The Left Needs Its “Schools of Enlightenment and Revolution”
Throughout the entire history of left-wing and working-class organizing in the United States, the participation in and building of institutions of political education has been key.
A discussion group at the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee. (Highlander Research and Education Center)
Not long before he was gunned down by the Chicago police in 1969, Fred Hampton, deputy chairman of the Black Panther Party and chair of its Illinois chapter, observed, “You can’t build no revolution with no education.”
Recently, the New York City chapter of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) created an Academy for Socialist Education. The academy — which one of us, Steve Fraser, is involved in organizing — is into its second “semester,” offering courses that range from fascism and imperialism to an introduction to political economy and the making of “Trump country.”
Institutions like the academy, as well as less formal undertakings, have featured prominently in the history of many radical movements. Challenging the status quo and imagining new worlds heightens the desire for new knowledge. Indeed, the demand for education of any sort was at one time the cry of working people, when formal schooling was a mark of the privileged. Education was seen as central to emancipation.
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