Free School University (FSU)

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 FREE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY at Occupy Boston 


The 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 and are currently held at the Harvest Food Coop Community Room, 581 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge (Central Sq. 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, to volunteer as site-assistants, 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. After everything is confirmed, you can use the Occupy Boston Event Submission Form to expedite posting to the occupyboston.org event calendar.


  • Date / Time:
  • Location:
  • Title:
  • Brief Description:
  • Short Biography:  


 RESOURCES                                                                                                   

Free School University

Working Group Information

Meeting Notes


The Howard Zinn Memorial Lecture Series

 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.


Wednesday, February 8, 2012: Grace Ross is a lifetime activist in democratic people’s movements and a two-time candidate for Governor of Massachusetts. She is presently the coordinator of the Mass Alliance Against Predatory Lending, the statewide coalition working to reverse the foreclosure-crisis in our Commonwealth. She has written a book on the current economic crisis entitled “Main Street $marts – Who got us into this economic mess and how we get through it?” The book is a comprehensive survey of the damage done to the 99% by an economy managed for the benefit of the few, and provides common sense prescriptions for solving the problems, ranging from banking, foreclosures and homelessness, to health care, to jobs – all the while empowering people and building a more democratic society. We will be discussing some of these issues in a conversation that includes, “How did we get here?” “What do we do about it?” and “What is the role of the Occupy movement in solving these problems?”

Wednesday, February 15, 2012: Arjun Jayadev (PhD), assistant professor of Economics at University of Massachusetts-Boston, whose areas of expertise include international economics, economics of distribution, development, political economy, macroeconomic dynamics, and economics of power.


The Howard Zinn Memorial Lecture Series

MARX'S GHOST: Midnight Conversations on Changing the World

Thursday, February 9, 2012 (7:00pm)

Author, activist and BC sociologist Charlie Derber speaks to his most recent book, Marx's Ghost: Midnight Conversations on Changing the World. He will be joined by Alexandra Pineros Shields, Brian Kwoba and Genevieve Butler at Encuentro 5 (33 Harrison Ave, 5th Floor, Boston). Click here for more info about the event. From the publisher:

"An American sociologist (Derber) travels to London's Highgate cemetery, where Karl Marx is buried. A surprise encounter with Marx's ghost, which reveals insights into the great revolutionary's personality and biography, leads to a night-long conversation between Derber and the ghost on important issues of the day: the economic crisis, globalization; climate change, war, racism, left- and right-wing politics, the future of capitalism, new economic models emerging in Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and Asia, and revolutionary activism by citizens in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya-even Wisconsin. The ghost reconsiders his theories as he speaks eloquently about American labor, environmental, peace, social justice, civil rights, immigrant, and gender and anti-racist struggles. Their engrossing, funny, and provocative conversation, interrupted by appearances from ghosts such as John Maynard Keynes, offers a new vision of the stunning relevance and tragic flaws of the historical Marx, who now reveals a surprising Great Transition to a transformed future." 


Military Forum

BLACK SOLDIERS IN THE WAR OF THE SLAVEOWNERS’ REBELLION: A Presentation Based on the Memoirs of Civil War Veteran Norman P. Hallowell

Monday, February 13, 2012 (3:30 - 5:00pm, doors at 3:15pm) 

The book Black Soldiers in the War of the Slaveowners’ Rebellion, edited by Quentin Davis, is composed of selected letters and papers of Norwood Penrose Hallowell, one of the "Fighting Quakers" and a very active Abolitionist. Hallowell was for a time commander of the Massachusetts 55th Regiment, the second all-black regiment. Hallowell admired his men greatly and most of the book is about them. A presentation based on Hallowell's memoirs will be presented by Quentin Davis and members of the Peter Brace Brigade (Civil War re‑enactors of the Massachusetts 54th Regiment) will take place at the Community Church of Boston, 565 Boylston Street (Copley Square, between Arlington / Copley Square T stops). Click here for more information. 


Occupy Film

Occupied Peoples & People's Occupations is series of films and discussions presented by the organizers of The Howard Zinn Memorial Lecture Series. Films will be shown at the Community Church of Boston (tentatively) every Thursday night beginning at 7:15pm through May 10, 2012. This series is being organized with the intent to shed historical and social light on our current situation, by bringing people together to reflect on past and present people's struggles, in particular those struggles which are most often buried in the mainstream historical narrative. Check back soon for more details! Films being considered for future showing as part of the Occupied Peoples & People's Occupations series include two PBS American Experience films: Wounded Knee (Episode 5 of We Shall Remain, a film about the occupation of Pine Ridge Indian Reservation) and Freedom Riders. The following films are currently scheduled:


Thursday, February 16, 2012: Left on Pearl, directed by Susie Rivo, is a film that honors the International Women's Day marchers who turned left on Pearl on March 6, 1971 to take over a Harvard building at 888 Memorial Drive, declaring it the first Women's Center. The film employs multiple perspectives to tell the story of this little-known but highly significant chapter in the history of the Second Wave of the Women's Movement. The event marked a surprise ending of that year’s International Woman’s Day march and through the occupation, hundreds of women tranformed the hopes, glories, conflicts and tensions of Second Wave feminism into the establishment of the longest continually operating Women’s Center in the United States and sparked the development of many other feminist and community organizations both locally and nationally.

Thursday, February 22, 2012: Three Thousand Years and Life is a breath-taking 1973 documentary, featuring original footage of the occupation of Walpole prison. Two years after the massacre at Attica, prison guards at the Massachusetts Correctional Institute at Walpole walked out in response to progressive reforms at the facility. Bobby Delello (a former prisoner who participated in the event) and Jamie Bisonette, author of When the Prisoners Ran Walpole: A True Story of the Prison Abolition Movement (a book about the event) will both be present for discussion after the film. Bisonette wrote of the event,

"The prisoners stepped ably into the void—and all-out peace ensued. They shrank the murder rate from the highest in the country to zero. Even more significantly, they worked hard to bury racial antagonism and longstanding feuds so even 'lifers' with no hope of going home could find ways to live together, learn, and grow—to regain the humanity that the system intended to squash."


FSU-TV

Saturday, February 18, 2012: FSU has been invited by Occupy Boston TV (OBTV) to do a 30-minute show from 3:00 - 5:00pm with three guest panelists and a moderator. Programming is to be determined. The studio is in Brookline. If you are interested in planning something or participating as a guest panelist, contact us at fsu@occupyboston.org, or come to our Working Group meeting on Friday at 5:30pm. 


 PAST TEACH-INS & VIDEO ARCHIVE                                                

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. 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.

FSU in the News





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