We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Shirley Leung a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Shirley, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

The Fort Collins Community Action Network (FCCAN) is a local, social justice driven non-profit organization.

FCCAN’s mission is to create community based on furthering economic, social, and environmental justice, sustainability, human rights, and peace for all by building coalitions, developing strategies and actions, and supporting existing progressive organizations.

We created our organization around this mission because a group of local organizers and activists came together with the shared recognition that there is a lack of cohesion as well as limited resources in the community for grassroots work. The dominant work is service-oriented and perpetuates a harmful charity-driven practice that doesn’t address the root causes of violence that our community is experiencing, while disempowering marginalized community members..

Shirley, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I got involved with FCCAN in 2019 after graduating from CSU with a degree in Ethnic Studies and women and gender studies. I knew I wanted to utilize my education and skills to do meaningful organizing work in the community that was grounded in the history and theory from all of the scholarly activists that I was studying. I also was eager to get involved with community efforts as I felt like CSU was a bubble within the community where I wasn’t aware and as engaged as I wanted to be with what was going on for everyday folks. I was passionate about yoga and tai chi and teaching and offering movement practices that centered ancestral forms of healing and joy and creativity. I knew I wanted to take these skills as well into the potential community work with FCCAN which is how I ended up as the healing justice organizer. Some accomplishments that I am most proud of are helping to steer FCCAN through transformation and conflict meditation during the pandemic as we shifted as a social justice organization, and forming our values and theory of change, bringing on new spokescouncil members, starting the healing justice program and offerings and continuing to expand our internship program and partnership with the ethnic studies department.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

Some of the most effective strategies that we use as a grassroots community organizing group are centered around supporting change. These include:

Community organizing, Advocating, providing infrastructure for social change groups to build coalition in a network and providing healing, creative spaces with Queer and Trans communities (centering BIPOC folks in healing justice)

More specifically our 3 main core strategies are:

1. Facilitate Community Dialogues and Political Education
2. Provide & Build Capacity for affiliate members
3. Develop and drive campaigns and lead community organizing efforts as a coalition and as an organization

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

Some of the books that have significantly impacted our thinking and philosophy include: all about love by bell hooks, the purpose of power by Alicia Garza, the politics of trauma by Staci Haines, Healing Resistance by Kazu Haga, Pleasure Activism by addrienne marie brown and Radical Dharma by Reverend Angel Kyodo Williams and Lama Rod Owens.

Contact Info:

• Website: fccan.org
• Instagram: instagram.com/fccan/
• Facebook: facebook.com/fortCollinsCAN/