Big gratitude for those who gathered today to share community and bright ideas. Our next Free University session will be Saturday, 2/15, @2pm (location to be determined). Please mark yr calendars.
Here are notes from today’s potluck + visioning session…
*lessons from our past work:
– make events/mtgs scheduling consistent
– create within our capacity
– playfulness is powerful!
– food/drinks are key organizing tools
– include short readings with event themes
– video-document for wider event lasting power
*winter Free U public spaces to consider:
– subway stations
– atriums
– museums
*event ideas:
– “subway station salons” – hold a “pop-up” dialogue in a station to engage with a wide array of New Yorkers on social issues. make it a performative, fun, short burst of political contact to spread the word about Free U. Goal: try hosting one at the end of February on “Our Right to the City”!
– museum tours – similar aim to transform a space with community dialogue (ex: Brooklyn Museum 1st Saturday).
– film screenings
– more “counter-classes”
– “Free coffee with Free University” tabling in public spaces – small-scale personable outreach
– good ol’ fashioned flash mobs!
*themes/potential collaborators:
– de Blasio’s election – what does it mean for building NYC power from below?
– learning about international movements (Brazil’s and Sweden’s mass fare-hopping actions
– people of color-led race, gender, and LGBTQI justice (Dream Defenders, Safe Outside the System)
– environmental justice – anti-fracking, XL pipeline, TPP (350.org)
– surveillance then and now – on COINTELPRO and PRISM
– linking east/west coast education & anti-militarization struggles (No 2 Napolitano @UC, Save City College of SF, anti-ROTC town halls)
– Our Right to the City – demanding universal school lunch, pre-K, affordable housing, food, open hospitals, transportation, etc.
