Activism course, session #1- October 11, 2011:

We started with rotating 1-on-1 conversations, discussing which seasons we liked best and one thing we liked and didn’t like about each of them. The purpose was to connect individually with each other before ‘getting down to business’.

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This was followed by an exercise designed to explore some key things that might have brought us together here: filling out the four parts of a circle, each different aspects of ourselves. It was not meant to only be things relevant to ‘activism’, but things that were important to us as whole people, as human beings. Due to time restraints, we only shared some of what we’d written.

Following that, we talked about a concept of ‘messaging’ that is about connecting with relevance to the people you’re addressing, rather than talking about what is important to you/your group.

Whiteboard - messaging

The three key aspects of this approach are to determine:
- who it is you’re talking with (‘niche’/'target’/important characteristics)
- what is their key concern/problem/need that you are addressing
- where do you get them to in relation to that (more of an ‘end result’ as compared with a ‘how’/'what you do’)

This was directed into a ‘going deeper’ exercise where we explored individual interests in participating in the course – what they were looking to get out of it by the time it was over, where they wanted to be (or, more broadly, the type of change they were envisioning in their group or society).

In small groups, we brainstormed about the values in the ‘process’ of activism or creating social change (and we’ll return to this exploration of values in future weeks).

The brainstorming was prefaced by a discussion of the term/principle, “prefigurative” – meaning to model in the present, in the way we work and interrelate, the types of behaviour we would like to have in a future society. This could be expressed as ‘the means create the ends’ (instead of the ends justifying the means), or ‘being the change’ (instead of achieving the change). And there was discussion about how this can be accomplished both in temporary large scale settings (like gatherings where people live and organize by different values from normal society) or in more ongoing yet smaller groups or initiatives (with even this course as an example, as we were modelling a participative, unauthoritarian learning environment, instead of the mainstream approach used most of the time in schools and elsewhere).

And it was followed by reading/discussing a list of conditions for creating a positive learning environment, from pages 46-47 of Joan Kuyek’s book ‘Community Organizing: A Holistic Approach‘ (the unofficial textbook for this course, available at Octopus Books). This was meant to foster thinking about how ‘abstract values’ might be applied in concrete situations/processes or to specific goals.

The evening ended with a brief discussion on what people would most be interested in learning as we moved forward in the course, and a bit on setting up the online component of the course.

The key things identified to explore further:

  • strategic approaches to activism/social change
  • understanding group dynamics, generating energy/enthusiasm, outreach
  • examining motivations (including the role of guilt)
  • case studies, for lessons on what works (and what doesn’t)

 

Upcoming resource materials:

Strategy:

Group dynamics:

Case study #1 – Independent Media Center network

 

Note: Please add any comments you might have below:
- on anything from the class,
- on further thoughts/questions on any of the concepts mentioned,
- or on anything you find particularily noteworthy/’follow-up-able’ from the resource materials ….

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