FreeSkool Basis of Unity

Freeskool is an autonomous, nonhierarchical space for learning, radical expression, and skill-sharing. We believe in education models which undo the institutionalization and scarcity of knowledge and instead foster the educator in everyone. We do this by:

• Decommodifying wisdom exchange and rejecting the binary of teacher and student;
• Providing safer spaces for building social movements;
• Valuing all forms of expression and learning styles;
• Upholding a decentralized, open leadership model for internal Freeskool organizing; and
• Ensuring our offerings are accessible to as many people as possible.

We promote the cross-pollination of ideas and skills which are explicitly feminist and in opposition to capitalism, colonialism, authoritarianism, sectarianism, imperialism, patriarchy, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, racism, and other forms of oppression. We believe in the power of solidarity, mutual aid, consensus decision-making, direct action, and radical co-learning to create the world we want to live in.

FreeSkool operates on the stolen, ancestral territories of the Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), Stó:lō, Səlilwǝta?/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh), xwmǝ0kWǝyǝm (Musqueam) nations. Settler colonialism has brought and continues to bring violence to these lands via unlawful resource extraction, racism in the medical and foster care systems, and intergenerational trauma through residential “schools”. As we work, learn, and organize as settlers on these lands, we have an obligation to recognize the continued effects of settler colonialism, take action to decolonize our ways of being, demand for Land Back, and continuously work to repair harms perpetrated upon Indigenous nations, presently and historically.