Poverty Scholars Program Leadership School Skills and Organizing Workshops

Poverty Scholars Program Leadership School
Charleston, West Virginia
August 9th -15th, 2009

Skills and Organizing Workshops

ART! WHAT IS THE STATE OF THE ARTS IN MOVEMENT BUILDING?

Participants are welcome to attend all or as many as they choose of these workshops.

Art is one of the most powerful voices within movements.  Whether it is song such as “Which Side Are You One”, Maya Angelou’s poem “And Still I Rise” or the anti-Vietnam image of a man placing a flower in a rifle, art has a way of expressing the ideals of a movement with clarity and focus.  The Art Workshops are an interactive way of engaging the question, “How can I use art?” while strategizing about future endeavors of the artists among us and our place in the movement to end poverty.

Monday:  Working with the artistic media of theatre and song we will create art that will engage us in a discussion about the who-what-where-when-and-how of arts in movement building.  This process will help us to identify the successes and struggles of using art in our work.  Ultimately, we will brainstorm how to grow from individual projects to a longer-term connected strategy.

Wednesday:  Working with the artistic medium of poetry and literature we will explore sources of inspiration that help us do our work.  This strategic session will help us identify how we can work together more closely and support one another.  Ultimately, we will brainstorm what the big picture looks like for art in the movement over the next five years.

Thursday:  Working with the artistic medium of visual arts (as well as examples from some other mediums) we will explore the history of art and social movements.  Not only will this give us an overview of how art has been used but it will help us further strategize the forms art can take in our individual and collective struggles in this movement to end poverty.

 
BUILDING BLOCKS OF AN EMERGENT ORGANIZING MODEL: HUMAN RIGHTS, POLITICAL EDUCATION, AND PROJECTS OF SURVIVAL

Participants are welcome to attend all or as many as they choose of these workshops.

Monday: Movement Building Through Human Rights: What are Human Rights and How Do We Use Them?
This workshop will examine what human rights are, the history of human rights and how groups are using the human rights framework to do community organizing. The National Economic and Social Rights Initiative (NESRI) will help facilitate this workshop as we lay out the framework and tools of human rights organizing and learn from specific examples of organizations like Mayday, New Orleans; the United Workers, Baltimore; CADRE, Los Angeles; and Michigan Welfare Rights Union, Detroit; that have successfully used human rights in their organizing.

Monday: Political Education: Goals, Methods, Theory and Practice
This workshop will explore different methods of Political Education in order to address the importance of Political Education in developing competency, clarity, and commitment in our organizing.  Presenters will share specific tools/exercises that have worked successfully in their organizations for developing leadership, creating awareness, and building a movement. 

Wednesday: Critical Ingredients for Our Housing, Health Care, and Youth Organizing
This workshop will provide a space for participants to first define the ingredients of human rights, political education, and projects of survival and then to integrate them into our organizing around Housing, Health Care, and Youth.  While we focus on the particularities of our local struggles by sharing our best and worst practices and how we use these critical ingredients in our organizing, we will also be challenged to recognize the dependency that each ingredient has on the other and to remember additional ingredients needed in building a sustainable movement to end poverty. 

Thursday: Building a Movement and Creating Public Voice: Truth Commissions, Town Hall Meetings, Public Forums and Political Hearings 
People around the globe recognize that their basic human rights are being violated and are taking a stand against such abuses.  This workshop will highlight the lessons learned by organizations like the Poverty Truth Commission in Scotland, the Shack Dwellers Movement in South Africa, NESRI in the U.S., and Poor Magazine in Berkley, CA and their fight to reveal the truth about poverty and exploitation.  We will discuss how Truth Commissions, Town Hall Meetings, Public Forums and Political Hearings can be used to educate and organize the public in fighting to end poverty. 

 
ECONOMIC CRISIS: HOW DID WE GET IN AND HOW DO WE GET OUT?

We would like to request that participants attend all three sessions of this workshop, allowing us to deepen our discussions and learning.

With rising unemployment and foreclosure rates, the springing up of tent cities, and millions more families falling into poverty, it’s more important than ever that we understand the root causes of the current economic crisis. This track will continue the conversation from the morning plenary session on “Poverty and the Economic Crisis” in more depth.

Monday: Understanding, Researching and Teaching the Current Economic Crisis

Wednesday: Poverty as Structure: Exploring our Economic and Political System

Thursday: Revisiting the Poor People's Campaign: Identifying Alternatives that Ensure Economic Human Rights for All

In these sessions, we will share current data from sources that are free and available over the Internet as well as research techniques for finding, compiling, understanding and presenting this information.

We will explore impoverishment and inequality that result from our economic and political system, discussing the nature of ‘poverty as structure.’  We’ll look at the economic crisis within a longer history of dispossession, exploitation, and denial of economic human rights.  We will discuss:

• Why is the US government bailing out large financial institutions instead of guaranteeing employment and housing for all? 
• What might be wrong with an economic system based on private ownership and a concept of humans as naturally self-interested? 
• If we can’t meet our basic needs due to lack of jobs, inadequate wages, and removal of social safety nets, do we actually have freedom and equal opportunity? 
• What would we have to change for food, housing, health care, and education to be treated as human rights instead of as commodities available to those who can afford them?  What gets in the way of us making these changes?

We will examine the differential impacts of economic crises, poverty and inequality in 1968 and today.  Then we will discuss King's attempts to build a movement of the poor across color lines, which addressed the interconnections between economic exploitation, racism, and militarism.  We’ll also introduce economic human rights as a way of framing our demands to end poverty and build an economic and political system based on justice and equality.  We’ll ask what alternatives a revived Poor People's Campaign might call for today, focusing on a few key issues, such as bank nationalization versus bailout or single-payer universal healthcare.  We will conclude with a collaboration building exercise designed to utilize the EHR framework and challenge issue boundaries.

 
MOVEMENT BUILDING THROUGH MEDIA & COMMUNICATIONS

We would like to request that participants attend all three sessions of this workshop, allowing us to deepen our discussions and learn media skills over the course of the week.

Throughout the course of the Media Track, participants will have the opportunity to watch and listen to powerful examples of movement based media, discuss the ways media and communications can be used to build and strengthen the movement to end poverty, and develop skills in interviewing, storytelling and media making.  Media-making may require the use of time outside of the track for collecting interviews and other material, as well as for video/audio editing or blog posting.

Each Media Workshop session will be split into two parts: a media track plenary and individual media skills sessions.  Participants can choose one of these media skills to focus on throughout the week:

Video

Skills:  Learn how to shoot and edit videos and distribute them on the Web, with the use of flip video cameras, flip camera software, and youtube. Understand the steps and concepts involved in pre-production, production, and post-production.  Develop an awareness of the different ways video can be used to share and connect stories, build relationships, act as a witness, and communicate with many different audiences and individuals.

Product: 3-5 minute web-friendly videos, using interviews and footage captured throughout the course of the leadership school.  The videos will be uploaded to a youtube channel and blog, which groups can continue to use after the Leadership School.

Audio

Skills:  Learn how to create short audio pieces using Merantz recorders and free editing software. Develop confidence in interviewing, using equipment, and building an audio piece for radio or web.  Learn how to set-up a free podcast (audio blog). Create understanding of the many ways audio documentation can be used internally & externally within movement building.

Product: 3-8 minute audio pieces, centered on in-depth interviews with other leaders at the school. Participants will determine their specific area of focus. Final pieces will use ambient sound, music or archival audio to enrich their central interviews. A podcast will be set up for each group, which they can continue to use at home.

Note: we will be using Marantz recorders, but will discuss how to use lower end equipment & provide handout about equipment options for different budgets.
 
Blog

Skills: Develop an understanding of the internet in terms of both broadcast media, social media, and the digital divide. Understand the web as a platform for distributing media, collaborating and research for our organizing. Learn the basics of creating effective blog posts, integrating multi-media. Develop written skills in the format of reflection and interviewing.

Product: A blog space with written documentation and reflection on the immersions.  The blog space will also collect the video and audio produced in the other tracks.  A listserv/group for continued dialogue and development of a national web platform after the school. 

 
New Labor: New Models for Organizing in the 21st Century

This workshop is designed for participants to commit to attending all three days. Please choose to attend the whole workshop.

This workshop is designed primarily as a forum for leaders engaged in what is generally called "new labor" organizing to share knowledge and experience with each other.  With a central focus on the organizing models of the various participating groups, we will focus also on the potential role of new labor in a larger social movement to end poverty.

Monday: We will seek to gain a common understanding of what defines "new labor" through looking at labor from a historical perspective (incorporating the local history of the West Virginia Coal Wars as well as the relationship between labor and the 1968 Poor People's Campaign) and putting current labor struggles within the context of the larger framework of contemporary political economy and in relationship to building a larger social movement.

Wednesday:  (and possibly part of Thursday) a range of groups will present on specific aspects of their organizing models including the following: organizational structure (i.e. how decisions are made, governance structure), constructing campaigns, leadership development (i.e. political education and "learning as we lead"), the role of arts and culture, media, and religion. 

Thursday: We will delve deeper into the various challenges and barriers presented in our struggles.  Time will be given to the specific concerns of participating groups as we spend time looking at case studies and sharing insights.  At the conclusion of this workshop, we will focus on moving forward in terms of helping to build a broader movement to end poverty. 

 
RELIGION AND ORGANIZING

Participants are welcome to attend all or as many as they choose of these workshops and are open to people of all faith traditions and ages.

Monday:  Biblical Stories of Ending Poverty:  Faithful Persistence
This workshop will explore the roles personal spirituality and the Bible in building a movement to end poverty.  Participants will discover various interpretations of the parable of the widow and the unjust judge as a way to discuss how one's faith and values motivate involvement in this movement.  This workshop is open to people of all faith traditions and ages and regardless of whether or not you have attended other workshops in this track.

Wednesday: Biblical Stories of Ending Poverty: Sacred Struggles
Participants will reflect on experiences at Kayford Mountain and Matewan alongside the Biblical story of Naboth's vineyard.  We will discuss the sacredness of land in each of these stories and how our own stories of struggle and movement building are reflected in and similar to Biblical stories of struggle.  This workshop is open to people of all faith traditions and ages and regardless of whether or not you have attended other workshops in this track.

Thursday:  Biblical Stories of Ending Poverty:  Disbelieving Disciples
This workshop will include a textual reflection on "the poor will be with you always" passage in the New Testament, including how this text has been used against us or for us in our community organizing and movement building work. We will also expand on the plenary of the role of religion by discussing particular techniques and experiences of getting religious people and congregations involved in the movement to end poverty and our specific organizing campaigns.