Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

Friends, we face serious problems. These problems are enormous, entrenched, and complex—and perhaps most importantly, we are intimately entangled in them. This course is an attempt to develop some of the analytical, practical, and emotional skills we will need to address these problems; a space where, in a spirit of solidarity and hope, we—along with the other faculty and students who’ve been through this course—can puzzle through and move towards repair and transformation, towards a better world. 

This class is inspired by Robin D.G. Kelley an exemplary scholar-activist who articulates it like this: "The most radical ideas often grow out of a concrete intellectual engagement with the problems of aggrieved populations confronting systems of oppression." (Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination 8) That’s the tradition I hope our work this term can live in. 

To be a little more practical, most weeks we'll read some; and individually you will do brief and informal reflections.

The "big" work is two projects: individually, will develop your skills to plan and organize actions to make a better world. Then, as a class, we'll conceive of and engage in a direct action project to make PCC a little more just and equitable. So the class requires some reading and writing, but mostly it's quite informal--the main work is analyzing how power works, learning from one another, and developing skills to make the world more just.

If you want more info, please reach out: nick.hengenfox@pcc.edu

nope. We'll just use the basics.