TABLE OF CONTENTS:
1.  Please join us at PTO!!  A SPECIAL EFFORT CONTINUES
2.  FROM THE EDITOR: A FEW WEB-BASED MATERIALS
3.  LINKS TO POPULAR EDUCATION BLOGS
4.  UPDATES ON FUTURE SOCIAL FORUMS (MWSF update)
5.  WHERE POPULAR EDUCATORS WILL GATHER
6.  LINKS TO POPULAR EDUCATION WEB SITES AND ONLINE BOOKSTORES
7. QUOTE OF THE MONTH

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1.  THE SPECIAL EFFORT TO GATHER POPULAR EDUCATORS AT THE PTO CONFERENCE IN MINNEAPOLIS MAY 31 – JUNE 3, 2007CONTINUES
 
Please join us at PTO!! The special effort to encourage popular educators to gather at next years annual Pedagogy and Theater of the Oppressed Conference to be held in Minneapolis May 31 – June 3, 2007.  Come together, share what you do, learn from others, and join us in celebration. 
        Plans are for two half-day pre-conferences on Thursday, May 31, a morning introductory session on Pedagogy of the Oppressed and an afternoon session, A Popular Educator Practitioner Workshop.  (There are several pre- and post-conference Theater of the Oppressed options featuring Augusto Boal and/or Julian Boal, and others.) 
        We are also working with the planners to increase the opportunities for participant dialogue, and to help move the conference beyond the familiar “talking heads” formats, to make it more of a “gathering” than a conference.
        For information and the call for proposals see http://www.ptoweb.org/
 
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2.  FROM THE EDITOR: A FEW WEB-BASED MATERIALS

Some of the most interesting popular education materials I have come across lately are from the Coalition of Immokalee Workers.  In some of the articles on their successful campaign to get Taco Bell to buy tomatoes only from suppliers that pay and treat workers decently I had noted that the Coalition used a popular education method of community organizing.  For some time I have been trying to find out what that meant.  Recently, one of the Twin Cities organizers who worked in Florida on the earlier campaigns, and is now helping to organize the current campaign focusing on McDonalds, shared some copies of materials – in particular a series of “codes” used to animate discussions in organizing the workers, a “Theater Skit,” and a draft of a good article on both the history and methods of the Immokalee Workers, an article that also describes some of the popular education practices used in the organizing campaigns.  The article will soon be published and I am working on a way to share the other materials.  Watch the future issues of this newsletter for information.
 
Exciting News!  Since I have not identifies any new materials to review in this issue, I have delayed getting started putting the issue together.  This morning’s email brought another good reason for the delay.  I just received a note from Michael Newman in Australia, my favorite adult education author, that he has made three of his books available online for free downloads.  They are: Maeler's Regard: Images of Adult Learning; Defining the Enemy: Adult Education in Social Action; and The Third Contract: Theory and Practice in Trade Union Training.  His most recent book, Teaching Defiance: Stories and Strategies for Activist Educators, published last year by Jossey-Bass, was mentioned in the June-July 2006 issue of The Popular Education News.  (I am still hoping to find someone to write a short review for the newsletter.) Several of these books about adult education and social and political action have won awards. 
 

   

 

A Tree of Knowledge

It's not the analysis of neoliberal globalization which is missing, but rather practices of transmitting and exchanging knowledge. Also missing are ways of inspiring people to engage in political action.

 

Political education from below, in the sense of Popular Education, is underdeveloped within the movement of globalization critics. It's not only way more fun than reading texts but also reaches and inspires more people.

 

In these four workshops you can experience and learn about

 

*capitalism and anti-capitalism using methods of popular education

*tools and approaches for training social activists

*how to use these skills within non-hierarchical organizing procesess

• Use the momentum we have built in the Midwest in support of the first United States Social Forum (USSF), scheduled for June 27-July 1 in Atlanta. By ensuring a strong Midwest contingent, we will help build personal relationships and organizational connections between the MWSF and the broader national and international Forum movement.
• Organize a series of more focused follow-up activities aimed at building on the energy generated by the USSF by further developing relationships and movement infrastructure in the Midwest. These activities will include a Caucusing / Organizer Training event in fall 2007, in preparation for the MWSF in the summer of 2008. The fall event also offers an opportunity for those who are unable to go to Atlanta.

• Mobilization for the USSF
• Fall 2007 Caucusing / Organizer Training event
• Midwest Social Forum 2008
• Midwest Social Forum Organizing Structure

• Write [at least one per month] essays, op-eds, news analyses, or other pieces in general audience news sources that serves to educate the wider U.S. public about the USSF, the people it involves, and the issues it addresses;
• Write at least [three] analyses, poems, opinion pieces, announcements, etc. in specialized publications targeting particular audiences of activists, special interest groups, professionals, or other publics who should know about the USSF and/or who can contribute to the work of the USSF;
• Following the USSF, we will do “report back” work – that is, write and speak to help inform the U.S. public about the USSF’s discussions and about how to carry forward the goals of enhancing social movement cooperation and promoting progressive social change in this country;
• Encourage friends and colleagues to make financial contributions to support the USSF.  The costs of this meeting are high, and organizers also seek to raise money to increase participation from low-income activists. Costs will be met through registration fees, donations, and corporate or foundation grants.
• Speak with local journalists and/or activists in your community about the USSF and aid preparations for local participation in and/or media coverage of the forum;

For info: http://www.forumsocialmundial.org.br/

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7. WHERE POPULAR EDUCATORS WILL GATHER
           
March 1-4, 2007, Their Wars Left Behind: Education for Action, The Rouge Forum hosts at Wayne State University, Detroit Michigan.  For info http://www.pipeline.com/~rgibson/rouge_forum/TheirWarsLeft%20Behind.htm  

Spring 2007 (dates not yet set) Cross-border Dialogue on Popular Education and Global Economic Power  Just Associates is collaborating with the Toronto Labour Education Centre and a range of economic justice and workers’ organizations in Mexico, the USA and Canada   http://www.justassociates.org/

March 9-10, 2007 4th Annual (Net)Working Conference on Women & Literacy: Threads of Experience - Creative Spaces for Women's Learning Northeastern University, Boston  A Call for Presenters is out with a deadline Dec 1.  for info http://www.litwomen.org/conference.html

March 9 -11, 2007 Interpreting for Social Justice, Highlander Center, New Market, TN http://www.highlandercenter.org/

April 20-22, 2007 Fourth International Conference of the Popular Education Network, Maynooth Campus of the National University of Ireland For info jim.crowther@ed.ac.uk

April 27 - 28, 2007 Seventh Annual Popular Education Conference: From Crisis to Transformation Contact, The Center for Popular Education and Participatory Research.  Contact cpepr@berkeley.edu for the call for presentations and information.

April 27 - May 6  Undoing Capitalism - Skills for Change (4 workshops), (Methods and tools of popular education for the anticapitalist movement. A ten day workshop and training experience.)  Rosa Luxemburg Foundation in cooperation with the Canadian Union of Postal Workers and Training for Change , Muncheberg OT Trebnitz (nr Belin) http://www.rosalux.de/cms/index.php?id=12502&type=0

May 24-25, 2007 Critical Connections: Education for Social Change International Conference, Queen Margaret University College in collaboration with the Institute for International Health & Development and the School of Social Science, Media & Communications, A call for proposals by theme: Arts for Social Justice (contact sknight@qmuc.ac.uk), Popular Education (contact escandrett@qmuc.ac.uk), Resilience, Rights and Recovery (contact sfustukian@qmuc.ac.uk)  For info www.community-arts.org.uk

May 31 Pre-Conference Workshops:  Pedagogy of the Oppressed (AM) and Popular Education Practitioner’s Workshop (PM) before the Pedagogy and Theater of the Oppressed Conference, Minneapolis (See 1. above).

June 1-3, 2007 13th Annual PTO Conference: "What Does it Mean to be a Citizen" University of Minnesota, Minneapolis http://www.ptoweb.org/

June14-17, 2007 Class Matters: Working-Class Culture and Counter-Culture Annual Conference of the Working-Class Studies Association, Macalester College, St. Paul, Minnesota.  For info  rachleff@macalester.edu

June 14-16 2007 ESREA Active Democratic Citizenship and Adult Learning Network Seminar: Changing Relationships between the State, Civil Society and the Citizen: Implications for adult education and adult learning The Unit for Adult Education (UfAE), University of Minho, Braga, Portugal http://www.uea.uminho.pt

June 21-24, 2007 The Conference - Free Minds, Free People, The Chicago Freedom School Project, the Education for Liberation Network, The Brotherhood/Sister Sol, and the University of Chicago's Center for Urban School Improvement.  (The conference will bring together teachers, youth, parents, researchers and community-based educators from across the country to begin building a movement to develop and promote Education for Liberation.) freeminds@Brotherhood-Sistersol.org

June 22, 2007 Symposium on Popular Education, the first day of the Allied Media Conference, Detroit, Michigan http://www.alliedmediaconference.org/

June 22-24 Allied Media Conference: Breaking Silence, Building Movements, Detroit, Michigan http://www.alliedmediaconference.org/

Aug. 31-Sept. 2, 2007 Highlander's 75th anniversary Celebration, Highlander Center, New Market, TN. http://www.highlandercenter.org/

Sept 20-23, 2007 5th ESREA European Research Conference: Adult Learning and the Challenges of Social and Cultural
Diversity: Diverse Lives, Cultures, Learnings and Literacies , University of Seville and Institute of Paulo Freire of Spain, Seville, Spain http://www.congreso.us.es/cesrea

Dec 2–5, 2007 International Researching Work and Learning Conference RWL5 , Cape Town, South Africa http://rwl5.uwc.ac.za

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8.  LINKS TO POPULAR EDUCATION WEB SITES AND ONLINE BOOKSTORES
(*those with online bookstores)
 
*Catalyst Centre ( www.catalystcentre.ca/index.htm )
*Highlander Center (www.highlandercenter.org )
*Resource Center of the Americas (www.americas.org )
*Growing Communities for Peace ( www.humanrightsandpeacestore.org )
*IPEA (www.peopleseducation.org/ )
Project South (www.projectsouth.org )
Center for Popular Education and Participatory Research ( www.cpepr.info)
Pop Ed Links Directory http://poped.org
WE LEARN: Women Expanding-Literacy Education Action Resource Network (http :// www.litwomen.org/news.html)
Centre for Popular Education ( http://www.cpe.uts.edu.au/)
The Change Agency ( www.thechangeagency.org/index.htm)
Training for Change www.TrainingforChange.org

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9. PROVERB OF THE MONTH