Mpls
Radical Pedagogy for Teachers, EXCO Facilitators, Youth Workers, Community Educators and Organizers
This course will explore how teaching and pedagogy can create radical learning spaces for disrupting power, movement building and moblization.
The first half of the course will explore how capitalism, whiteness, heteronormative gender oppression, ageism, and other forms of oppression impact our abilities to create transformative learning spaces. We will address the issues we find most salient to our particular teaching/organzing contexts, make connections related to teaching and learning across these varied contexts. We will gear the readings and discussions toward those issues and connections. During the second half of the session, we will build our facilitator and pedagogical skills through practice, learn and share strategies and tactics for facilitating in anti-oppressive ways, and find concrete ways to further support each other in our future pedagogical work.
This class is for anyone who facilitates or wants to facilitate meetings, classrooms, youth programs, and other learning spaces.
We can address some of the following questions, depending on interest:
How can we productively address oppressive discourses as they arise in a learning space?
How do systems of oppression constrain our learning spaces, and how can we address some of these constraints through pedagogy?
What is learning, how do we know when it's happening, and how do we make it productive for social struggles?
How do we mobilize people through pedagogy?
How do we address the dominant, individualizing discourses that can shape the way we and others approach teaching and learning?
Class will consist of 10-25 pages of weekly reading and discussion, and snacks!
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The Flowing Tiger: A Modern Approach to Self Defense
The course is designed to teach students proven-effective techniques at defending against real-world threats. Curriculum includes:
-For Women: defending against unwanted advances and prevention.
-Defending against an armed attacker.
-Basic/intermediate striking: punches, kicks, blocks.
-The philosophical aspects of a passive, but strong self-defense
Students will also be asked to do a small research assignment on one aspect of martial arts history or a style that interests them personally.
This is a student-oriented class, specific and personal lessons may be granted upon request.
Location
Screenprinting with Living Proof: Workshop for People of Color
This 2-day workshop will take place Saturday, March 31st and Sunday, April 1st from 1-4pm. thanks!
Participants are invited to join members of the Living Proof Print Collective for a two-day workshop covering the fundamentals of screenprinting exclusively for people of color. We will emphasize Do-It-Yourself (DIY) methods so folks can take their screenprinting skills out into their communities! Because of its DIY nature and capacity to efficiently create multiple copies of an image, screenprinting has historically been an art medium used to widely spread messages. We’re hosting this workshop specifically for people of color as a way to create a space to consider our positions as art-makers in our communities.
The first day, Saturday, March 31st 1-4pm we will focus on designing images to print and exposing screens. The next day, Sunday, April 1st 1-4pm we will be printing and sharing prints! By the end of the workshop, participants will make their image into a one-color print that they can put on paper or fabric to share and post widely and wildly. We will cover print shop basics, introduce materials and alternative inking and printing processes.
We are definitely open to participant input on class structure, though we will be cramming a ton into a short period of time so it would be great to hear from you with any questions or hopes before the actual workshop begins. We will be sending out some prep materials before the workshop and we encourage you to check these out to be more prepared for class when it starts.
IMPORTANT: Due to space limitations, we can only allow 6 participants for this 2-day workshop. Please sign up only if you can attend both days, in addition to self-identifying as a person of color and/or indigenous. We are planning to offer these again in the future so just let us know if you're interested in future workshops and we'll keep you in the loop.
Location
Información de Cáncer
los miercoles, 5-7pm
Descubrir el cáncer y sobrevivir. Ésta clasees para todos que tienen interés en cáncer. Información cómo superar del cáncer y de la depresión. Será un grupo para discutir experiencias, para aprender ideas de la cura nuestras vidas diarias... ejercició para reanimarse, medicinas naturales
Midwest French, Francophone & Francophile Festival & Convention Discussion & Planning Series
Planning meetings for the Midwest French, Francophone & Francophile Festival & Convention set for September 28 and 29 are open to the public at DeLaSalle High School (Nicollet Island) from 5:00-6:30 on Feb. 2 & 16; and March 8.
Enter the school through the door at the far end of the parking lot, the one closest to down town Mpls. A sign inside will tell you what room to look for.
January 19 (Franco-Americans), or separately by appointement on Jan. 20.
Feb. 2 (France), or separately by appointment on Feb. 3.
Feb.16 (Africa, Haiti), or separately by appointment on Feb. 17.
March 8 (Michif and other interested cultural groups related to la Francophonie), or separately on March 9.
We will be discussing and planning for the September convention at which Franco-Americans, Francophone Africains, French, Haitians, Metis, and Francophiles will present their
communities and heritage.
Everyone is Welcome to any of these meetings!
On Debt: An Anti-capitalist Reading Group
A reading group around issues of debt, starting with David Graeber's recent book, Debt: The First 5000 Years. Here's a blurb about the book:
Before there was money, there was debt
Every economics textbook says the same thing: Money was invented to replace onerous and complicated barter systems—to relieve ancient people from having to haul their goods to market. The problem with this version of history? There’s not a shred of evidence to support it.
Here anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom. He shows that for more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods—that is, long before the invention of coins or cash. It is in this era, Graeber argues, that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors.
Graeber shows that arguments about debt and debt forgiveness have been at the center of political debates from Italy to China, as well as sparking innumerable insurrections. He also brilliantly demonstrates that the language of the ancient works of law and religion (words like “guilt,” “sin,” and “redemption”) derive in large part from ancient debates about debt, and shape even our most basic ideas of right and wrong. We are still fighting these battles today without knowing it.
Debt: The First 5,000 Years is a fascinating chronicle of this little known history—as well as how it has defined human history, and what it means for the credit crisis of the present day and the future of our economy.
Location
Restore Urban Land with Native Wild Gardens
This workshop meets regularly on 36th St and Oakland Ave S (on the SW side of the intersection) on Thursdays at 11AM where we are gardening several species of native plants. We will be going on regular trips to surrounding areas for plant identification. We are planning on making seed bombs soon.
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This workshop is for those interested in healing some of the abused landscape we find ourselves in. This healing means returning land to a state more similar to the natural landscape of northern climates while serving utility to creatures who live in the urban area, particularly those of hominid ancestry (who currently have difficulty procuring energy from native plants and/or without assistance of oil-based and oppressive technologies) as well as the many creatures displaced by humans.
The goal of this group is to appropriate abused land (such as land that has been paved over or plagued by non-native plants) using native, 'wild' and perennial plants native to the region.
This workshop has no facilitation, therefore the direction and scheduling of the workshop is ultimately up to those participating - though the workshop is intended for those interested in actually playing on the land, not only discussing it.
Location
Twitter 101
What is Twitter, and how can you use it effectively to connect with your friends, colleagues, and - for business owners - potential customers? Go from being a novice to a power user by taking this two-hour class from Jay Gabler, associate editor of the Daily Planet, who was voted #1 best tweeter of 2011 by the readers of Vita.mn.
Tuition for this class is $10, but scholarships are available upon request. Register at TheDatabank.com:
https://www.thedatabank.com/dpg/262/donate.asp?formid=TCM-Event&c=8435870
Location
Bread!
This is a class about baking bread. We will start with the foundations and learn through practice and experiments. We'll build our own wild yeast starters to make sourdough, practice kneading together, and work with different flours, proportions, and shapes. Roll your sleeves up and rise to the occasion! You doughn't want to miss this great bread class!
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