Free School University (FSU)

Free School University (FSU) is a learning community of Occupy Boston. Topics vary from fun-and-games to politics and revolution. Our goal is to form an autonomous zone to entertain educate and enliven Occupiers and the general public, and to share skills needed to maintain it. The FSU has provided support and created the space for skill sharing, self-organization, teaching, and more than 150 learning opportunities so far. 

FSU Working Group Meetings take place every Friday from 5:30 - 7:30pm at the Harvest Food Coop Community Room (581 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge - near Central Square T stop). Note: We do not meet in the cafe. Go all the way to the rear of the store, behind the display case and up the stairs. The conference room will be on your left. It is not handicap accessible. Please let us know if this is a problem for you. For general inquiries or to join the FSU Working Group, please email: fsu@occupyboston.org.

To schedule a teach-in, please submit the following information to fsu@occupyboston.org. If you know the exact date and time and have all of the information below ready, please include POST: (date / time) in the Subject of your email. 

• Date & Time
• Location
• Title & Brief Description
• Short Biography
• Working Group Association
• Sponsors (if any)

After everything is confirmed, you can use the Occupy Boston Event Submission Form to expedite posting to the occupyboston.org event calendar.

 CURRENT TEACH-INS 

FSU-RADIO

FSU-RADIO is an educational series by the Free School University at Occupy Boston that streams live on OB Radio every Wednesday night at 7pm. Our goal is to maintain an autonomous zone to entertain educate and enliven Occupiers and the general public. Our purpose is to provide support and space for skill sharing and sharing basic info regarding Occupy Boston and to encourage self-organization, teaching, and learning opportunities.Call 617-506-9726 with questions or comments during the show, or join the IRC chat at occupyboston.org/radio.

Cooperation

Wednesday, April 11, 2012: William C. Coughlan, Jr. will join David to talk about Cooperation. Coughlan has spent more than 40 years in the cooperative movement, written six books, and currently teaches at the Tri-C Community College, Metro Campus, in the Cleveland, Ohio area. He will talk about his experience in the Cooperative movement, ESOPS, consensus, and related topics.

OBRadio: Veterans for Peace

This weekly radio broadcast organized by members of the Smedley D. Butler Brigade of Veterans For Peace streams live on OB Radio every Monday night at 6:00pm. Call 617-506-9726 with questions or comments during the show, or join the IRC chat at occupyboston.org/radio. Hosted by Bob Funke, member of the Action For Peace Working Group at Occupy Boston and Vietnam Veteran For Peace. Veterans For Peace is a non-profit educational and humanitarian organization dedicated to the abolishment of war employing the motto "De Oppresso Liber" (Liberate the Oppressed).

• Monday, April 2, 2012
• Monday, April 9, 2012

Occupy Boston Community Gathering

Occupy Boston Community Gatherings are held weekly on Monday evenings at St Paul's Cathedral on Tremont Street, from 6:00 to 8:30 PM. The first half hour of the Community Gatherings are set aside for socializing. FSU will be hosting the following community gathering:

Peace & Economic Justice | What's the Connection Between War & the Economy?

Monday, April 23, 2012 (6:00pm, St. Paul’s Cathedral - 138 Tremont St, across from Park St T Stop): The teach-in will begin at 6:30 with a short presentation from the New Priorities Network, "The Price of War" and a panel discussion with activists from various movements who will discuss the impact of war on communities. Panelists include:

• Tyrek Lee (Vice President, 1199 SEIU Massachusetts) 
• Oliver Hendricks (City Life / Vida Urbana, Coalition to Fund Our Communities / Cut Military Spending by 25%) 
• Duncan McFarland (United for Justice with Peace) 
• Rachel McNeill (Smedley Butler Brigade of Veterans For Peace) 

The panel will be followed by an open group discussion: Where do we go from here? There will be snacks and door prizes!

The Howard Zinn Memorial Lecture Series

From the Organizers of The Howard Zinn Memorial Lecture Series: We, as citizens, academics, and members of the 99%, would like to contribute to the conversation taking place at Occupy Boston about how to make a better, more equitable world for all of us. In the radical and participatory spirit of Occupy Boston and similar radical movements of the past, we see our role, as Giovanni Arrighi once argued, as helping the movement to develop its "own autonomy through an understanding of the broader processes, both national and global, in which their struggles [are] taking place" (The Winding Paths of Capital, New Left Review, Mar-Apr 2009). We wish to participate in the movement not from a position of authority, but one of mutual dialogue. While people know their situation much better than we ever will, as academics we are better positioned "to understand the wider context in which it develops" (Ibid). For this reason we have created a series of lectures in which academics lead a dialogue with Occupy Boston participants on issues of economic, political, and social justice. We call these lectures The Howard Zinn Memorial Lecture Series at Occupy Boston in honor of the late, great Boston Historian. More programming to be announced! For an archive of past lectures, click here.

 RESOURCES 

Free School University

• Website, students and teachers can build a free page here
• Announcements, sign up to receive announcements for FSU events and learning opportunities
• Facebook, group page
• Twitter
• YouTube
• Audre Lorde to Howard Zinn (A-Z) Library, Occupy Boston's Free Library
• Occupy Boston Radio, FSU broadcasts live every Wednesday from 7-8pm
• Occupy Boston TV
• Occupy University, FSU Page on OWS Education for the Revolution

Working Group Information

• Working Group, register and login to participate. You do not have to login to view the FSU files on our working groups page.
  • Information for Volunteers
  • Information for Teachers
  • Information for Site-Assistants
• List Serve, sign up for our working group's email list
• Living Agenda for upcoming FSU Working Group meetings
• Wiki Talk Page, space to share ideas for building this wiki page and FSU generally

Meeting Notes

October 2011	January 20, 2012
November 2011	January 27, 2012
December 2, 2011	February 3, 2012
December 7, 2011	February 10, 2012
December 16, 2011	February 23, 2012
December 23, 2011	February 30, 2012
December 26, 2011
January 6, 2012

The Howard Zinn Memorial Lecture Series

• Website, WordPress
• Updates, keep up with the lecture series at OccupyBoston.org
• Facebook, group page
• Video Archive, playlist of past lectures on YouTube
• Upcoming Lectures
• Occupied Peoples | People's Occupations, OCCUPYfilm
• Past Lectures

Archives

Past Teach-Ins

Since our first teach-in on October 7, 2011, the Occupy Boston Free School University has created the space for more than 150 teach-ins! For a complete list of past teach-ins, click here. 

Videos

To access our video archive, including nearly 40 videos of our past teach-ins, click here. If you have video you would like us to add to the archive or links to coverage of FSU events in the news, please email them to us at fsu@occupyboston.org.

Media Coverage

• Immigration, Environment, and Occupy by Avi Chomsky (Boston Occupier, 2.14.2012)
• From Occupy to Workers Control: Professors Elaine Bernard & Immanuel Ness by Doug Enaa Green (Boston Occupier, 2.2.2012)
• Paul LeBlanc: The Ancestors of Occupy (Boston Occupier, 1.27.2012)
• Citizens United Summit (Boston Occupier, 1.20.2012)
• The Fetishism of Debt by Michael Denning (Boston Occupier, 1.13.2012)
• Gar Alperovitz: Democratizing the Economy (Boston Occupier, 12.21.2012)
• Criticizing the Critique of Representation: Bruno Bosteels at Occupy Boston, by J.E. Hamilton (Boston Occupier, 12.6.2011)
• Zinn Lecture Series Brings Academia to Occupy Boston by Doug Enaa Greene (Boston Occupier, 12.6.2011)
• Their Crisis and Our Response by Victor Wallis (Boston Occupier, 12.6.2011)
• Reflections on Occupying by Dennis Fox (draft for publication in the Journal for Social Action in Counseling and Psychology, 11.20.2011)
• The Right to Protest for Right: Peniel E. Joseph on Economic Justice & MLK Jr by Julie Orlemanski (Boston Occupier, 11.19.2011)
• Papercut Zine Library & Lucy Parsons Center Re-Open by Liz Pelly (The Boston Phoenex, 11.9.2011)
• So That All Voices May Be Heard: Concensus and C.T. Lawrence Butler (Boston Occupier, 11.3.2011)
• Vijay Prashad Speaks at Occupy Boston (Boston Occupier, 10.25.2011)
• Blyth Asks: Should the Poor Insure the Rich? (Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University, 10.14.2011)
• Occupy Wall Street: Getting the Targets Right by Mark Blythe and Kevin Gallagher (Triple Crisis, 10.13.2011)
• Ivy League Professors Speak to Anti-Wall Street Protestors by Lauren Keiper (Reuters, 10.7.2011)