by Mohawk Valley Freedom School

After a short time of inactivity the Mohawk Valley Freedom School in Utica, NY is back in session. The school has since moved locations and is now at The Other Side at 2011 Genesee Street in Utica. The Freedom School will host monthly workshops and classes with a focus on social movements, the labor movement, and radical politics that will be rooted in popular education. The Freedom School comes out of the tradition of the Mississippi Freedom Schools of the 1960s and has also drawn inspiration from a range of liberatory education models like the Akwesasne Freedom School, the Zapatista escuelitas, Sandinista popular education programs, various anarchist experiments in education, free schools, Black Panther liberation schools, and the Work Peoples’ College of the IWW. The Mohawk Valley Freedom School was started by activists in Occupy Utica, the Black Rose Anarchist federation and the IWW in 2014.

The first workshop is titled “Fire Your Boss! – A Workshop on Workplace Democracy, Cooperatives & Worker Self-Management” and will be held on Wednesday, January 30 at 7:00pm. Below is a description of the workshop.

You don’t hate Mondays, you hate capitalism. We are alienated from our labor, from each other, isolated and alone, frustrated and saddened by the fact that we will spend most of our waking hours for most of our lives working. But it doesn’t have to be that way. There is a long, exciting history of workers in specific workplaces, across industries and even millions of workers across nations who kicked out their bosses and ran their workplaces democratically. If you’re interested in learning more about democratic, non-hierarchical workplaces, collectives and communes, worker self-management and revolution, come to this interactive workshop and discussion. We will take a closer look at the Spanish revolution of 1936, the Argentine rebellion of 2001 and a number of other examples, and theories, of worker self-management.

This workshop is the first of a series of workshops offered by the Mohawk Valley Freedom School. After a year of dormancy, the Freedom School is opening up again to offer free classes and workshops that focus on social movements and social change, the labor movement and labor organizing, and resistance and revolution. Freedom School classes are now held at The Other Side at 2011 Genesee Street in Utica.

This program is sponsored by members of the Black Rose Anarchist Federation, the Upstate NY Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), and the Anti-Fascist Book Club of Utica.