Location: Oakland, CA
Region: National
Founding: 2017
Founders/leadership: Alexis Flanagan, co-director; Doris Dupuy, co-director
Resonance is an ever-expanding network of Black, Indigenous, immigrant, women, femme, trans, and two-spirit people and their co-conspirators who are building a world beyond violence — a world rooted in mutual care, where all people live in dignity, and all beings can thrive.
Resonance’s worldbuilding draws on the lineage of radical feminist, BIPOC movement leaders who have, alongside communities, developed powerful ways to oppose and resolve violence. Today, Resonance practitioners are taking the next step toward transformation, by uprooting the complex and interrelated causes of violence, and supplanting them with ways of being in our families and communities, cultural norms, and systems of governance that reflect our values.
Resonance participants are healers, leaders, artists, survivors, and storytellers creating visionary spaces to access creativity and radical imagination, and practice what it means to thrive.
Resonance Network participants believe that liberation is a practice, and are building the world we know is possible, by:
- Activating Radical Imagination: co-creating community-rooted action spaces that interrupt the current dominant worldview, and cultivate mutual care in ourselves, communities, and collective systems.
- Claiming Collective Governance: practicing — in our families, tribes, teams, and communities — a set of principles that affirm our sacred responsibility to care for one another and the earth.
- Building Reach and Resonance: building authentic relationships, a shared vision, and collaborative action with individuals and communities who share a commitment to building a liberatory future.
Resonance Network first took root in 2013 with the first cohort of movement leaders to take part in Move to End Violence, a ten year program of the NoVo Foundation. Their shared vision of a world beyond violence made it clear they would need to work beyond the constraints of mainstream anti-violence approaches, taking the longer, more emergent path toward transforming violence and cultivating thriving individuals and communities.
Resonance Network’s founding members also recognized that transforming the roots of violence meant centering the people whose communities were most impacted by interpersonal and institutional violence. This intention remains a guiding force today.
From its founding, Resonance made the intentional choice to configure ourselves as a network. Unlike traditional organizations, networks hold the capacity to adapt, evolve, and scale in response to changing contexts and current events. This dynamic form not only mirrors the way change happens in natural networks like mycelium or a coral reef — it also makes broad transformation possible.
Today, MSC works in collaboration with Resonance’s core team and Navigators Circle as the network continues to evolve and grow. Made up of network participants, the Navigators Circle uses network principles of co-design, consent, and collaborative practice to support the Resonance team in choice-making about infrastructure and strategy. Through consent-based decision-making, Resonance practices the governance it hopes to see in the world: centering compassion, deep relationship, and collective thriving.