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Homework Assignment 2
This assignment is due by January 23.
Write at least two pages answering
the questions below.
For this class, all students will be involved in activities educating
and mobilizing fellow students in support of Assi workers. In order
to do so successfully, students need to learn from the wisdom of
immigrant workers — both historically and today — and
overcome preconceptions about the process of educating and mobilizing
others. In most cases, UCLA students have not learned about how immigrant
workers see the process of educating and mobilizing others. And in
most cases, UCLA students — both consciously and unconsciously — have
adopted a model developed by those in power. Thus, we can say that
most UCLA students practice a model that is designed to perpetuate
systems of domination and oppression, even though they are striving
to overturn domination and oppression. How, then, can students learn
different approaches for educating and mobilizing others? How can
students learn from the wisdom of immigrant workers?
1. For this homework assignment, describe briefly how you see
the process of educating and mobilizing others, specifically fellow
students.
For example, how do you see yourself educating fellow students
to take action in support of Assi workers, such as endorsing the
workers’ campaign,
attending our class forum, participating in our class picketline
and rally, and supporting other activities? Do you conceptualize
certain steps in this process involving awareness and action? If
so, what are the steps? When other students seem uninterested or
oppose what you say, how do you change their minds? Do you believe
there are certain effective methods of educating others — e.g.,
readings, lectures, etc.?
2. Next, from our Course Reader, read the excerpts from the book
Helping Health Workers Learn by David Werner and Bill Bowers — set
of pages near the end of the Course Reader (Student Activist Training
Materials). Read the pages on “Each One Teach One,” “Difficulties
in Working with People to Improve Their Situation,” “The
Need to Start Where People Are and Work from There,” “Helping
People Develop Critical Awareness,” and “From Awareness
to Action.”
3. Then read the 25-page cartoon by Wen-ti Tsen, “The Garment
Worker’s Story,” based on an actual community mobilization
that occurred in Boston Chinatown in the 1980s.
4. What new things can you learn about educating and mobilizing
others from the excerpts of the book by Werner and Bowers (such
as their description of the work of the promotoras in Honduras)
and
from the Chinese immigrant garment worker in Boston? In particular,
what changes do you need to make in your own thinking about the
process of educating and mobilizing others? (For more ideas, see
other articles
in the Course Reader that show how immigrants workers — historically
and today — educate and mobilize others.)
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