About

Power & Resilience Through Experiential Education

There are lots of tools out in the world that can be used to make this world a better place but are currently underutilized or that are used only by a certain group of people. PaRTEE provides access to these tools through advocacy and workshops. Our first set of workshops (planned for the beginning of 2020) is Justice Hams!

Justice Hams (JHam)

Two-way radio is super useful in any situation where infrastructure (e.g. cell towers and landlines) aren't available. Learning about amateur radio opens up a lot of possibilities. Ham radios can be used to keep in touch in remote places (e.g. providing medical support at remote political demonstrations) and allow communication when existing infrastructure is down (e.g. natural disasters like the CA wild fires or planning disasters like the public safety power shutoffs, also in CA).

Unfortunately, amateur radio (aka ham radio) isn't well-known to the general community, and even less so among people of color. We're aiming to change that with our our JHam (Justice Hams) program. We provide a friendly onramp for QTPOC activists by coordinating trips to Ham Crams to get licensed and following up with practical skills training.

Ham Crams are study sessions where a folks go through a study guide together for a few hours before taking the exam. The idea is that your short-term memory will be enough to help you pass the exam. They have a very high pass rate, so it works pretty well to get a license (which in ham parlance is called a ticket). Ham crams are great for getting licenses but they stop there; once you have your ticket you still have a ways to go before you can get on the air.

This is where our practical skills workshop comes in. After getting licensed, we will go through what different radios are available, what the tradeoffs are, and, of course, actually use the radios in exercises. If you are interested, please sign up for our mailing list! It's the best way to find out about future workshops.

About the organizers

Jen-Mei’s a founder of Liberating Ourselves Locally, a people of color centered, gender diverse maker/hacker space in East Oakland. She is also one of the founders of Comrade Lover, a social justice lion dance troupe. Jen-Mei has also been active in diversity and inclusion efforts in tech, including mentoring women and people of color entering the field, teaching workshops, and advocating for policy changes.

Loke is an educator and does community organizing and environmental justice education as well as mobility justice work through Cycles of Change. Loke is committed to working toward equitable solutions at the intersection of education, mobility access, food systems, and climate justice.

Together Loke and Jen-Mei have hosted Pancakes and Politics, a brunch event where we invite people to discuss the Primary and General ballots. Many people ended up using it as their voter guide, which stood out to us in contrast to the canvassing that we had done for issues and candidates where we were not sure about our impact.

In pursuit of a greater impact on democracy and justice, Loke and Jen-Mei founded Power and Resilience Through Experiential Education. Our goal is to create and provide access to tools and skills for social justice organizers and self-identified QTPOC folks, including their Anti-displacement Hacker School, Justice Hams (JHam), and Ballot Buddy projects. With Jen-Mei's propensity for do-good-gadgets-in-service-of-justice and Loke's quasi-prepper background, the PaRTEEers are currently hosting emergency preparation and response information sharing and training sessions for and by our community of QTPOC folks, with a focus on utilizing Ham radio in service of justice.