As the director of an intensive, two-year, activist training program, I  
start from the assumption that activist learning, education, and  
training improves the chances of our social movements actually winning  
victories. This assumption has been well documented by researchers like  
Griff Foley and Michael Newman, but for me this core conviction grows  
mostly out of my own experience. In the early 1970s, I helped organize  
an activist study circle designed by a popular education group called  
the Philadelphia Macro-Analysis Collective. My particular “macro” group  
involved close to two-dozen local activists in Minneapolis and St.  
Paul. Each week, about twenty of us would settle in for two hours of  
reports and discussions based on our readings and experiences. The  
learning process was participatory and lively. Topics included the  
global environmental crisis, ecological limits to growth, North-South  
relations, U.S. history, militarism, political economy, social  
oppression, strategic nonviolent action, and other grassroots  
strategies for change. The result of these searching dialogues, which  
we always related to the concrete challenges in our own activist work,  
was not a group adherence to any single political line, but a dramatic  
deepening in our understandings of the world, the constraints and  
opportunities we each faced, and the programmatic and strategic options  
that might help us realize our goals. It was one of my most powerful  
learning experiences as an activist and has shaped my activities over  
the last three decades.

Happily, over thirty years later, a group of popular educators is now  
working to update and revise the old 24-week “macro-analysis” seminar,  
and they are even developing information on how to adapt the new format  
to shorter, democratically-run, political education classes within  
colleges and universities. This is a project to keep an eye on. If you  
would like more information about this and other study group efforts,  
please check out:

Blog: THE WELL-TRAINED ACTIVIST
Post: The Power of Activist Study Groups
Link:  
http://eaop-blog.blogspot.com/2006/08/power-of-activist-study- 
groups.html

All my best,

Steve Chase
Director, Environmental Advocacy and Organizing Program
Department of Environmental Studies @ Antioch University New England
603-357-3122 ext. 298; 603-357-0618 (fax); [log in to unmask]
EAOP's Basic Website is at: http://www.antiochne.edu/es/eao/default.cfm
EAOP's Blog -- "The Well-Trained Activist" -- is at:  
http://eaop-blog.blogspot.com