The Abolitionists Challenge is charged on a Solidarity Sliding Scale.  You can learn more about our approach below.

This year’s Abolitionist Challenge training is being run as a bit differently. We are no longer offering discounts. Instead, we are asking you to consider joining us in a way that supports abolition, cooperation and a solidarity economy.

As we work toward a society that is free from racism and all forms of oppression, we must be willing to pay our fair share for training that uplift these values. With that in mind, we have structured a payment scale that supports the work of abolition.

We are using sliding scales for the abolitionist challenge to both make it accessible for those with lower incomes & wealth and to center our values and politics on redistribution. Often, sliding scales emphasize the accessibility for those who can’t afford full pay on one end of the scale without calling into question the perceived normalcy of being able to afford to pay the full rate.

We believe in building an economy that doesn’t normalize wealth disparities and acknowledges the centuries of labor exploitation, slavery of Black people, violence, and resource extraction on which today’s economy and the wealth (particularly of white Americans) has been built.

We believe in a solidarity economy, one that centers racial and economic justice, and is based on care for all and not profit for some. We recognize that, under racial capitalism, where individuals and organizations find themselves on the economic ladder is not based in justice.

We are striving to be anti-capitalist in a capitalist system, to articulate the value of the labor we offer while working to make it accessible and just within a system that values cheap products, devalues feminized labor, and extracts wealth. We are in process on this and will continue to shift and tweak our methods with new learnings.

In order to practice our values and work towards building a solidarity economy, we practice redistribution internally and ask that you, Abolitionist challenge participants, engage critically with this practice as well.

This will guarantee that folks are paid a fair rate and a salary that aligns with our relative privilege and marginalization, regardless of the composition of a workshop and/or the rate tier.

Redistribution rates ensure we can offer solidarity rates and donation based programming for BIPOC, pay land rent, and contribute funds to Black & Indigenous-led organizing where we live without devaluing the labor of your marginalized facilitator.

A note about valuing labor

We encourage you to interrogate your sense of monetary value for different products and services.

Many of us have been taught to shop around for the cheapest price with the best ‘value’ – but what do we really mean by that? How are we assigning worth to different kinds of labor? Like many who work in sectors with feminized labor, we experience people pushing back on rates or tuition (some have even suggested that I should donate my time because I believe in what I do).

If your organization believes that anti-oppression work is important, we encourage you to reflect that in your budget. A good frame of reference  is to look at what you are willing to pay for technical skills such as computer programming, financial consulting, or engineering and hold up a mirror to how you value anti-oppression work and skilled facilitation of structural change processes.

Even so, we realize you or your organization/business will be committing to financial investment to attend.  Please review the following “tiered pricing” for our sliding scale so that you can choose the right pricing for this training.