AORTA is a worker-owned cooperative of facilitators and strategists devoted to helping our movements renew a stronger sense of liberatory vision, values, and purpose.
We envision a world without racism that honors the culture, knowledge, power, and healing of Black, Indigenous, and communities of color. We are committed to building power through collective cultural & healing strategies for racial justice across Minnesota using organizing, leadership training, community policy & research. Our Theory of Change drives our ecological model of organizing where we all have a role to play in building power for impactful change with community and systems. We believe that by tending to the soil or those closest to the issues, using tools that uplift their leadership, culture, wellbeing and expertise, we can overcome toxins in our environment, in turn allowing us to enjoy the harvest of long-term change for racial justice.
Established in 2015, the Race, Indigeneity, Disability, Gender & Sexuality Initiative (RIDGS) was created to support innovative research, teaching, and community-building for scholars engaged with issues of race, indigeneity, gender, and sexuality. RIDGS is dedicated to bringing faculty and students together to pursue lines of inquiry that challenge systems of power and inequality, assert human dignity, and imagine social transformation.
