Fighting to Learn, Learning to Fight: Building the Movement for Public Education and Equality
Do you want to build the movement to defend public education and fight racism, and you’re serious about winning?
Do you want to increase underrepresented minority enrollment, restore affirmative action and overturn prop. 209 and pass CA DREAM Act 131 and a UC-Wide DREAM Act?
Then this class is for you!
“Fighting to Learn, Learning to Fight: Building the Movement for Public Education and Equality” is a class designed for participants to learn the theory and method behind the leading organization in the fight for public education at UC Berkeley and around the country: BAMN (The Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration, and Immigrants Rights And Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary). BAMN is an integrated organization with a proven track record of success in our campaigns to protect the right to a public education for all students; Latina/o, black, Arab, Asian, and white, documented and undocumented. Our victories include:
- Successfully defending the right of black, Latina/o and Native American students to attend selective public universities through upholding affirmative action at the U.S. Supreme Court in the 2003 Grutter v. Bollinger decision through combining an aggressive legal defense with mass student mobilizations culminating in a 50,000 person march on Washington the day the case was heard.
- Protecting the right to affirmative action through stopping ballot initiatives designed to eliminate this right in Arizona, Missouri, and Oklahoma.
- Forcing the Los Angeles Unified School District to maintain their voluntary school desegregation program and honor California’s Cesar Chavez Holiday
- Stopping the closure of Catherine Ferguson Academy, a school for pregnant and parenting girls in Detroit, Michigan.
The class will discuss, critically analyze, and work to move forward BAMN’s current campaigns: defending public education, fighting the fee hikes and budget cuts, overturning Prop 209 and restoring affirmative action to the state of California, making UC Berkeley a sanctuary campus and passing the DREAM Act.
The class will focus on four main tenants of BAMN’s perspective: the promise of public education and its role in American society, the centrality of fighting racism and the “New Jim Crow”, the importance of building an independent, youth-led movement, and our responsibility to fight for our own liberation as leaders.
The course is designed first and foremost to engage students in a process of thinking critically about building our student movement in order to move it forward. The class will focus on analysis and group discussion of selected texts including BAMN’s original literature and other primary and provocative sources. Students are invited to further their understanding by choosing between a weekly reflection on the reading and discussion or doing one-hour of BAMN organizing assigned at the beginning of each week. Additionally students will choose from a variety of options for completing a final project, which will give students the opportunity to apply the ideas they have learned to their own experience and actions.
BAMN’s aim is to use this class to find and develop students who want to lead on the questions of public education, immigrant rights, and civil rights. We know that if we can develop a group at UC Berkeley with a solid perspective and the ability to lead in action, we can not only change our campus but use our position to change the whole direction of this nation. We invite you to join us.
Reading List
The Character and Aims of BAMN
The BAMN Pledge
The Promise of Public Education and its Role in American Society
Segregation in Ferndale
The Hampton Idea
Yudof Document The Relevance of the Term Privilege
Our Responsibility to Fight the New Jim Crow
The Obama Document
Myths and Facts on Affirmative Action / Liberator No. 1
Yearning the Breathe Free
Building an Independent, Youth Led Movement
I Have a Dream
Walk Out
Students on Strike
Our Challenge as Leaders: Fighting Our Own Oppression
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
How to Enroll:
Enrollment is first come first serve.
Freshmen and Sophomores please register in the lower division course: 00602
Juniors and Seniors in the upper division course:00698
If you are waitlisted we will work with you
Website:http://groups.google.com/group/decal_fighting…arn_learningtofight?hl=en
Faculty Sponsor: Dr. Robert Allen
