Free Self-Defense LV – Addressing a Need for Self-Resilience and Community Support
In a world where people are rarely taught to defend their rights, many marginalized communities are vulnerable to the whim of the systems that often fail them. In response, Free Self-Defense LV, an Indigenous women-led program was created to address this issue.
Seeing a need, local community leaders came together to develop this volunteer-based program for people to encourage self-resilience and build community care to support and police themselves. Amanda, a co-founder and volunteer instructor of FSDLV shared about the inspiration and goals of the organization.
“The reason for the program is to create a community of solidarity, learn self-respect, and recognize our individual capacity to protect ourselves, our families, and the vulnerable members of our communities,” she explained. “And its purpose is so we don’t rely so much on the system to save us. We have to save ourselves.”
Creating the Free-Self Defense Class program
After her cousin’s husband Gene taught her boxing for years at a local gym for free, Amanda said that this experience motivated her to share that knowledge with others. A major part of the whole program is the importance of sharing one’s gifts with others, especially something that enables people to know how to protect themselves, their rights, and others.
“The program was created to share our gifts so everyone can have access to knowledge of how to take care of themselves, so they don’t have to wait for someone else. We try to aim our work towards our most vulnerable community members,” she explained. “Some of the most dangerous situations are domestic disputes, most often aimed towards women and children. For example, the most vulnerable time in a woman’s life is while pregnant. We want to help lower these stats, lower calls to police, and reduce domestic violence and murders.”
With these intentions, Free Self-Defense LV began in July 2023 with a group of Indigenous women, including Amanda and Eztli of Fifth Sun Project. Moreover, one of their main goals involves raising awareness for murdered and missing Indigenous women (MMIW).
“It started as monthly classes, but we soon realized that we needed to turn it into a weekly class because women are being abused and going missing every day,” Amanda said. “It couldn’t be just once a month, we need to train as often as possible.”
In addition, it was important to make it sustainable and keep people’s progress going and seeing real progress over time.
“To be effective, you must train consistently. Consistency is where you see the progress,” she explained. “You develop muscle memory so it’s automatic in case you ever end up in a dangerous situation.”
Finding Locations and Instructors for the Classes
One of the challenges they faced when organizing the class involved finding a consistent location and people willing to host them.
“We moved around a few places, starting in the park as a pilot class at Craig Ranch, then had our first official class at UNLV with 20+ students,” Amanda shared. Her husband Lou who has 30+ years in Karate and MMA led the first class with another instructor, David, who has 10+ years of boxing experience, while Amanda took on the role of the female instructor.
The program has had access to UNLV on multiple occasions, as well as other local gyms for a while, until they closed down.
“David luckily had a connection with the Nevada Climbing Center where we now have been hosting classes for the past year,” Amanda said. There, they met Melly, a rock climber trained in Jiu-Jitsu, Xi-Gong, & Yoga as well as Alicia, another community volunteer trained in Jiu-Jitsu They very quickly became program instructors.
As this program grows, sustained by volunteers, FSDLV now has several instructors teaching within the program: Amanda, Lou, David, Melly, Alicia, and Paolo. They each bring different skills and expertise to the classes and provide a range of martial arts forms.
Current Locations for Free Self-Defense LV Classes
Free Self-Defense LV currently offers classes at multiple locations. The free classes are currently taught weekly at the Nevada Climbing Center on Mondays from 6:30 PM to 8 PM and at the Downtown Container Park on Sundays at 10:30 AM on the lawn. They also recently added a new class: an Advanced Self-Defense class at Altruist MMA on Sunday evenings from 6 PM—8 PM.
The outlook for this schedule is pretty solid until further notice but they always have special classes happening hosted by community organizations.
Amanda shared that they’re always looking to expand and are asking for spaces to either sponsor, host the program, or offer space for a low fee.
“Luckily every location host has been supportive of this program and never asks us to pay as we all volunteer our time to keep this program going week after week,” Amanda explained.
What a Typical Class Looks Like
Free Self-Defense LV has taught more than 100 classes since it began in 2023. Using MMA, the class covers several styles of fighting over 2 hours.
“All of the volunteer instructors are trained in either Karate, Boxing, Jiu-jitsu, Judo, Muay Thai, and/or Filipino Martial Arts,” Amanda said. “We combine all these different martial arts styles as we believe not any single one of them is the best. We take a bit from each of these styles and use the most effective and efficient techniques to develop our program.”
A typical class starts with warm-up exercises, situational awareness, and practicing verbal boundaries. The physical portion of the class covers basic fight stances, footwork, blocks, and strikes. They focus on teaching students to be comfortable in an uncomfortable situation. Students learn how to use their body as a weapon with basic yet effective strikes and practice real-life scenarios.
“Since this is a women-oriented program we go through various scenarios women experience regularly,” Amanda explained. Putting together all the moves they learned, students practice responding to arm grabs, hair pulls, and choking scenarios. They also practice drills resisting being lifted and carried away or mounted on the ground. “It is very scary to be in these situations so we practice staying calm, working through each scenario so we can quickly get over the shock of it if it ever were to happen.”
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The Importance of Self-Defense
Amanda shared that self-defense is about self-preservation, self-love, and self-respect. It’s not about showing off, it’s about setting boundaries and expecting others to respect those boundaries.
“If you know someone is looking to hurt you, you can de-escalate, avoid, and/or be mentally ready to protect yourself,” she said. “I think if everyone had self-defense training, there’d be more respect between people.”
Not originally from Vegas, Amanda said the community has been incredibly accepting.
“It’s been so lovely to be so easily accepted into the community here and seeing people being open to suggestions and who are really down for the community,” she said.
Amanda also added that despite the acceptance seen from the community, there is an understanding many paid martial arts schools might not like that we offer this information for free.
Amanda shared that the program is paid for out of pocket, as well as being supported by community donations and grants.
“Everyone has a right to this, we shouldn’t have to pay for this life-saving knowledge.”
Goals for 2025
In addition to finding more locations to host classes, Amanda shared that they want to expand the focus of the classes.
“We want to start classes specifically for children and conduct anti-bullying campaigns,” she said. “When kids learn self-defense they also learn discipline and self-control at a young age. This teaches them healthy boundaries, self-worth, and how to regulate their emotions. My husband Lou is a perfect example of someone who learned respect and emotional intelligence because he was put into Karate at a young age.”
She added “We welcome families to come to class even if their kids don’t want to participate initially. They watch their parents learning these skills and see how it develops confidence which might interest them in the future. We encourage parents and children to participate for the betterment of their future family dynamic.”
Amanda shared that they also want to hold more emotional intelligence workshops.
“It all comes down to people’s emotions and their ability to defuse and de-escalate situations,” she said. “This then leads to growing the interpersonal relationships we have with each other. If you know somebody crossed lines with you, you can set those boundaries and effectively defend them.”
Amanda also said they’d like to offer more self-love and self-care workshops, survivalist and domestic survivor retreats for women, and more weapons training and other advanced training.
They have also started a carpool to a free Women’s Only Gun Safety Class hosted up north at the Clark County Shooting Complex in order to encourage women to learn different forms of self-defense offered throughout the Greater Las Vegas region.
Partnering with the Community
In pursuit of its mission and goals, Free Self-Defense Class LV partners with several local organizations and businesses. Throughout the entirety of the program, Amanda shared that they’ve worked with more than 20 local community organizations.
“Eztli, the lead organizer of Fifth Sun Project (FSP) is a co-founder of the program, with the self-defense program being a subcategory of FSP. We work hand-in-hand with FSP, and they collect our donations that pay for the equipment and gas for the volunteers who support the weekly classes,” she said.
Another of their original sponsors is Her38Roses, an Indigenous-led domestic violence awareness organization that provides monthly women support group meetings and other services for women who are in or leaving domestic violence situations, along with Indigenous Vision, an Indigenous podcast and media group offering cultural training and more.
Amanda notes the FSDLV team is also very grateful to the Nevada Climbing Center, Altruist MMA, and DTLV Container Park for offering them the space and opportunity to provide the classes every week.
“Shoutout to the owners and general manager for hooking it up!” Amanda said.
In addition, FSDLV also works with The Solidarity Fridge, a local food pantry and urban garden addressing food insecurity and revitalizing ancestral healing, and Las Vegas Liberation, a 501 C 3 non-profit that does weekly food distributions to the houseless community and monthly drives at the Care Complex downtown.
Amanda’s Favorite Part About This Work and Her Advice to Others
Amanda shared a little about what she loves most through her work with the class.
“What I love about this is meeting people who have such empowering stories of resilience and just seeing people’s faces light up when they realize their capabilities. It gives me hope for the future,” she said. “This class is for people to learn and to then go out and share with others in their community who might not be able to make it to the classes.”
The transferability of the skills taught in the class helps sow seeds of strength within the community.
Amanda also shared some advice for those looking to start their self-defense training.
“Just believe in yourself. Learning self-defense is a form of self-care and self-love,” she said. “Know that you’re worth it and that you’re worth protecting.”
She also mentioned some basics of self-defense practice, like the importance of realizing that anything can be a weapon, including yourself, as long as you’re intentional about using it.
“This can be your water flask, phone, keys, or anything else available to you. Don’t feel hopeless. You are capable; you just have to believe in yourself,” she said. “And, accept that you might get hurt. But it is nothing to the amount of unimaginable pain you’ll go through if you do nothing to protect yourself.”
#GetinMotion with Free Self-Defense LV
There are multiple ways for the community to support Free Self-Defense LV!
Follow the program on Instagram to keep updated on upcoming classes and other events to attend. You can also sign up for their newsletter, print and share their self-defense educational pamphlet, and check out their program overview. The FSDLV LinkTree highlights other resources available to view as well.
One of the best ways to support FSDLV is by donating to help keep the program running. Donate through CashApp, Venmo, and Zelle using the phone number (702) 788-4513.
Free Self-Defense LV will also be conducting a demo workshop at First Friday’s upcoming annual mental health resource fair, ‘ARTUOK?’ This all-ages event is free and open to the public.
In addition, donating a hosting location enables the program to offer more classes and have flexibility if one of their other venues is unavailable.
“We’d love to work with every community who’d allow the program. This includes micro-schools, dance studios, and offices. We’ve done classes at the Student Union at UNLV, and we did a class at the Art Factory for sex workers,” Amanda shared. “NV State University’s Self-Defense Club coordinated a day for all of them to come to a class. We work with anyone in the community interested in obtaining this priceless knowledge”
Lastly, the program is always happy to have more volunteers, welcoming students with any martial arts or boxing experience to keep coming to class and sometimes even assisting instructors during class.
“There is always room for us to grow,” she said. “We’re not all experts. Anyone who can volunteer their time for a monthly class or whatever they can offer is appreciated.”
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