Hi! I’m Sierra Ramírez. I am a grassroots organizer and political educator living in Washington, DC. I created the Direct Democracy institute (DDI) because I want social transformation that we can live through.

DDI is here to equip people and organizations with three things that I see as critical for creating long-term sustainable change:

• grassroots organizing fundamentals,
• cooperative communication skills, and
• the history and practice of direct democracy.

With those three elements, I believe we can rebuild collective culture and change the world

Check out all of DDI’s offers below.

Work with DDI

DDI supports teams that are ready to truly build power: organizationally, relationally, in community, and in the wider world.

There are multiple ways for your team to work with DDI:

• Pre-designed workshops and strategic accompaniments
  
• Any DDI class or workshop can be provided directly to an organization.
  

• Bespoke offerings (trainings, retreats, mediation & more)
  
• Let’s revamp your organizational strategy, mediate conflicts, create systems for adaptive management, or re-organize your team’s decision-making approach.
  

• Sponsored participation in DDI’s public courses and workshops
  
• Groups can participate at discounted rates, and individuals often participate using personal development funds. Both approaches offer great opportunities for peer learning and network building.

• Coaching
  
• Collaborative leadership development, somatic healing & more
  

Organizational clients so far:

Code for America’s Brigade Network, Upturn, the Democracy Fund, Latino Economic Development Center, Community Change, the Sunrise Movement, the Metropolitan Anarchist Coordinating Council, and Solidarity Economy STL.

Teaching Portfolio

Using Money

& Building Grassroots Power

Learn how progressive and radical organizations have raised and used money historically, plus how we can use these examples to do so ethically, strategically, and collaboratively today. Offered as a 1-2 hour workshop session

Making Decisions Together

DDI Flagship Course

Develop grassroots organizing fundamentals, cooperative communication tools, and critical understanding of direct democracy frameworks. Can be facilitated as a 10-week course or 4-day intensive.

Build Organizational Power: With Amazing One-on-ones

Get ready to have effective, inspiring, honest one-one-ones that will lead to big changes in your community, collective, or workplace. Offered as a 1-2 hour workshop session.

Caracol Coaching

We all need guidance and support to make changes in our lives.

Most of us have relatively little power, compared to the systems we were dropped into. It's easy to feel trapped, or stuck. So the choice of what to do with the wiggle room that we have is incredibly precious.

The space to change things is there.

And we can do something with that space

when we understand

both our personal and collective power.

Let’s find your spark.

Caracol Coaching sessions are one-on-one spaces for:

• Collaborative leadership development
  
• Life design and livelihood strategizing
• Somatic healing
  

Supportive praxis

The goal of a Supportive Praxis group is to develop our praxis in concrete ways, within an emotionally supportive, community oriented setting.

Sustaining the critical work that we are each a part of can be shockingly isolating. It helps when we have a space for external support built explicitly around our growth and survival.

Supportive praxis groups not only a more economical way to access coach support, they also provide an ongoing setting were we practice relating in the way we actually want to, with people who share similar values around power, cooperation, and changing the world.

Complete the contact form to be “matched” with a group once enough compatible participants are confirmed.

Upgrade your

Org Infrastructure:

Rapid Reflections

Tracking progress toward our goals should make our work easier! It should help us be more adaptive, connected, focused and accountable. Practices should fit in our team’s flow, and the results should be easy for peers to understand.

Rapid Reflections do all of that and more. This system helps keep teams cohesive: Everyone understands what everyone else is doing and where the organization is in relation to strategic goals.

It’s also non-hierarchical: team-members can collaborate equally and the results are easy to analyze as a group

When paired with DDI accompaniment you can improve

• organizational culture
• communication
• group decision-making
  

Your organizational environment can become more collaborative, power-informed, and efficient, with broader and more meaningful participation in the long term.

Learn more!