A Space for Political Education?

How different from Highlander, Citizenship and MS Freedom Schools!  Bernice Robinson said that "the Civil Rights Movement was built on the foundation of the Citizenship Schools."

See excerpts from Volume II of The Occupied Wall Street Journal Below (Thanks Chia and Katherine)

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From  Manissa McCleave Maharawal

Manissa McCleave Maharawal is a doctoral student in the Anthropology department at the CUNY Graduate Center. She is also a longtime New York City based activist.

October 4, 2011

And when I left [the occupy wall street gathering] ... I felt something pulling me back to that space. ..... I think this is what Occupy Wall Street is right now: less of a movement and more of a space. It is a space in which people who feel a similar frustration with the world as it is and as it has been are coming together and thinking about ways to recreate it. For some people this is the first time they have thought about how the world needs to be recreated.

....Maybe this is how movements need to maintain themselves, by recognizing that political change is also fundamentally about everyday life and that everyday life needs to encompass all of this. There needs to be a space for a talent show across from anti-patriarchy meetings. There needs to be a food table, medics, and a library. .... And that within all this we will keep talking about Troy Davis and how everyone is affected by a broken, racist, oppressive system. Maybe, maybe this is the way?   

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From a friend of a friend October 9, 2011

Optimism from the Usually Less Optimistic Cindy Milstein:
Occupied Wall Street seemed, to me, an incoherent, contentless, disorganized mess when it first started; now, some 3 weeks into it, people have stumbled through an accelerated learning curve. Here's a report on last night's results from my dear friend Joshua Stephens: "Last night, I was part of a nearly 3hr meeting that involved coordination of direct action trainings, legal strategy education, political education, historical education, support strategies for teachers of color in NYC, skillshares & theater to combat patriarchal behavior in organizing, support for indigenous remembrance in opposition to Columbus Day, and means of putting the struggles of marginalized communities in NYC at the center of it all. This involved management of TWO google groups, multiple schedule tracks of classes, 3-4 web calendars integrated into one web platform, and fuck knows how many twitter feeds. It also involved liaising, federation, and mutual support between no fewer than five thematic working groups and adherence to principles laid out by a directly-democratic general assembly. The next time you hear someone say Occupy Wall Street is disorganized, please slap them."

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Excerpts from Volume II of The Occupied Wall Street Journal