Political Education and the Labor Movement

I have been part of many groups throughout college and too often these groups focus on the day to day tasks of running an organization: building membership, filing paper work with student life, fundraising, etc. All of these mundane and time consuming tasks often get in the way of what is important- educating ourselves and those around us. As the political director of the Loras College Democrats one of my duties was political education, but with the election I pushed that aside in order to allow more time for our group to volunteer with campaigns. At the time this seemed to make sense, but now I am realizing what a huge mistake that was!

ROC-Miami is teaching me how crucial political education is to building a movement. We hold political education classes during all of our bartending classes and, to my surprise, people really seem to enjoy it! People want to learn more about the world around them and what they can do to change things. It is not uncommon for people to start shouting things out or to ask “how can I get involved” during a political education class. For example, this week’s class was about the power of organizing. John was asking them what they thought would happen if the fifty people in the room walked down to Ocean Drive to one of the restaurants. One person shouted “we would scare the s*** out of them” to which another person responded “let’s do it!” I am learning that as people learn more they become more eager to join the movement and as they learn even more they become willing to make sacrifices, sometimes as large as losing their job, in order to change things. It is unlikely that an uneducated person would be willing to lay everything on the line, but it seems like an educated person would. This is why political education is so important; people need to truly understand problems in order to fight against them, otherwise they are simply a person holding a sign.

John was telling me about the Vietnamese military, during the Vietnam War. This military had two heads of it: one for the military strategy and another for political education. The sole role of this political education director was to educate the troops about issues. They found that in educating the military more the soldiers understood what they were fighting for and as a result they were willing to do anything necessary to ensure victory. In essence they became better soldiers because they were mentally prepared for the battle through political education.
Another lesson learned…