Rolling Earth, movement education

Over time, the standard chants and slogans used on picket lines and in demonstrations, protests, and marches, become stale and cliche. The content gets lost and the music becomes sing-song. The chants have no impact. The whole experience becomes disempowering. This activity takes one chant -- What do we want? When do we want it? -- and "reverse engineers" it to open up a discussion of the goals and expectations of individuals and groups. After all, these are the big questions: What do we want? When do we want it? How can we have an impact?

So, what's this handbook about?

A toolkit

What kinds of activities can I use to help workers learn their rights and develop their ability to organize for democracy and power?

This handbook is first of all a toolkit for educators and activists, a collection of learning activities I used to help workers learn about their legal rights and how to use them to organize for democracy and power in their unions and on their jobs.

I have made some progress: you can now find one activity from each chapter in the handbook: Popular Education for Union Democracy, along with an introductory piece that lists all the activities from that chapter and puts them in context.

Click on the link at left for a full table of contents.

Please let others know about the site and feel free to register and comment.

"Popular Education for Movement Building" or マットの英語でデモクラシー（仮）

I will be teaching a course at PARC's Freedom School in Tokyo, Japan, this May. The course is six sessions, from May to July, 2008. The cost (which may change) is 15,000 yen. The maximum number of participants is 15 people. Contact PARC to register.

It is an English course, but the subject of the class is unique. Here is the course description from PARC, followed by my description of the course in English:
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The Spiral Modeli: This is the spiral model as it appears in Educating for a Change. The image is very widely used.

The spiral model illustrates several important principles of popular education:

• that it begins with the experiences and interests of the participants,

• that the content of the educational process flows from their experience,
• that new information is needed,
  
  

I have been concentrating on The Workers' Inspiration: Popular Education for Union Democracy. My plan is to get the intro section for each chapter and one activity into good enough shape to be viewed by the public.

I had initially planned to make them available only to registered users until they were in more finished form, but that would mean that a new visitor wouldn't really see much, and might not decide to register.

So, though they are not entirely finished, I am making them public in the hopes that they will make the site more useful to people.

By Matt Noyes, adapted from "Power" in Literacy for Empowerment: A resource handbook for community based educators, as adapted from an activity by Barbara Greene of the Mountain Women's Exchange.

Summary:

The Union Power Line: How strong is the union now?

(top row:) Very Strong! 100%!
(middle row:) 50%
(bottom:) Weak, 0%!

(visible columns:) Contracts good and getting better; Hiring halls are fair and effective; Workers active in the union at all levels; Contract enforced, job conditions safe.

Note:

I am collecting activities I have used in my English for Activists courses and other language teaching for a book on Participatory Techniques for Language Learning. Like Popular Education for Union Democracy, to get access to all the activities, and comment on, ask questions about, and contribute to the book, you need to register on this website. See "how to participate."

The book is here.

A collection of participatory activities I have used in teaching English. (As content is added, I will see how best to organize it into broad categories. In the meantime, it may be easiest to navigate by clicking on the tags.)

Comments and suggestions are welcome (gratefully received)!

All content is under a Creative Commons license (see footer).