This is a short interview with Harmony Goldberg, an educator with SOUL who has
helped develop and facilitate the Power and Imperialism and Roots of Terror workshops.
She discusses the pertinence of militarization for understanding globalization in lowincome communities of color, especially in a post-9/11 context.
Can you talk a bit about who SOUL works with and why you developed these
popular/political education workshops?
SOUL is a political education resource for youth organizations in the Bay Area and
nationally. After September 11th, the issues became so pressing that a lot of
organizations were calling us and asking for tools and curriculum for the young people
that they work with to help them develop an understanding of what was going on. And I
think the international perspective has been a blind spot to a lot of locally-based
organizations, so we actually started developing this curriculum shortly after September
11th, and have run it for youth organizations and have run Train-the-Trainers for youth
organizers themselves. There’s membership organizations that work with low-income
and working class people of color, which is a major base for all of our curriculum and all
of our programs. So, the main audience has been youth organizers from oppressed
communities, but it has also been organizers from more of a global justice background
that have wanted to promote more of a local understanding in the anti-war movement,
and/or develop trainings that were accessible to people from more marginalized
communities, instead of just what is often an older, white, and middle-class base.
Something that is unique about the manual is the focus on militarization. Most global
justice manuals seem to focus on economics. Can you talk about why there’s that
emphasis?
Well, we were writing it in the build-up to war. There was just a default. The other piece
is that in our work around youth organizing, the truth is that our base relates to the
militarization. Yes, the conditions of working class people of color is about the broader
economic conditions, but the fronts people fight on every day aren’t about economics
explicitly, they are about incarceration or the disinvestment in schools, or they’re about
police brutality, or they’re about incarceration instead of services. I think the main thing
that angers people is their experience of oppression. That is where they’re most
conscious of their oppression, often here. So, amongst the organizations that we work
closely with, there’s a lot of juvenile justice issues, and police brutality, and so I think it’s
the most direct connection.
Why is popular education so important in how we build a capital-M movement?
I think the best evidence for why we need a movement and why we need fundamental
transformation is the day-to-day realities that people live. We don’t need to change the
world just based on moral principle, we need to change it because people are suffering. I
think that’s the most consistent basis to build a movement from, so I think it’s important
to pull that experience out. And, I think the energy that you can create by helping people
to understand their own power in an educational context is the energy that can motivate
and drive a movement.
And why do you think pop ed brings that out instead of institutional education?
I think people need spaces where they can understand that they have knowledge and
power instead of thinking that they need to get knowledge and power from somewhere
else.
Do you think that the Global Justice Movement has been successful in the last five
years in addressing some of the gap in diversity and representation?
I think it’s a mixed yes and no. I feel that the GJM has advanced in its analysis of
globalization, that there is a better understanding now that globalization didn’t start with
the WTO, but in fact has a long history of colonialism and imperialism. And I think
people have become more conscious of the need to be related to and accountable to the
organizing that happens in the communities that are impacted by imperialism and
colonialism here. But a challenge that has come up repeatedly, that I don’t think we’ve
solved, is that there’s a desire to be accountable to communities, but there’s not really an
understanding of what that means on either side’s part. Take the Republican National
Convention process for example, the reality was that the community based organizations
couldn’t drop everything to lead these protests. But then you have the direct action
movement sorta waiting, and so no one leads. And so, just stepping back and letting go,
waiting for people to step in when it is not their main area of work, is not a solution. And
so to me, we’ve come to consciousness, but haven’t come up with a solution of how this
plays out or applies. It’s not just ‘integrate the global justice movement’ and it’s not
‘stop and wait for other people to replace you’. The global justice movement should be
mobilizing the people. That’s great. But they should do it in an anti-racist way.
Do you think people of color and immigrants are particularly well-positioned to take
leadership roles in the global justice movement, in a post- 9/11 world?
I think that in general the most consistent leadership in social movements comes from
people that are impacted by the issues. The issues that working class people and people
of color face here in the U.S. are not just connected to the global process of poverty and
violence. I think they have the most shared experience with people in the third world,
with poverty and violence. More shared experience as a basis for solidarity and history.
There’s a lot of history and historical consciousness that people have to tap into.
Mainstream education doesn’t pull that out, but popular education does, whether you’re
talking about colonization, or slavery, or people being forced out of their homes. And,
you find that in particular with immigrant communities. And after Sept. 11th, just the
heightened nature of the U.S. repressive apparatus brings particular communities to the
forefront, especially South Asian and Arab folks. But, I think it’s true across the board.