The Midwest Academy is an elite organizing school that trains people on how to organize for social change. I had the privilege of accompanying four X Committee members at this training, which was held in Chicago from October 9 to 13, 2006. Our trip and tuition were funded by the Minneapolis Foundation.
The Midwest Academy focuses on organizing by learning to strategize, build leadership and power. Participants came from an array of progressive organizations all over the country and world, spanning issues from environmental education to universal healthcare.
The training is meant to help these organizations become more strategic in their fight for social, economic, racial, and environmental justice.
According to the Academy, there are three basic principles of direct action organizing:
- First, concrete improvements in people’s lives must be won.
- Next, people need to be made aware of their own power.
- Lastly, the relations between people, the government, and other institutions must be altered by building powerful organizations.
The training provided a necessary framework for X Committee members to utilize, breaking down seemingly huge projects and campaigns into smaller, manageable steps.
This information is extremely useful for a group like the X Committee as they work on building support for programs and become more involved in shaping policies in their city and state through greater civic engagement and voter registration activities.
Through role plays and exercises that illustrated power relations, how to strategize, recruiting principles, and accountability sessions, X Committee members were able to work on the skills they need to be organized and effective in their community.
The X Committee was lucky to be able to send four different members who were all drawn to different aspects of organizing. While one focused on recruiting methods, another finely tuned her strategizing skills by using tools the Academy provided and another was excited to come home and choose the next issue.
The Midwest Academy teaches an organizing philosophy, methods, and skills that enable ordinary people to actively participate in the democratic process, something that is often lacking in the homeless community for countless reasons. Now, these four members have a unique opportunity to implement what they’ve learned into the X Committee to actively work to civically engage the broader homeless community in St. Paul.