Protect Our People: De-escalation Training

Our safety is a collective responsibility. Train your community to de-escalate violence & harm.

Image Description: A group of masked trans and queer Asian and Pacific Islander people hold a large purple banner that reads: Police Out of Pride. There is a black banner to the left that reads BLACK LIVES MATTER in multiple different languages.

Curriculum

The Protect Our People: De-escalation Training is a facilitator-led two part training curriculum which offers an introduction to de-escalating situations of violence, conflict and harm. The curriculum was developed to center trans and queer BIPOC and is rooted in key Lavender Phoenix values: abolition, abundance, interdependence and self-determination.

The curriculum is comprised of two trainings, which can be led on separate days within 1-2 weeks of each other:

The first part, Prepare Our People, is an online training meant to increase accessibility & orient participants to foundational de-escalation concepts.
The second part, Protect Our People, is meant to prioritize embodied learning and allow participants to role play practice scenarios.

Prepare Our People: Online Training

Facilitator

The facilitator agenda should be used by the facilitator to facilitate the training. It features an overview of purpose, outcomes, audience, materials & roles. It included an outline of timing & key sections. Each section begins with its purpose and specific function in the training, and includes a facilitation script.
The facilitator slides should be screenshared during the training. The facilitation agenda provides detailed notes about when the slides should be shared.

Agenda

Slides

Participant

The participant workbook should be shared with the participants to reference during the training. It includes a handout on Assessing Situations, scenarios for small group discussion and a guide for small group discussion on verbal de-escalation tactics.

Participant Workbook

Protect Our People: In-Person Training

Facilitator

The facilitator agenda should be used by the facilitator to facilitate the training. It features an overview of purpose, outcomes, audience, materials & roles. It included an outline of timing & key sections. Each section begins with its purpose and specific function in the training, and includes a facilitation script.
The small group facilitator guide should be used by small group facilitators during the practice scenario section. It includes an orientation to the facilitator role, suggested structures for small group practice, and tips on suggested tactics for each scenario.

Agenda

Small Group Facilitator Guide

Participant

The in-person scenarios should be shared with the participants to reference during the practice scenario section. It includes a care menu for small groups to offer & receive care and four specific scenarios with supporting details on roles (aggressor & target), dynamics, and surroundings.

Scenarios

How To Use This Curriculum

Image description: A group of masked TQAPIs are in a community room facing the front where there is a facilitator speaking to the group. — Image description: A semi-circle during a **Protect our People Community Safety Training** at a park outdoors. Community safety leaders demonstrate physical stances to de-escalate situations of harm.

Group Size

This training is designed to be facilitated by a team of 3-4 facilitators. It is also designed for large groups of 20-50 participants. Additional facilitators may be needed for the small group role plays, depending on the number of participants; we recommend 1 small-group facilitator for every 5-6 participants.

Facilitation Experience

This training is available for anyone who wants to support their organization or community to learn de-escalation skills. However, this training is most effective when led by facilitators that have experience in de-escalating situations in their lives and/or in direct actions and can draw on their lived experience to support the learning of participants. Ideally, facilitators should have previously attended at least one de-escalation training that covers some of the skill sets included in the training.

Adapting for Audience

This training was developed for Lavender Phoenix membership, and trans and queer BIPOC community. Please make a copy of the curriculum, and adapt the training to meet the specific needs & experiences of your organization or community. We ask that you still cite the original Lavender Phoenix curriculum as a source if it is adapted and used for your organization. Please let us know if you are leading this training with your community by emailing info@lavenderphoenix.org. We want to know who is using this resource and how!

Background

Who created this?

This version of the Protect Our People: De-escalation Training was created and edited by Lavender Phoenix’s Community Safety Committee members, Summer Organizers and Staff from 2022 to 2024.

What is covered in the training?

This de-escalation training is split into a virtual and in-person component, which cover in their entirety:

How to decide if & when to intervene in escalated and potentially dangerous situations, including:

Conflicts with verbal abuse
Mental health crises in public
Agitators at protests & direct actions

Verbal de-escalation tactics & skills
Body language and physical positioning used in de-escalation
Small group scenario & role play practice

Why did we create this training?

In 2022, the Community Safety Committee set out to train our trans and queer Asian and Pacific Islander membership in the foundational de-escalation skills required to intervene in situations of violence, conflict and harm.
This project was rooted in key organizational values: abolition, abundance, interdependence and self-determination. The Community Safety Committee wanted to help build a world in which we practice collective safety and real care, as our movements work to dismantle the prison industrial complex (PIC), defined by Critical Resistance as “the overlapping interests of government and industry that use surveillance, policing, and imprisonment as solutions to economic, social and political problems.”
We prepared by learning from other community members and organizers, especially those rooted in the lineage of Trans and Queer Black, Indigenous, People Of Color who have learned how to create safety outside of carceral systems. We want to recognize and give gratitude for their labor and teachings. We attended trainings from Mamie Chow and Irma Shauf-Bajar, the For the People Safety Team here in the Bay, the folks at Vision Change Win (such as Ejeris Dixon, Che Johnson-Long, and others), and Nonviolent Peaceforce. We also studied materials from the People’s Response Team Chicago and Anti Police-Terror Project (APTP) Oakland to inform this training.

Who is it for?

Over the course of 2022 to 2024, we led several trainings using this curriculum. Initially this training was created for trans and queer BIPOC folks. But this year (2024), as many communities mobilized to end the genocide in Gaza, we saw an increase in the demand for folks trained in de-escalation. Given the urgency of the political moment, we continued to center trans and queer BIPOC and began to include politically and values-aligned allies in the audience for our training.
We also recognized that one organization could not train our entire movement in these skills. This spring, as student organizers led encampments to hold their institutions accountable and divest from Israel’s occupation of Gaza, they were met with harassment from right-wing forces and brutalized by the police. Lavender Phoenix members led a flash de-escalation training to support student organizers, locally in the Bay Area.
However, we wanted more organizers to have access to this curriculum to lead their own de-escalation trainings and share these skills with their communities. To achieve this, we decided to launch this curriculum on our website and make it publicly available.