Community Learning
Mapping for Social Change
K45.1420 4 CR R 9:30-12:15 René Francisco 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.
Lyrics on Lockdown
K45.1444 4 CR T 6:20-9:00 Ella Turenne
This course will focus on the uses of the visual arts and spoken word as a tool for positive social change. Through hands-on collaboration with the Blackout Arts Collective—an organization that uses poetry, music, film, theatre and visual arts to educate people on issues around the prison industrial complex—and other grassroots organizations, students will create artistic and dialogical spaces for critically thinking about the crisis of incarceration in this country. Speakers may include representatives of the Prison Moratorium Project and Malcolm X Grassroots Movement. Possible readings include writings by Augusto Boal, Christian Parenti, Manning Marable, Bakari Kitwana, and Bryonn Bain. The course will culminate in a group creative project. Students do not need to be artists to participate in the course, however, creative building will be an integral part of the curriculum.
Shifting Focus: Video Production and Community Activism
K45.1445 4 CR R 2:00-4:45 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.
Introduction to Grassroots Organizing
K45.1449 4 CR R 6:20-9:00 Hany Khalil
Activists seeking progressive social change face daunting obstacles: limited resources, cynicism about the possibilities for social change, conservative worldviews, and powerful opponents, to name a few. To have an impact under these conditions, activists need to learn how to think strategically about how to bring community members together to win changes in oppressive institutions and policies through their own action. This course is an introduction to the nuts and bolts of grassroots organizing. After studying alternative models of community organizing, we will look at how organizers involve community members, select issues, develop local leadership, and plan effective campaign strategies and tactics. We will draw upon organizing theory, case studies, interactive trainings, films on community and labor struggles, conversations with organizers, and observation of community organizing in the field. Readings include Rinku Sen’s Stir It Up: Lessons in Community Organizing and Advocacy; Kim Bobo, et. al., Organizing for Social Change; and Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals. Prior experience in campus or community organizing is desirable but not necessary.
Law and Community Activism
K45.1452 4 CR W 6:20-9:00 Marina Sitrin
As activists and members of society we are confronted by laws all of the time, though we rarely see ourselves as actors in relationship to these laws. Why is that? We are taught that rights have been given by progressive courts, rather than won by popular struggle. Where do rights come from? Are they the same as laws? In this course we will examine the role of popular resistance and its relationship to laws. We will examine concepts of justice, law, obedience and disobedience as we work with community-based organizations. Through our study and discussions in class we will create a base for working in the community, and from working in the community we will create more of an understanding of theory. Three areas students can choose to work in are: community groups using the legal system to advance their goals, groups mobilizing community support to defend against unjust laws, and groups using international human rights standards to shift the discourse around the issue of rights. Readings will range from Howard Zinn and Emma Goldman, to David Kairys and Patricia Williams, as well as excerpts from political trials. We will also read reflections from community groups working with or against laws and segments of legal decisions.
Immigrant Rights
K45.1456 4 CR M 6:20-9:00 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.
Literacy in Action
K45.1460 4 CR M 6:20-9:00 Maura Donnelly
This course combines volunteer work in New York City adult literacy and English as a second language programs with an academic introduction to the philosophy, history, and current issues of basic education. Students will work as volunteer teachers of reading and writing oral English or mentors at such institutions as the University Settlement, Union Settlement, International Rescue Committee, and Fortune Society. In class they will read about and discuss such key issues as which “basic skills” U.S. adults now need, which adults lack these skills and why, the implications for our economy, families, communities, and democracy, the instructional approaches developed for adults, and the steps that might be taken to build support for high-quality, adult basic-skills programs. Throughout the course, students will relate such issues to their own on-site experiences in class discussion and role-playing, and create a portfolio of writing that includes on-site observations, lesson plans, reflections, and a final analytical paper. Readings may include Auerbach's Making Meaning, Making Change; Horton and Freire's We Make the Road by Walking; and the journals, Focus on Basics and The Change Agent.
School Reform, Public Policy, and Human Rights: Making Community Voices Matter
K45.1468 4 CR R 6:20-9:00 Anderson
This course takes a close look at schools in NYC to make sense of the sharp disparity in demographics and resource allocation between the schools at the top and those at the bottom of the public system. We will pursue two questions throughout this semester. First, why is education so important for our understanding of how society―and inequality―work? Second, how can a human rights discourse help move forward the struggle for school reform and social justice? Students will volunteer with organizations such as the Task Force 2009, the Independent Commission on Public Education, and the Independent Borough Education Commissions to organize and mobilize low income communities of color in order to develop concrete policy recommendations for the upcoming 2008 elections. In addition, students will have the chance to meet with community leaders, elected officials, and educators.
