CTSJ 101 Tools for Social Justice Activism
Meaningful social and political change requires not only critical and thoughtful engagement with our grounding ideas, dominant theories and our existing positions. It also demands that we learn the concrete, practical skills necessary to make our ideals real, to exercise our rights, to fulfill our duties to one another, and to transform the actual mechanisms and institutions that shape our lives. This course — unique at either the undergraduate or graduate level — will provide students with an intensive and full-spectrum introduction to the most important, most effective and newest techniques, tools and technologies used in political and activist campaigns from the highest levels of electoral politics to non-profit, non-governmental and community campaigns.
The course curriculum is organized in three dimensions, training students with the core skills necessary to participate in existing political and activist work, but also empowering them to, when necessary, imagine and carry out their own innovative and transformative campaigns. To this end, students will learn not just tactical skills, but also strategic planning and management approaches that will help them invent, implement, and improve the campaigns to which they commit themselves.
This course will include instruction and workshops that bring the best practices and lessons from top businesses and campaigns, refined by political practitioners and distilled for students. It will also include tactical skills training-- media messaging and communication strategies, polling literacy, database management, budgeting and campaign finance, Get Out the Vote (GOTV) efforts, and lobbying basics.
Prerequisite
None
Corequisite
None