Politics & Organizing
Perspectives on Imprisonment
The U.S. prison population rose by 700% from 1970 to 2005, a rate far outpacing that of the general population growth and crime rates. This statistic describes the expansion of the prison industrial complex (PIC), a system of government and business interests that use surveillance, policing, and prisons to solve economic, social and political problems. In this 8-week course, we will learn about how the PIC has grown in the last 30 years and talk about this system’s impacts. We will discuss the ways people of color, poor people, queer people, immigrants, and other oppressed communities have been made criminal and learn about acts of resistance to the PIC. We will share our stories with each other and identify possibilities for action. Snacks provided.
The first half hour of each week will be spent in circle to give space for people to share their lived experiences with criminalization, structural violence, and imprisonment. The hour and a half following this will include a mix of lecture, group discussion, film screenings, and creative activities (free writes, poetry reading, etc). There will be recommended reading for the course, but the facilitator will do her best to choose accessible and concise articles and will provide copies of all readings to participants at no cost. While the instructor sees herself as a prison abolitionist, all viewpoints and perspectives are welcome in the classroom. She will work to build a space where people with diverse lived experiences feel welcome and supported to share their stories. While she anticipates some difficult conversations, she will do her best to facilitate constructive and respectful discussion. Snacks will be provided each week and travel stipends are available if transportation costs present a barrier to your participation. All participants are strongly encouraged to attend as many classes as possible and to communicate with the facilitator if you are not able to attend.
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Advancing our movements: Lessons from Los Panchos, an urban housing justice and popular resistance movement
This course will facilitate the collective discovery of how to carry social movements forward, using the Popular Independent Front of Francisco Villa (FPFVI-UNOPII a.k.a. Los Panchos) as a case study. Los Panchos are a housing justice and popular resistance movement based in Mexico City.
The course will have two main components: First, we will learn about how Los Panchos continue to advance their movement after 25 years of resistance organizing. We will consider the three elements of Los Panchos organizing: Science, Culture, and Political Formation. Each element plays a role in how their organization continues to grow their movement. Second, we will assess what lessons we can learn from Los Panchos and translate them to advance our own movements.
The course will be a mix of readings, class discussions, and activities using a popular education approach. It is designed to incorporate praxis, focusing on how to put theory into practice. Therefore, participants are encouraged to be involved in change-making work in some capacity, although all are welcome. Class activities will use the ideas we learn in class and apply them to the organizations and movements we are a part of. The goal of the course is to create stronger and more sustainable resistance movements here in the Twin Cities and beyond.
Questions we will explore include:
- What do we need to do to carry our movements forward?
- How do we use education for social change?
- How do we foster cultures of resistance?
- How do we develop political consciousness and build commitment?
Please contact me if you have any questions or thoughts regarding the course. Thanks for checking it out!
- Andrew
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Exploring Global Governance:
The basis of this class focuses on the concept of governance on the global level. Some of the questions that we will be addressing will concern the reason, purpose, and need for global governance combined together with its future. Whenever we attempt to take a closer look at the rest of the outside world, we begin to realize that the conduction of human affairs is becoming increasingly interconnected on a worldly scale. Economics, diplomacy, and the distribution of technology is carried on a worldwide basis and the means in which each category is conducted surpasses the territorial boundaries of nations each literal second of the hour!
Internationalism presents itself as the initial means that distinguishes the face of the modern world and those who are not on board are usually isolated to a single boundary leaving them as a second rate sphere of influence. Therefore, in the beginning of the class, we will try to determine if the conduct of international affairs is similar to the means in which personal relationships are formed among individual human beings. Ultimately, we seek to postulate the following: aren't nations consolidated social structures that generate a greater form of identity that brings out the individuals that reside all within their designated boundaries?
IMMIGRATION REFORM: CHANGING U.S. LAWS
IMMIGRATION REFORM:
CHANGING U.S. LAWS
The United States of America has serious problems related to immigration.
This cyber-seminar will acknowledge all of these problems,
but it will not dwell on what is wrong with the present laws and practices,
since the problems are all well known
to anyone who is paying enough attention to want to join this seminar.
Less well discussed are the various ways to solve the problems of immigration,
without doing serious harm to any of the human beings involved
and without unintentionally creating new problems
by means of the new laws and regulations
that were supposed to solve the original problems.
This cyber-seminar takes place by means of a Facebook Group,
which has the same name: IMMIGRATION REFORM: CHANGING U.S. LAWS.
Each week a new theme is introduced by the facilitator.
Then all of the others in the FB Group are invited to respond
with questions, comments, & further thoughts on the same theme.
The major advantage of having a Facebook Group
over having an e-mailing list is that the participants
can get to know one another better,
since many do use their real faces on Facebook.
Even if they use some other picture or icon,
each member of this seminar has a different visual symbol.
When a member of the Facebook Group writes something,
it is sent to all of the other members by means of e-mail.
And because most comments are in response to a specific discussion-starter,
they appear in the Facebook display
under the posting to which the member is responding.
Group members may also start new lines of discussion if that appeals to them.
And the responses to those new ideas will also appear under the original posting.
Thus, it will be possible for someone
who has been out of touch with the group for a week or so
to catch up with the discussion by posting responses to each of the essays
Indigenous Imperative: Native Thought and its Implications in the age of IDLE NO MORE
Location: Macalester College, Old Main, Room 003
The premise of the course is that our future is not only ecological but indigenous. We will be looking at not only the Six Nations Confederacy, but several other cultural and political powers in the western hemisphere including the Hopi, the Ojibway, the Inca, the Maya, Aztecs and many others. One of the goals of this course will be to not only push the envelope but get rid of the envelope. No discussion of our problems or potentials is possible without our indigenous center. Forget casino gambling, fry bread, pow wows, Sherman Alexie's cynical novels, and all of the other caricatures of first nations people. Rather we are going to vigorously look at the loose medicine bundle of values and cultures which evolved on this continent called sacred turtle island. We will advocate for a robust restoration of native teachings while turning inward to examine each of our own indigenous roots.
NOTE: Ray does not use email all that much so calling is preferred.
Also due to some times in the past with people leaving part way through the session Ray is requesting that participants sign up with the full intent to attend every class session. He is willing to write any class participant a letter of recommendation upon completion of the class. Please only sign up if you plan to make it to almost every class.
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Mexican Social Movements
My class will be on current Mexican social movements, starting with the Zapatistas/EZLN. Will also learn about the Oaxacan teachers struggle/APPO, the killings of women, in north border, in Juarez & Chihuahua, & the current evets happening.
Indigenous Imperative: Native Thought and its Implications for Our Future
Location: Macalester College, Old Main
The premise of course is that our future is not only ecological but indigenous. We will be looking at not only the Six Nations Confederacy,but several other cultural and political powers in the western hemisphere including the Hopi, the Ojibway, the Inca, the Maya, Aztecs
and many others. One of the goals of this course will be to not only push the envelope but get rid of the envelope. No discussion of our problems or potentials is possible without our indigenous center. Forget casino gambling, fry bread, pow wows, Sherman Alexie's cynical novels, and all of the other caricatures of first nations people. Rather we are going to vigorously look at the loose medicine bundle of values and cultures which evolved on this continent called sacred turtle island. We will advocate for a robust restoration of native teachings.
NOTE: Ray does not use email all that much so calling in preferred.
Also due to sometimes in the past with people leaving part way through the session Ray is requesting that participants sign up with the full intent to attend every class session. He is willing to write any class participant a letter of recommendation upon completion of the class. Please only sign up if you plan to make it to almost every class.
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21st-Century Propaganda: Thought Control in A Democracy
This six-week course will offer an unconventional definition of Propaganda as it functions in U.S. society in the 21st Century. Although the premise of the class is that Propaganda permeates the entire intellectual culture, the focus will be on the mass media. Along the way we’ll do a bunch of fun and challenging exercises, working in small groups and doing as much homework as people want to do. (Maybe none.) We’ll consider how Propaganda affects social change work, learn how to protect ourselves from the dangers of Propaganda and how to begin to neutralize the power of Propaganda in the culture at large. We’ll look a bit at Public Relations theory and what I like to call the Public Relations-ization of U.S. culture. We’ll be learning a bit about systems analysis and the functioning of the structures and processes that are built into the modern media environment. By the end of the course, I hope we’ll all have a better understanding of how Propaganda works, how it affects our lives, and how to spot it and disarm it. The only requirement will be interest in the subject—no prior knowledge will be required to understand any of the concepts we’ll be covering.
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Before Occupy: Horizontalism and Social Movements in Argentina
In this class we'll study the experiences of egalitarian social movements in Argentina. After December 2001, Buenos Aires became well known among activists around the world for its experiments in radical democracy, as worker-run factories, unemployed workers' movements, and neighborhood assemblies inspired far-flung radical imaginations. As a class, we'll learn more about how these movements work, what their successes and failures have been, and how they negotiate class, gender, and nationality.
Depending on participants' interests, we'll read about the movements, learn about the 2001 collapse in Argentina, think about the context in Argentina that supported these movements (and our own context in the US), Skype with Argentine activists, and/or design solidarity projects with our compañeros and compañeras down south. This is popular education, so exactly what we learn and how is up to all of us!
Popular Education in Movement History, Theory, and Practice
This EXCO class will be a weekly seminar on popular education. We’ll engage with the history of popular education in the Twin Cities and globally, learning how it has been embedded in radical movements as well as discussing the critiques of, and challenges with, pop ed.
Participants will take turns leading discussions of readings, films, audioclips, curriculum, with an intentional focus of developing both ourselves and a usable curriculum or database of resources for a popular education center at the Minnehaha Free Space.
We will invite outside folks experienced in popular education and militant research to come lead some seminars, as well as give whoever wants to a chance to do so. We will keep track of readings and other resources so that they are accessible in the future.
Here's an example of one way to visualize a popular education approach -- as a 'spiral':
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