UNSIF - Atlanta Campus

 University Sin Fronteras

Liberation Spring Semester 2014

It’s time again, what will you contribute?

The South is at a critical point in the fight for social justice. Trends in current legislation lay a path that is rolling back civil rights legislation and historical gains from Southern Freedom Movement, courts are creating the NEW Jim Crow styled behaviors, violence against people of color is NOW common place, the rights of women are trampled by conservative forces and the STATE, private and public entities are destroying neighborhoods, and public education is under attack.

All of these increasingly highly aggressive issues are a direct product of a colonial framework where human rights are systematically dismantled and dissent is suppressed. The University Sin Fronteras’s Liberation Spring Semester will examine the role of rising Social Movements in the South that aim to build community power to confront injustice, to build a NEW 21st Century Southern Freedom Movement. The Liberation Spring Semester course will act as a critical part of building momentum for Southern-wide summer (Liberation NOW) organizing campaign. This process is based on preparing participants to connect Action around the aforementioned crisis by exploring how to decolonize and organize the ‘fronts of struggle’ including the education (political), the body, our economy, our work, and our cultures. Student-participants will collectively determine the role of the State and co-create new knowledge based on their lived experiences and analysis and hands on projects (Liberation Now).

Student-participants are asked only to bring their burning questions, their suffering, their victories, and their desires for a just society. Another World is Possible, and Underway.  Another SOUTH is happening.

Register Online

Course Questions

  1. How do we collectively decolonize the South?
  2. How do we build power through action and how does action build power?

 

PEDAGOGY:

The UNSIF bases its educational philosophy in critical thinking and theory…

OLE

It enhances organization (expand, deepend and defend)

It is about developing LIBERATORY leadership (not just for the Know)

And, it is based on and replicates EMANCIPATORY education.

 

METHODOLOGY:

University Sin Fronteras is a University With Out Walls, and beyond borders. 

1.  Adjunct faculty frames the theme and the critical question (No lecture)

2.  It uses COLLECTIVE learning and sharing methods of the round robin (all discussion                 goes around the circle not by raising hand)

2.  The knowledge is in the room (we have to find out the true level of the knowledge in           the room not from books to starts)

3.  Collective synthesis (what the content course meant collectively to all)

4. Notes documentation (you get the notes) for cumulative purposes and part of the    content of the course

5. Student participants write up a one page hand written REFLECTION paper that            becomes part of the content of the course.

 

SCHEDULE:

COURSE CLASSES will be held on WEDNESDAY’s at 6:00 PM starting promptly on time

Course classes end at 8 PM promptly

March 26 – May 14 , 2014

WHERE:

The Univ SF classes will be taking place at PROJECT SOUTH at 9 Gammon Ave SE, ATL GA 30315  office # 404.622.0602 office

 

Contact Les: 404.964.3168  les@projectsouth.org or Ruben: 210 378 5699 grulla@unsif.com

 

 

REGISTRATION FOR COURSE: MARCH 12-26, 2014

Register Online

March 26

Class I – Introduction to Decolonizing the South

Adjunct Faculty – Emery Wright

This course will provide an overview and analysis of the historical framework of colonization and how it can be manifested in contemporary society to maintain a level of control over people and specifically how it looks in the South. Attention will be given to the implications for a lack of awareness around colonization and group discussion will focus on how one can decolonize his/her own life, the role of the state in perpetuating the colonization process, and how to combat decolonization in every facet of society.  Deeper class dialogue will explore the roots of oppression and encourage the class to collectively formulate strategy and a structure for activism against colonization in the south. This introductory course will lay the groundwork for the remainder of the semester as broader topics are introduced and explored. (2 hrs)

Suggested Readings:

 

APRIL 2, 2014

Class II – Struggles over the Sovereignty of the Body in the South

Adjunct Faculty – Stephanie Guilloud

This course will invite the student-participants to explore gender constructions as fundamental to colonialism and how sovereignty over the body in the context of the South plays a substantive role in the movement for liberation for all people. Key themes will examine the foundations of the binary, the role of the state, and agency around our bodies. The class will explore the question: What is the path to decolonizing body sovereignty? Student-participants will be exposed to the history of how the state and dominant culture renders and reinforces impotence in life-impacting decisions. Student-participants will further identify ways to confront power in this context. (2 hrs)

Suggested Readings:

 

APRIL 9, 2014

Class III – Decolonizing health and healing in the South

Adjunct Faculty – Cara Page (to be confirmed)

This course will engage the students in discussion around topics associated with health and healing as it relates to subjects like food justice and healthcare access in the South, where social constructs like poverty lend to a lack of access to both. Other focus will connect to the role of the state in maintaining a colonized system and policies that work to victimize consumers and student-participants will be encouraged to identify ways to work against these circumstances through group activity. Another area of exploration will be the role of healers and how some traditional healing was suffocated by colonization and made to represent something entirely different than its original purposes. (2 hrs)

Suggested Readings:

 

APRIL 16, 2014

Class IV – Decolonizing Labor and Migration in the South

Faculty – Salladin Muhammed (to be confirmed)

This course will effectively debunk the prominent myths around labor and migration in the South by bringing to light the racist and exploitive methods used by corporations and governments to manifest their agendas by manipulating the lives of workers. Students will gain insight into the development of institutional exploitation and the “justified” malevolence that it used to maintain order for the injustices and atrocities exacted. Much focus will be placed on the organizing tradition in the South and ways to forward the process of building solidarity to decolonize the normative neo-liberal and conservative analysis of labor and migration in a way that empowers the people to demand equal and fair treatment for all stakeholders.  (2 hrs)

Suggested Readings:

 

APRIL23, 2014

Class V – Decolonizing and counteracting the Impact of Globalization and the Neoliberal (New Confederate) State on the South

Adjunct Faculty – Ruben Solis

Globalization and all of its complexities will be researched in this course as a way of highlighting the deleterious effects of internationally enforced protections enacted by the state to protect and perpetuate corporate entities/government’s ability to promote imperialism. After spending considerable time detailing the history and process of globalization students will be led in practical discussions on how to counteract globalism on a local level and in solidarity with those in the Global South who aim to free themselves of its oppression. Within this effort, the notion of decolonizing solidarity will also be defined by the collective group and put into context around normative ideas of economics and economic growth as it relates to the South. (2 hrs)

Suggested Readings:

 

APRIL 30, 2014

Class VI – Role of Culture, Art, and Music in Decolonizing the South

Adjunct Faculty – Alice Lovelace

This course will advocate for study on the use of culture to create liberated spaces in the South through an analysis of art as a capable narrator of the process of decolonization. The course will also examine southern examples of the intersection where are meets action in the form of decolonizing established norms. Specific attention will be placed on literature, film, theater, music, visual art, and poetry in the history of the Southern Freedom Movement and its role in fighting discrimination and injustice. With this in mind, analysis will be encouraged on how to decolonize art and culture in the South, and in turn use it to inform paths to cultural organizing and activism.  (2 hrs)

Suggested Readings:

 

MAY 7, 2014

Class VII – The Southern Freedom Movement in the 21st Century (Southern Freedom Movement Assembly and the Sothern Movement Alliance)

Panel – Ruben Solis, Glory Kilonko, Paulina Helm – Hernandez, Niqua Douglas or Nia Mitchell

Moderator – Les Etienne

This course will detail the history of the Southern Freedom Movement in the present 21st century political moment and chronicle the stated efforts of the Southern Movement Assembly/Alliance to coordinate actions to achieve a shared purpose: to dismantle the systems that create and maintain racism, oppression and exploitation while also building the social and economic democracy that advances self-determination and sovereignty on multiple fronts. Students will be encouraged to take the knowledge gained from Liberation Spring Semester to engage with the impending Liberation Now! summer project that builds upon the momentum of the movement.  (3 hrs)

Suggested Readings:

 

May 14, 2014

Synthesis

Facilitator – Stephanie Guilloud

This culminating (Collective) experience will explore both the personal and collective lessons learned from the courses and use the group’s collective learned and personally generated knowledge to use discussion as a means to form answers to the class questions. (2 hrs)

 

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