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The National School for Strategic Organizing
The Labor/Community Strategy Center in
Los Angeles
is recruiting applicants for the National School for Strategic Organizing,
an advanced program in the strategy and tactics
of
building left social
movements.
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"If you are ready, then know that the Center, and the Bus Riders
Union 'fight to win'. We've done it by building a militant Civil
Rights and environmental justice movement of the masses that is vibrantly
internationalist, intergenerational, pro-feminist and multilingual."
- Daniel Won-gu Kim, Class of 2001 |
2007
Application due April 15th click here
What is the school like?
What are our campaigns?
Who are we looking for?
Approach to Pedagogy
What assistance is available?
Application Information
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What is the National School like?
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Tammy Bang Luu, Class of '01,
organizing youth around the Student Pass campaign |
The School combines a variety of experiences:
(1) Classes and readings on political and organizing theory
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political education seminars on analysis of the mainproblems we face in the world today as well as approaches to strategy and tactics
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organizers' exchanges with campaign veterans where you learn our
theory of transformative organizing and examine the specificity
of tactics needed for building organizations
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case study workshops on historic campaigns, making history in
the present
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briefings on campaign development
(2) Direct participation in ongoing mass campaigns
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on-the-bus organizing
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area work teams that integrate theory and practice within tactical plans
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learning the Center's approach to 'counter-hegemonic' demand development
and methods of building a leadership core and community allies
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learning to assess different phases of a campaign: when to escalate, when to retreat, how to consolidate gains and victories
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on-going self evaluation aided by a close working relationship with an assigned mentor and supervisor
Through theory-driven social practice, organizers in the School learn flexibility to move with the twists and turns of organizing and discipline to structure time for work, study, reading, writing, and reflection.
"Time,
place and conditions—three words that will always remind me
of the Center. This work is incredibly dynamic—dialectical
materialism dictates constant reassessment and reading of conditions
and contextualizing those conditions within a history of evolving
contradictions. This necessitates constantly reexamining where
we stand and being responsive to the evolutions."
- Vanessa Moses, Class of 2005 |
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In what campaigns is the work situated?
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March demanding U.S. sign Kyoto Accords |
Concretely, organizers at the National
School will participate in one of our mass campaigns, such as the Bus
Riders Union (BRU), which challenges corporate-driven transit policy while
engaged in direct on-the-bus organizing to build a vibrant multiracial, multilingual,
intergenerational organization on wheels. Through the BRU and other projects participants
in the School will help build economic, political, and cultural alternatives
through concrete victories that build new communities. Participants will be involved in the following current
campaigns:
- Bus Riders Union's Fight Transit Racism/Billions for Buses Campaign
- Clean Air, Clean Lungs, Clean Buses Campaign—making a link between
toxic pollution in communities of color and participating in an international
movement to reverse global warming
- Community Rights Campaign—challenging the criminalization of Black
and Latina/o communities, working with Black and Latino high school
youth to challenge the 'pre-prison' tracking system
- Take the Initiative Campaign—educating and mobilizing voters with
hard-hitting materials that challenge right-wing ideology and help
defeat reactionary California ballot initatives
Other work in which organizers-in-training may be involved includes:
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Community graphics and Make History media project
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Organizing through teatro, improvization and dramatization
- Web and electronic organizing
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Agit-props development, writing and designing materials
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Legal work for the on-going federal oversight of the MTA
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Political education programs
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Frontlines Press and AhoraNow commentaries
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Documentation and archiving
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Voices from the Frontlines radio
The work is extremely intensive and very
rewarding. Complete focus on this submersion experience at the School
is expected.
"The
Center allows me to combine hip-hop and civil rights, national liberation
and my commitment to fighting for the survival of people of African
descent as well and my sistas and brothers around the world. We
come out of the Black political tradition that talks about self-determination
and land. We talk about the particular histories of oppressed
peoples and their relationships and demands against what Martin
Luther King Jr. described as the worst purveyor of violence in the
world today."
-Damon Azali, Class of 2001
& Community Rights Campaign Lead Organizer
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Who are we looking for?
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March on City Hall demanding Mayor Hahn buy clean fuel buses and increase access to student passes |
We are looking for organizers who want
to create a fusion between left politics and transformative organizing.
Our daily work challenges the dominant values and culture of the society,
and transforms the people with whom we organize while transforming organizers
in the process. We want people who already have
experience as organizers and understand the flexibility and patience needed
in this work. We value the quality of humility, a willingness to
learn from experienced organizers, veteran bus riders and leaders of oppressed-nationality
working class communities. At the same time, we need people with the experience,
initiative, and confidence to contribute constructive, innovative ideas
to the organization.
The National School accepts classes of
up to six students. The next term will begin July 16, 2007 and run for
six months. Organizers-in-training who do an excellent job are encouraged
to stay another six months. Our work takes place within the Black, Latino,
and Korean communities of Los Angeles. The class of 2007 will be selected
to strengthen our work in these communities; therefore, applicants with Spanish
and/or Korean language proficiency and/or prior organizing experience
in the Black community are strongly encouraged to apply. People
of color, especially women, are given priority. We also encourage those
with publications distribution, website development, and outreach, administration
and fundraising skills to apply.
Are you looking for affiliation
with a political organization?
Our primary goal is to recruit organizers
to the politics and work of the Strategy Center. The School of course
also functions as a training center for organizers in a broader movement,
and many of our graduates are doing great work with other movement organizations
and projects throughout the United States. But the majority of our graduates
have chosen to live and work with us in Los Angeles, and our first objective
is to attract people who could envision a long-term future in L.A., one
six month increment at a time, working to build the work of the Center
and its key projects.
"When
I organized on the buses I confronted so much of the self-hatred
and right-wing-taught assumptions of our society that shaped my
life in the projects of Houston...this summer here has been about
growing in a space where I feel assured, safe, proud and confident
in my politics, beliefs and values."
- Cynthia Rojas, Class of 1998 |
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What is the National School's approach to pedagogy?
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Sanyika Bryant, Class '03, speaking at
Ahora Now Forum
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The National School for Strategic Organizing
is rooted in the Strategy Center's long-term organizing campaigns that
demand comprehensive, structural and increasingly international solutions
to the problems of urban poverty, racism, national oppression, environmental
degradation, and the escalating attacks on workers, women, peoples of
color and immigrants.
Based on the premise that 'social being creates social
consciousness,' the School is designed to create opportunities for people
in the course of struggle in a mass campaign to share experiences about
how the political system works. The School is structured to teach
a model of conscious organizing situated within an overall strategy and
tactics. It teaches the tools of organizing technique and of inquiry into
working class life. It seeks to instill simultaneously a capacity for
critical thinking and a readiness to imagine future possibilities for
common struggle and social change. In this context, we are all learning
all the time. Therefore, the School is always evolving in response to
what we learn, and those accepted to the class of 2007 will now be contributors
to that process.
We call this site of learning inside
a social movement a 'school of social life'. Learning is generated by
daily organizing practice. Knowledge is created through action and reflection.
Every component of time here can be a period for self-reflection, in addition
to the structured format for political education and organizer training.
"I
have spent my life trying to find the connection between pedagogy
and organizing, between feminism, civil rights, anti-imperialism,
and socialism. Now I am committed to using my experience to help
transform a new generation of organizers. Every class teaches
me new things as I teach the ever changing social theory of the
international Left project."
- Lian Hurst Mann, co-coordinator,
National School for Strategic Organizing |
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Carla Gonzalez, Class '03, at
Pride Parade |
Assistance is provided in the form of:
The NSSO is an experiment, a Movement
Graduate School. While students at the establishment's academy pay enormous
stipends and come out with little knowledge and onerous financial debt,
our graduates live modestly, learn a lot, and have all their major expenses
covered. It is a honor to be accepted, and our participants understand
the responsibility and demonstrate a great work ethic and sense of appreciation
of the opportunity.
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Application Information
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For further information on applications, deadlines and all aspects of theschool please contact Tammy Bang Luu.
Applications are due April 15th,
2007.
The program runs from
July 16, 2007 through December 20, 2007.
National School for Strategic Organizing
Labor/Community Strategy Center
3780 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 1200; Los Angeles, CA 90010
phone: (213) 387-2800 fax: (213) 387-3500
e-mail: school@thestrategycenter.org &
tammy@thestrategycenter.org |
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