MWSF

Midwest Social Forum Holds Organizing Teach-in

by Marc Becker
April 3, 2008

Over 150 activists from throughout the Midwest gathered the last weekend of March 2008 for Organizing Communities Across Boundaries: An Organizing Teach-in. The weekend sought to build collaborative relationships and develop organizing skills to bridge the divides that segment social justice movements.

A struggle that social movements face is to break from hierarchies and out of “silos” that divide people from each other. Activists need to move from protest actions, which often react against oppression, to developing and presenting visions of where we want to go. Social movements are also moving away from the control of foundations that often limit activism through funding restrictions.

Planning Committee member Patrick Barrett noted that not only are skills important, but we also need to build relationships. Big gatherings are good for gaining a sense of being part of something bigger, but small gathering is designed to help us build relationships.

Taylour Johnson and Ashok Kumar from the Liberty Tree Foundation for the Democratic Revolution lead a workshop on how to organize students on campus. How do we build institutional power structures on campus so that we do not have to keep recreating models from one generation to the next? How do we make our organizations about movement building rather than just being a social club?

Taylour and Ashok begin the discussion by talking about examples from UMass and Quebec of students successfully organizing and gaining their demands. Ashok made a distinction between reformist reforms such as a living wage campaign that gains a specific demand but does not build a movement, and non-reformist reforms that go toward building a movement so that the organizing efforts do not collapse after gaining a specific demand. This leads to the importance of building institutions that will last forever.

At the immigrant rights caucus, we identified the key issues that we see facing immigrants:

Over 100 activists gathered yesterday for the Organizing Communities Across Boundaries: An Organizing Teach-in sponsored by the Midwest Social Forum. The purpose of the weekend meeting is to build collaborative relationships and develop organizing skills to bridge the divides that segment the social justice movement.

Almost a thousand community activists, workers, students, educators, and others committed to making a better, more just world possible gathered in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in July for the 2006 Midwest Social Forum (MWSF). The MWSF is an annual gathering in the Midwestern United States that provides an open space for exchanging experiences and information, strengthening alliances and networks, and developing effective strategies for progressive social, economic, and political change.