In the past three years, we have witnessed the power of direct action to create instant accountability and its ability to quickly amass power in Black communities. We aim to increase and harness that power.
We believe it is key for Black people to be agents in creating systematic shifts in this county, and we believe that Black people engaging in direct action is a key tactic in creating this change.
We connect folks working across movements at the intersections of racial, social, and economic justice. Through direct action training, coaching, and leadership development, BlackOUT supports grassroots organizations in crafting strategies that address anti-Blackness, win policy reform, directly challenge unjust systems, and offer resilience-centered solutions.
Core Framework
Core Framework
Our Core Framework
We view direct action in 4 frames because it reminds us that there are a diversity of tactics. We use the 4 R’s as a framework to understand our theory of change, so that people can see their work within a broader context. We assert that we cannot create real, lasting change without engaging all four strategies and more Practitioners being clear about where their strategies fit allows us all to be more strategic in our alignment.
Rapid response
An action that immediately responds to an injustice, or that intervenes to stop it.
Rebellion
An action that questions the validity of the system by banging on it whenever.
Reform
An action that puts pressure on your decision-maker to meet your demands, usually within a grassroots campaign.
Resilience-based actions
An action that asserts your fundamental right to something.
Request a Training
We provide personalized trainings on everything from Black direct action theory to climbing 101. Check out our Trainings tab and request a training today!
Action Support
We provide on the ground support to activists & organizers who are looking to execute creative and effective direct actions in service to their work.
Our Values
We value experimentation, summation, and evaluation as a means to finding the most effective ways to achieve impact.
We value transparency and trust. Relationships are key, and are our most powerful currency. We strive to cultivate stronger relationships, greater coordination, and more unity amongst Black organizing and amongst all Black people.
We reject the culture of respectability and all its limitations. We will engage our radical Black imagination. We exert our rights to be our full Black selves.
We believe in adhering to functional leadership structures for security, efficiency, practicality, and other reasons. We believe in democracy where everyone has a role in the decisions that affect their lives and work. We do not fetishize flat structures.
Theory of Change
We believe it is key for Black people to be direct agents in fighting their own oppression and that direct action should be a tactic in that. We cannot stand on the sidelines of our liberation. We can approach our actions as healing spaces and make the time to create ritual in our trainings and in our action preparation. We hold space for our trauma and our magic as Black people. We do this by acknowledging our fear, our heightened risk, and also our shared history. We can also do this by bringing joy through music, laughter, and games in our spaces.
Black people are taking action for their own liberation and justice.
Direct action creates instant accountability and the ability to quickly amass power.
Direct action is exercising your human rights and can facilitate personal learning and transformation.
Standing up to those that oppress you is healing and liberating.
We must constantly bring in, train and support the develop of new leaders.
If we can change the conditions for Black people, this will shift and change the conditions for other communities.
Direct action has a long legacy in Black communities. Our approach is to decolonize direct action and re-center on our powerful ancestral knowledge and courage of African women, men and children that have been fighting back for generations. Africans jumped from Slave ships to resist the brutality of chattel slavery, shipyard workers who shut down the transport of weapons to supply warships, the legacies of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the youth uprisings in Soweto as part of the anti-apartheid movement are some examples of the long legacy of civil disobedience, disruption and direct action within Black communities across the African/Black Diaspora.
How We Began
“His nickname was Mike-Mike and his favorite color was blue,” these where the words moving words shared by Michael Brown Sr., the father of Michael Brown Jr. shared at the national Movement for Black Lives Convening in Cleveland, Ohio. Michael Brown Jr., an 18-year-old young man, was murdered on the 9th of August in 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri. This blatant show of police brutality sparked social unrest and civil disobedience across the country and raised the under acknowledged realities of police brutality, anti-Black violence and state-sanctioned violence against Black communities to the national stage.
On the 10th of October 2014, local community-based organizations and organizers put out a national call for direct action trainers and practitioners, with a diverse skills set, to travel to Ferguson to come and support their work. There was a specific request for direct action trainers to support the community residents and activist in direct clash with local police and National Guard. A group of trainers traveled from Oakland, Boston and other areas of the country to Ferguson to answer the call for Black direct action trainers to coordinate a “Moral Monday” action. Upon arriving, they witnessed the lack of Black direct action trainers and the critical need to build this expertise among community residents, students, activists and others in Ferguson.
These young leaders arriving in Ferguson had the opportunity to attend a direct action training by the Ruckus Society. This training layered onto their experiences as youth and community organizers offered the critical and unique set of skills of facilitation, curriculum development, multigenerational training, grounded in the theory and practice of civic disobedience and direct action. These young leaders worked closely with the Organization for Black Struggle as well as, TribeX, and Lifted Voices, and supported various types of civil disobedience and direct actions during this period of massive disruption, giving birth to a growing national movement.
It is in this crucible of mass movement that the BlackOUT Collective was born. Since its inception, the BlackOUT collective has been driven by a vision of liberation, and guided by the decree in the struggle for Black freedom and liberation, that, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” – Frederick Douglass
CTWO Hub
CTWO Hub
Relationship with the CTWO Hub
The BlackOUT Collective joined the Center for Third World Organizing (CTWO) Hub in 2020 as part of an effort to better serve our movements, networks, and communities through the intentional quilting of skills, resources, and institutional knowledge across multiple powerhouse movement-building projects (BlackOUT Collective, CTWO, and Ruckus Society).
We continue to honor the original mission of BlackOUT Collective by maintaining our space for Black direct action and provide organizing training and organizational support for smaller formations and organizations.