BASE Community Self-Defense Workshop

BASE, an acronym for Building Autonomy & Safety for Everybody, is an ongoing response to the violence against women, and trans and queer people in Seattle and all over the world. BASE organizers advance a community-based strategy of self-defense and a belief that defending our bodies, livelihood, and communities is inherent to self-determination. In this free workshop, learn how to do a knee strike and a palm strike, and how to use your voice to build power that can transform oppressive systems in our lives.

BASE is a project that started as a collaboration between Banyan Queer Collective and API Chaya, and is now coordinated by a collective of queer and trans folks that are working toward liberation for people in Seattle and everywhere. Co-facilitators for this workshop are James Keum from BASE and micha cárdenas, Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences and Interactive Media Design at the University of Washington Bothell, and exhibiting artist in the exhibition MOTHA and Chris E. Vargas present: Trans Hirstory in 99 Objects.

James Keum is a community advocate and facilitator, focusing on the self-determination of queer and trans people of color and young people in Seattle. Their involvement in BASE and the queer Korean-American community is to support healthy relationships and autonomous communities. 

micha cárdenas is the director of the Poetic Operations Collaborative, a design research lab at the University of Washington Bothell applying technological creativity to advance social justice. She is an artist/theorist who creates mobile media to reduce violence and increase health. This workshop is a part of cárdenas's #stronger series, which uses social media and speculative design to develop ways of promoting health and fitness for trans, two-spirit and gender non-conforming people, in order to make our communities safer and stronger. #stronger is a project of the Poetic Operations Collaborative.