The D.C. COLLAB
What is the D.C. COLLAB?
The D.C. COLLAB is a collective of radical grassroots organizations based in D.C. committed to ending capitalism and gender and sexual oppression by focusing on the economic, social, and historical conditions and interests of working-class Black people in DC. Grounded in anti-reformism, The D.C. COLLAB will work to abolish the U.S. settler colonial state’s prison industrial complex and its institution of policing by building Black/African community power and self-determination, including winning freedom for all political prisoners/prisoners of war.
Current COLLAB Organizations: Black Lives Matter DC, Malcom X Grassroots Movement DC Chapter, Stop Police Terror Project
We believe that building a People’s Self-Defense Network is essential to protecting our communities and advancing liberation. Our vision is grounded in the principles laid out by the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement in Let Your Motto Be Resistance, which calls for organized, community-based self-defense rooted in Black self-determination.
To actually keep each other safe, we need to train, study, and practice together. That means learning how to respond to crisis, how to prevent harm, and how to protect each other from both the violence of the state and the conditions that create harm within our communities.
We can’t rely on the systems that have never protected us. If we want to survive and build something different, we need each other, and we need to be ready.
Since 2022, we have offered community events, including the following rotating series of these three core trainings—one each month, on a continuous basis:
Street Law 101 – Know-your-rights training based on fighting criminalization. It exposes the true cost of policing and explores tactics being used by police.
Police Abuse Complaints, Narrative Control, and Building Community Power – Learn how the police complaint process works, how police and government statements influence the public, and if the community can use that process to correct those statements and help address some of the conditions caused by the never-ending war on Black people.
CopWatch – Building teams means learning concrete tactics to observe and document police actions, protect our communities from brutality and repression, and understand why this form of organized community self-defense matters.
Join us on the third Saturday of each month at 12 PM at the ONE DC Black Workers and Wellness Center, located at 2500 Martin Luther King Jr. Ave SE in Anacostia, for these and other events.
Free food, free childcare, and sign language interpretation provided!