While we are on zoom and many of us are joining from different places, we want to remind ourselves that we are gathered on the unceded lands of indigenous peoples. For those in NYC, where SOS is based, the Lenapehoking and the land of the Lenape people. The legacy of transatlantic slavery and the history of anti-blackness in the US has been tied to the theft of people to stolen land. Settler colonialism and the afterlife of slavery include the expansion of prisons and the militarization of police occupying unceded lands. Early carceral technologies included the displacement of Native people off of sacred lands and into reservations, and so abolition necessitates decolonization.

Adapted from the Asian American Feminist Collective, and drawn from Tuhiwai Smith's Decolonizing Methodologies, and Mahmood Mamdani's "Settler Colonialism: Then and Now"

When and Where

July 27-August 28

Online (zoom and whatsapp)


About SOS

Summer Organizing School (SOS) is a collective project to teach, train, and organize members from across universities and unions with the practical skills and political education to refuse austerity politics that place profit over people. SOS is a platform for free online classes and skills training facilitated by undergraduate and graduate students and instructors from universities in the New York area in coordination with local organizations. We seek to build and strengthen our collective capacity—as students, librarians, food service workers, custodial staff, clerical workers, contract faculty, and more—to reimagine and reconstruct the university. We will teach, learn, and share experiences as a practice of mutual aid. We are not here to fill the gaps in what the corporate university fails to provide. We are here to build and realize new visions of education, community support, political education, and consciousness raising.


Themes

Land - settler colonialism, gentrification, decolonization, “global network university”

Citizenship - imperialism, immigration, sanctuary

Labor - rank-and-file militancy, racialized labor, academic labor, social reproduction, strikes

Abolition - prison-industrial complex, transformative justice at work, police unions, student organizing for abolition

University - reimagining the university, digging into university finances


Endorsements

BSU-NYU, Black Student Union

IEC-NYU, Incarceration to Education Coalition

GSOC-UAW-2110, Union for Graduate Student Workers at NYU

SLAM-NYU, Student Labor Action Movement

Update: As of September 20, 2020: BSU no longer endorses SOS


Contact Us!

Email: SOSFreeSchoolNY@gmail.com

Instagram: @SOSFreeSchoolNY

Twitter: @SOSFreeSchoolNY

Venmo: @SOSFreeSchoolNY