Our Experience

CRITICAL THEORY DISCUSSION CLASS (for Current and Former Clients)

One of our workshop includes articles based on critical theory. Critical theory is defined as a process of
examination that allows one to unveil the structure of fundamental social practices and thus the potential
distortions of society that are within these customs. The critical theory workshop seeks to enliven one’s
consciousness of the existing perceptions that structure social institutions. This theory understands
objective knowledge as illusory and focuses on subjective knowledge which recognizes all data as
historical and biased. This workshop incorporates and raises discussion on articles that explore sexism,
racism, homophobia, internal sexism, internal racism, and internal homophobia. A reader that includes
articles by Bell Hooks, Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, and Chandra Mohanty is provided. Contact
Arcolina Panto at ap@revelationlaw.com or at 1-510-665-4195.

THEATER OF THE OPPRESSED WORKSHOP (for Current and Former Clients)

According to Douglas Paterson (http://www.wwcd.org/action/Boal.html), the Theatre of the Oppressed
workshop consists of physical interactions that are designed to challenge people to truly listen to what
they hear, listen to what they touch, and see what they look for. These activities serve to heighten one’s
senses, demechanize the body, and get one out of habitual behavior in order to move beyong habitual
thinking and interacting. This workshop utilizes the human body as a tool of representing feelings, ideas,
and relationships. Through sculpting others or using one’s own body to demonstrate a body position,
clients are able to create anything from one-person to large-group videos that reflect their impressions of
a situation or form of oppression. These videos can be virtual one-act plays or more often short scenes.
In either case, a full presentation is offered to the audience. The joker (difficultator) then says to the
audience we will do this again, and if you would do something different than what the protagonist (not
the antagonists) is doing, stand up and yell stop. The protagonist will then sit down and the audience
member is invited forward to show their solution of the moment. Once the intervention is performed, the
audience invariably applauds, and the joker invites the audience to discuss the proposed solution, and to
offer even more solutions. At the conclusions of these exercises, the original scenes are replayed with the
intention that the protagonists will have learned more about how to handle their distressful interaction. act
contact Melanie D. Popper for more information at 1-510-665-4195 or mdp@revelationlaw.com.

RE-EVALUATION CO-COUNSELING (for Current and Former Clients)

According to Re-evaluation Counseling website (www.rc.org), re-evaluation counseling is a process in
which people of all ages and backgrounds free themselves from the effects of past distresses by learning
how to exchange effective help with one another. This theory provides a model of how one can behave
when in the area of a distressful interaction. The re-evaluation counseling theory assumes that everyone
is born with tremendous intellectual potential, natural zest, and lovingness, but that these qualities have
become blocked and obscured in adults as the result of accumulated distressful experiences (fear, hurt,
loss, pain, anger, embarrassment, etc.), which begin early in our lives. In recovering and using the
natural discharge process, two people take turns counseling and being counseled. The one acting as the
counselor listens, draws the other out and permits, encourages, and assists emotional discharge. The one
acting as client talks and discharges and re-evaluates. With experience and increased confidence and trust
in each other, the process works increasingly better. Any young person would recover from such
distress spontaneously by use of the natural process of emotional discharge (crying, trembling, raging,
laughing, etc.). However, this natural process is usually interfered with by well-meaning people ("Don't
cry," "Be a big boy," etc.) who erroneously equate the emotional discharge (the healing of the hurt) with
the hurt itself. When adequate emotional discharge can take place, the person is freed from the rigid
pattern of behavior and feeling left by the hurt. The basic loving, cooperative, intelligent, and zestful
nature is then free to operate. Such a person will tend to be more effective in looking out for his or her
own interests and the interests of others, and will be more capable of acting successfully against
injustice. This workshop is facilitated by trained, third party rc-ers. Contact Melanie D. Popper for more
information at 1-510-665-4195 or mdp@revelationlaw.com.

WRITING WORKSHOPS (for Current and Former Clients)

This workshop is facilitated by Jen Cross (writingourselveswhole.org), who hosts Revelation Writers
class for clients at her studio in San Francisco. According to Ms. Cross, the aim of this workshop is to
change the world through writing. We intend to create an empowered community that is able to effect
change. We exist in the service of transforming trauma and/or struggles around sexuality into art and
thus creating spaces in which individuals may come to recognize the artist/writer within. Our goal is to
offer safe, confidential (to a certain extent) writing groups, which allow for transformation, risk,
laughter, and artistic manifestation, to a broad cross-section of the community. Some writing workshops
focus particularly on those who have felt marginalized and silenced (survivors of sexual harassment,
sexual trauma and domestic violence, members of the LGBTQQI communities, and those who are poor,
underemployed, or homeless). By expressing one’s own story contributes to changing the world. To
express our own story changes the world. Writing is both memory and possibility at once, and in moving
through and with that tension, we create change. Contact Laura Zellman for more information at at 1-
510-665-4195 or lz@revelationlaw.com.

ANTI-HARASSMENT & SENSITIVITY TRAINING FOR EMPLOYERS

The Revelation Law Firm offers interactive, educational trainings for employers wanting to take
preventive action against harassment and discrimination lawsuits with regard to race and gender from
their employees. Trainings include information regarding the legal aspects of these dynamics in the
workplace, and offer a consciousness component that requires active participation in learning about how
discrimination and harassment take place--and how these can be prevented--using our knowledge about
oppression in a transformative way. To schedule your mandated 2-hour supervisor training, contact
Melanie D. Popper for more information at 1-510-665-4195 or mdp@revelationlaw.com.

HOLISTIC RESOURCES AND WORKSHOPS

THE REVELATION LAW
FIRM

2560 Ninth St., Suite 212MA
Berkeley, CA 94710
1-510-665-4195
1-510-665-4197(fax)
1-510-295-2507(efax -- for large documents)
office@revelationlaw.com