FRACTAL FUTURES LAB
A collaboration between Luis Alejandro Tapia and S. Leigh Thompson
small is ALL.
Liberation is a practice.
Come practice with us.
Workshops, talks, and retreats for organizers, facilitators, and movement makers embedded in liberatory vision and practice. We build radical empathy, movement strategies, and joyful, embodied tools that unravel linear, transactional, and oppositional organizing and move all of us toward collective liberation.
Why this, why now
Our movements are carrying a lot. Attacks on our work. Burnout. Strategies that reach for winning, punishment, and exile, the same logic as the systems we're trying to dismantle.
We deserve better. We deserve movements that hold us. And we need everyone.
Fractal Futures Lab is a practice space for building the other way: strategies rooted in care, sharpened by critical analysis, powered by joy. This isn't about being nice. It isn't about centering anyone's comfort. It isn't a break from strategy.
This is strategy.
Wanna know more?
About fractals
A fractal is a pattern that repeats at every scale.
The shape of the smallest piece
reflects the shape of the whole.
Same goes for our work. The tiny things we do every day (how we check in, how we handle conflict, who we trust, how we treat the person across the line from us) grow or shrink the world we're building. Big is small. Out is in.
Our movements work when the liberation we seek is practiced in our strategies and organizing tactics, the ways we speak, and the relationships we build.
It’s not hard. We help you incorporate the small into the all.
How we work
We're facilitators who make you move. Expect reflection, dialogue, movement, play, and real practice, not a lecture with slides.
Our toolbox:
Theatre of the Oppressed (Image Theatre and more)
Emergent Strategy
Circle keeping + restorative practice
Somatic and embodied practice
Popular education
The lineage that grounds us: bell hooks, Paulo Freire, Audre Lorde, Grace Lee Boggs, adrienne maree brown, Octavia Butler, and more
Every session is built so that people leave with something they can actually use: a compass, a working framework, a practice to return to, and strategic moves for their current organizing.
About us
Luis Alejandro Tapia
Lu is a social impact and systems change consultant, circle keeper, and transformative facilitator working at the intersections of spirituality, justice, healing, and liberation. A son of Caribbean immigrants rooted Uptown in the Bronx, he brings more than two decades of experience as a racial and restorative justice coach, trainer, and social justice educator, helping institutions move past performative change toward transformative justice, and centering the power of the global majority to create change. Lu believes dismantling internalized oppression matters as much as challenging external systems. Off the clock: harmonica, ninja gymnastics with his daughter, and a very serious sourdough practice. Joy and discipline, both.
S. Leigh Thompson
Leigh is a movement strategist, Theatre of the Oppressed Joker, and joyful troublemaker. Trans, genderqueer, queer, white and Native, disabled, and neurodivergent, Leigh has spent 25+ years at the intersection of art and justice, working with thousands of people across 100+ organizations, from grassroots projects to global nonprofits. They've been a lobbyist, campaign strategist, organizer, and trainer with the ACLU, GLSEN, Race Forward, and the Center for Racial Justice in Education, and served as Executive Director of The Forum Project. Leigh brings rigor, irreverence, and deep care in equal measure, and doesn't pull punches. He co-runs The Asterisk, a community workspace for healing, creativity, and liberation, and lives on Munsee Lenape land in Kingston, NY.
What we work on
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Not self-help empathy. Humanization as political practice: connecting with the full personhood of others, including people whose actions cause harm, without excusing that harm or collapsing the power analysis. Oppression draws a line between us and them. Empathy removes the line. And that opens strategic options opposition-only thinking slams shut.
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Building trust and relational authority one small, repeated practice at a time, and scaling those practices into cross-racial solidarity and systemic power.
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Not a garnish. Method. Practices that keep people in relationship and in the work for the long haul.
And joy is how our bodies learn to lean into hard things instead of flinching away. Liberation is in the direction of joy.
Wanna know more?
Fill out the form and we’ll reach out to share a bit more about what we do and to learn more about how we can connect.