Writing as Activism Prompts: March Recap

March 31: Cultural Identity

• Reading Material
  - Quixote Soldiers: A Local History of the Chicano Movement, 1966-1981 (David Montejano)
  - Memory of Fire (Memoria del Fuego) Trilogy (Eduardo Galeano)
  - Ghost Dance: The Poetics of Loss (Melissa Kwasny)
  - Oxford Union Debate Presentation, Dec 3, 1964 (Malcolm X)
• Viewing Material
  - Latino Americans (documentary)
  - Ken Burns' Jazz (documentary)
  - The Freshest Kids: A History of the B-Boy (documentary)
• Listening Material
  - Black Power Speech (Stokely Carmichael)
• Race or Ethnicity or Nationality?
  - Race as social construct
  - Early American music recording industry labelled blues and jazz as "race music"
  - Beyond race in the 21st Century, transcending the hyphenated

Writing Prompt:

• What culture do you speak? Write the narrative of your unique American history

March 24: Human Nature

• Reading Material
  - Human Nature: Justice vs. Power - Debate with Noam Chomsky & Michel Foucault (1971)
  - Arguing for Our Lives: A User's Guide to Constructive Dialogue (UT Austin professor Robert Jensen)
  - Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other (Sherry Turkle)
• Viewing Material
  - Robert Jensen on Arguing for Our Lives at Book People
• Freud-Foucault vs. Chomsky-Jensen
  - Is there a universal human nature?
  - Is authoritarian structure conducive, let alone necessary, for creative progress within human development?
  - What are the underlying impulses driving our functioning selves?
• Three principles derived from observation-research
  - to survive
  - to create
  - to communicate
• Alone Together
  - with an overabundance of communication avenues in this "information age" we still seem to be largely disconnected from the idea of community
• Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
  - Physiological
  - Safety
  - Love and Belonging
  - Self-Esteem
  - Self Actualization

Writing prompt:

• What's in your human nature? Describe the parameters wherein you see creativity or communication can flourish

March 17: The Classroom

• Reading material
  - featured poems by Rabi'a and Rumi rendered by Daniel Ladinsky (see Love Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West), and a poem by Mary Oliver titled "The Poet Dreams of the Classroom"
  - "A school I sat in cured me of hurting others" - Rabi'a
  - "What classrooms have you lounged in; What nonsense have you traded your gold for?" - Rumi
• The function of public schooling
  - system of indoctrination and subordination
  - preparation for the workforce or higher education?
• Current state of higher education
  - corporatization of the university
  - student debt, average student owing between $25k-$30k upon graduation, debt surpassing $1 trillion mark
• Contrast with structured hierarchy of formal schooling with informal educational institutions
  - Institutions arising out of a collective organic need

Writing prompt:

• Write the vision that comes to mind for your ideal classroom

March 10: Letters

• Listening Material
  - The Source (Texas Public Radio) interview featuring poet Gary Snyder and writer Julia Martin
  - Death Letter Blues (Son House)
• Reading Material
  - Letter to a Hindu (Leo Tolstoy)
  - Letter from Birmingham Jail (Martin Luther King, Jr.)
  - Letters to a Young Poet (Rainer Maria Rilke)
• Passing notes
  - nostalgia of writing notes back and forth in middle/high school

Writing prompt:

• Write a letter to someone, alive or dead, or to something, past or present

March 3: Circles

• Reading Material
  - Circles (essay) by Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Viewing Material
  - Islamic Mysticism: The Sufi Way (documentary), written and narrated by world religions author/professor Huston Smith
  - Opening preface from documentary:
  "Going around in circles is a pejorative, a put-down. And with reason for life has its mad whirl, its deadening round. But for the Sufis, circling is the perfect motion. For the circle triumphs over time. It travels without leave-taking. It's true that going in circles gets us nowhere, but what if we're already there?"

Writing prompt:

• Write what has come full circle in your life or what seems to be spiraling out of control

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