In Lieu of a Syllabus (Still In Process)

Here is a general discussion of what this class will look like. Please feel free to contact Aaron Schutz, , for more information. When ready, a more formal syllabus will be posted.

This will be a hybrid coursecommunity organizing course that will meet face-to-face for one intensive3-day weekend. The course can be taken at the bachelors, masters, and doctoral levels. I will co-instruct the course with the primary instructor, Carlos Saavedra,a nationally known organizer working to conceptualize how to combine "movement" and "organizing" strategies in social action campaigns. His bio is below. A poster will be forthcoming. Note that while Saavedra's earlier work was with the immigrant rights movement, the focus will be on organizing more broadly, as is his current training work. His website is MovementMastery.org (but it seems down at the moment).

We will be offering the course as Ed Pol 111, 501 (which is in the process of changing to 511), and 711--all which have the title "community organizing" in the title--with appropriate additional work for graduate students. 511 is U/G. The course will take place on March 6-8, for 8 hours each day, and there will be additional online work prior and after. Thedoctoral students will participate in additional face-to-face seminars.

This follows a similar structure of a course we offered last year with Mike Miller, a former field secretary with SNCC, and an organizer with Saul Alinsky in Kansas City, with over 40 years of organizing experience.

Carlos Saavedra:

Carlos Saavedra has trained over 4,000 people and had a hand in more progressive policy changes than most congressmen. After coming to Boston from Peru at age 12, he joined the immigrant rights movement as a teenager, co-founding the Student Immigrant Movement to fight for equal access to higher education for undocumented youth in Massachusetts. He later served as the national coordinator for United We Dream, helping to expand the network from a small coalition to a 52-member national organization instrumental in the passage of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, and the DREAM Act — legislation that, combined, has resulted in legal relief for 1.7 million undocumented youth.

While continuing to serve as a consultant for immigrant rights organizations, Carlos recently co-founded the training institute Movement Mastery.
If you are interested, here is a recent interview with him: