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Project South:
From History to Action
website: http://www.projectsouth.org/
"In this country, there has been a kind of separation between organizing and education. But, when I see different models, like how the Zapatistas organized or how folks in Africa organize, there is no separation. I think a lot of that is based on a culture of democracy that is not the same in the United States." -DAN HOROWITZ DE GARCIA
Project South: Institute for the Elimination of Genocide and Poverty is a community-centered leadership development organization with an 18 year history of working for social justice in the South.They have been central to sparking the burgeoning grassroots interest in popular education as an approach to building critical consciousness in a progressive people's movement in the U.S. In recent years,they have begun to frame all of their education in the context of neoliberal globalization and global movements.
Initially conceived to generate a more comprehensive historical understanding of the Civil Rights Movement, Project South emphasizes history as a core element of all its numerous popular education modules, which are published and for sale on the internet.The organization began as a speaker's bureau that traveled around the country to talk about the strategic importance of the South in the process of movement building. In the early 90s, Project South took on the role of education coordinator for the Southern Up and Out of Pove rty Now! campaign. At this early stage, most of Project South's educational activities were in the more conventional form of study circles. In the mid-90s, however, the acknowledgement of a lack of leaders in the region drove Project South to focus more on leadership development and popular education as a medium.
After extensive research and assessment, Project South settled on its cur rent identity as a popular education
and action research organization.As Jerome Scott, director, notes:
We experimented with Horton, Freire, and a bunch of other people, and tried to pool together our particular brand of
popular education, as it reflects struggles that we’re involved with here in the South.We emerged as a popular education
organization because we realized that we had to develop thousands of leaders, not just two or three or four, but
thousands of leaders, if we were going to be able to ensure that once the movement breaks out and takes a leap, that it
moves in the correct direction, and that we win.
Following are excerpts from interviews with Dan Horowitz de Garcia, a program director at Project South working primarily on social control policies and the prison industrial complex, and Jerome Scott,director. A third,shorter interview was conducted with Stella Williams, who was a rank-and-file union member with SEIU 1199 in South Florida, one of Project South’s partner organizations. Project South works through long-term partnerships with community-based organizations in the South, usually providing a series of trainings geared toward developing their partners’ popular education programs.Stella is a living example of this process: after moving through intensive training with Project South, she has taken over the leadership development position at 1199.
One of the hallmark features of Project South’s model is developing a firm understanding of history.To accomplish this task, Project South generated its widely-used timelines that trace political, economic, and social movement history as far back as the 1400s. Many organizations have integrated exercises based on these timelines into their popular education. Often, workshops will start with participants locating personal experiences on the timeline next to historical turning points.