- ORGANIZE: Solidarity in Theory and Practice

Catalog description

An exploration of the history, theory, and practice of grassroots organizing. Often the response to overwhelming systemic injustice—from climate change, to gender-based violence, to labor exploitation, to carceral terror—is to organize. But what is organizing? How is it different from activism or advocacy? What can today’s organizers learn from grassroots social, religious, and political movements of the past? How do organizers navigate conflicts around strategy, leadership, and identity? This interdisciplinary course explores these questions as live political and social questions worked out through practice and experimentation. Students gain familiarity with classic debates about organizing process, analyze how these questions manifest in lived contexts, and apply what they have learned to a concrete project of their own choosing.