Evaluating the first-ever WFP Spring School
If you were a drink, what would you be? That was the question that kicked off the first-ever Working Families Party “Spring School,” a gathering co-organized by the Organizing Department of the Working Families Party and the Working Families Academy. WFP members and staff, movement activists and organizers from around the United States, and a delegation of international political organizers all made a case for their favorite beverage. A mojito, said one. A gin and tonic said a Momentum activist from the UK. A Rockstar energy drink said a union member from North Carolina. A molotov cocktail said someone else to the sound of laughter.
How do we build a political movement with the capacity and vision to simultaneously combat white supremacy, class exploitation, and patriarchy — all while being clear-eyed about the ways in which the terrain of the US political system is rigged against us?
Through an agenda liberally sprinkled with games and lighthearted activity, a serious process of political education was at work. How do we build a political movement with the capacity and vision to simultaneously combat white supremacy, class exploitation, and patriarchy — all while being clear-eyed about the ways in which the terrain of the US political system is rigged against us? How do we build independent political power in this critical moment? How do we have the courage to withstand the pressure that will come when we take on the political establishment? What can we learn from the history of third party organizing in the United States stretching from the Free Soil Party before the Civil War, to the Populist Party and Socialist Parties in the early part of the 20th century, to the Mississippi Freedom Democrats in the 1960's?
Want to see photos of the Spring School? Check these out!
And in the middle of it all, the real world of politics crashed in. Over lunch one day, we watched a Facebook live stream of the New York WFP leadership meeting in Albany. When they announced their decision to back Cynthia Nixon in her insurgent gubernatorial challenge to the heir of a Democratic Party dynasty — Andrew Cuomo — an impromptu discussion about what it meant for our broader progressive movement broke out. A new front had been opened in the fight to define the WFP in the era of Trump as a force unafraid to pick the right fights at the right time, and the ripples of that decision were being felt in real time.
Reflections on curriculum design — getting the balance right
It is a significant organizational commitment for the WFP to support an event such as the Spring School, so it is obvious that people will ask, “how is this event building the WFP?” There is no doubt that many people in our movement are turning their eyes to politics as a field of struggle. It is also clear that the Working Families Party has battle scars gained from years of building power in the electoral arena. So how do we design an event that both speaks to WFP members and staff in the room, but also to the activists and organizers from a broader movement? Put another way, how do we balance the organizational imperatives with the impulse to “democratize knowledge?”
Put another way, how do we balance the organizational imperatives [of the WFP] with the impulse to “democratize knowledge?”
In the end, I believe the Spring School demonstrated it is not an “either/or” proposition. For example, there was no guarantee that all of the people who attended the event from various movement organizations would walk away from the Spring School wanting to do politics, let alone that they would see the WFP as an authentic vehicle where they would want to do it. My sense — based on the manifest enthusiasm in the room — is we moved the dial considerably on both counts.
Interested in the curriculum of the Spring School? You can find it here.
(Editor’s note: the original curriculum folder did not include the most up-to-date digital organizing workshop curriculum. You can find it here.)
The Spring School was unapologetically a WFP-space, while at the same time the curriculum did not try to “pour WFP into people’s heads.” I am absolutely convinced that it was the popular education basis of our curriculum (plus strong and representative facilitation) that contributed to a very diverse group of people making a journey together. We created space for people to access the WFP’s 20 years of accumulated history and election experience, but it was not forced on them. People got a chance to figure it out for themselves.
If a goal of doing large-scale political education projects is to plant seeds that can grow into organization, there will be a need for highly developed core groups of deeply aligned individuals to emerge. The WFP will need people who have the ideological orientation, but also the skills and the resources, to build a mass party called the Working Families Party. In short, the WFP will need cadre.
At the Spring School, I think it is fair to say that we put some people on the path to being “true believers” who were not there before.
What is being built?
There is much talk right now about a 2018 “blue wave” in which Democrats will sweep into power. Looking ahead, the question worth asking is what percentage of the social ferment we are seeing in the streets at the moment will recede (be absorbed? get co-opted?) by the Democratic Party if the blue wave crests? Twenty percent? Forty percent? Eighty percent? If we are being honest, I am afraid we won’t much like the answer.
At the Spring School, a good deal of focus was spent on unpacking the idea of building independent political power for our progressive movement. It was embedded into our study of third party history and into the election simulators which occupied much of the second afternoon of the event. It was even laced into the skills workshops where we learned about the tools we use to win elections, but also applied a critical eye to the question of how we do elections in a way that reflects our values, not the values of an army of elections consultants who all have something to sell, and who exercise a form of “soft power” when it comes to maintaining alignment with the political establishment.
However, in talking about independent political power we can never lose sight of the four key intersections of the WFP’s work. They are the central engine of the analysis. We need to ensure that people are surrounded by this basic framework any time they walk into an Academy space. That said, it is possible for people to develop a critical analysis of racism, class exploitation, sexism and patriarchy, and the rigged political system…and never even once consider leaving the fold of the Democratic Party. So, again from a curriculum development standpoint, this was why — for example — the election simulators also mixed cross-cutting issues of race/class/gender with the need to navigate a political terrain controlled — in big ways and small — by the Democratic Party and its aligned organizations.
In the end, what we are building is still a work in progress. However, the Spring School was an opportunity to invite people into the process of imagining what a party like the WFP could be, sharpening our critical analysis of the political terrain in which we operate, and building a little bit of beloved community along the way.
