Community Learning
The Community Learning Initiative (CLI) bridges the gap between the classroom and the outside world by creating partnerships with community-based organizations, groups and individuals – as well as other NYU programs – in addressing real world problems and devising and implementing practical solutions. Our goal is to push the envelope on what rigorous classroom discussion and community/university collaborations look like. We want to bring together the best of what participatory action research, community mapping, service learning, and popular education has to offer.
Examples of courses include
Mapping for Social Change
K45.1420, René Poitevin
The goal for this course is to learn how to use Geographic Information Systems (GIS), the state of the art in mapping technology, as a tool for community organizing and public policy analysis. Among the specific skills we’ll learn are how to geocode addresses, and how to do spatial analysis to measure whether communities needs are being met or not. And last but not least, we will also learn how to use census data to map the racial and income composition of NY neighborhoods. The semester ends with a closer look at the uses and limitation of GIS for helping communities mobilize to improve their day-to-day lives and to enhance their capacity to influence over time the future trajectories of politics, markets, and civic life.
Shifting Focus: Video Production and Community Activism
K45.1445, Mark Read
From the taping of the police beating of Rodney King to the burgeoning growth of Independent Media Centers around the world, video has become an essential tool of social struggle. This course will be a hands-on class in video production in the service of progressive social change. Class time will be used to: examine the biases of corporate-controlled media; learn the theory and history of video activism; develop basic camera and editing skills; and reflect on lessons learned in the field. Outside of class students will break into groups and collaborate with local community organizations in the conception and production of a short video piece, and subsequently strategize with those organizations about how to most effectively use video in their particular struggles. Readings will include selections from Noam Chomsky, Robert McChesney and Thomas Harding.
Immigrant Rights
K45.1456, Sarumathi Jayaraman
In the last twenty years immigrants from an ever-increasingly diverse set of countries continue to flood the United States to find work to support their families, as the federal government simultaneously strips these immigrants of their rights as workers and residents of our nation. This course will outline basic immigration patterns in the last century, fundamental changes in the law that have affected these immigrants, including the drastic changes implemented after September 11th, and the ways in which immigrant workers are organizing in the workplace and elsewhere to sustain rights they have and win even more. As field placements, students will be working with immigrant workers’ centers that organize immigrant workers in different industries citywide.