Nichola Torbett
Nichola Torbett is a white, queer, raised-working-class spiritual seeker, recovering addict, gospel preacher, racial justice podcaster, and nonviolent direct action trainer. She grew up in a sundown town in Ohio and had no consciousness of racism until she was nearly 25. She is grateful to the powerful BIPOC-led movements of Oakland and San Francisco, California, for her political education and to the friends of color who told her about herself and took a chance on her despite it all. She is committed to helping other white people unlearn internalized supremacy and become part of multiracial coalitions to end racism and white supremacy. She is also the associate director of Kirkridge Retreat & Study Center.
Upcoming Programs by Nichola Torbett
Noncompliance: A Four-Hour Training
Drawing from the wisdom of successful campaigns to overthrow authoritarian rule, this training will focus on how we identify the pillars of support for the Trump administration and begin to weaken and bring them down by inviting our friends, relatives, and neighbors into various acts of creative noncompliance with varying levels of risk. Each person […]
White Antiracist Practice Group Series 9
Six weekly sessions on Wednesdays, noon-1:30pm ET, with this next session running September 3 to October 8, 2025. Looking for a place to deepen your antiracist practice? For a committed, kind community of support and accountability for taking action to dismantle white supremacy? You are in the right place! Our next white antiracist practice series […]
Campaign Building: A Four-Hour Training
This training shows you how to take a big, amorphous problem–for example, rising fascism in the US–and break it into a more discrete issue with a concrete demand and a campaign strategy behind it. We will cover issue cutting, spectrum of allies, power mapping, and base building, working with a real issue that your group […]
Dismantling White Supremacy in Organizing Spaces: A Four-Hour Training
We each see this historic moment through the perspective of our social location–the set of privileges and risks we each possess. In this workshop, we will seek out and uproot assumptions rooted in white supremacy that inadvertently get carried into organizing spaces and explore some of the postures and possibilities for cross-racial organizing in this […]
Nonviolent Direct Action: A Four-Hour Training
Also With Bill Wylie-Kellermann
Inspired by the long legacy of nonviolent direct action in movement history, and especially movements led by Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, this training will begin to prepare participants to use nonviolent, disruptive tactics as part of campaigns for justice. The workshop will give you tools so that your group can find tactics that […]
Liturgical Direct Action: A Discernment Retreat
Also With Bill Wylie-Kellermann and Naomi Washington-Leapheart
How is direct action or civil disobedience altered when framed in prayerful worship? What dimensions of freedom are then embraced? When public witness tells the story of faith and marks a feast or season, what new depth of communication is opened? When nonviolence is practiced in sacramental forms, how is liturgy itself enhanced? With examples […]