The Critical Role of Member Education: The Nation Magazine Article Review

All too often in our base building and membership development work we focus on the doing, not the thinking. We rest in an assumption that people’s lived experience with oppression means that they have a detailed understanding of how and why it happens. We under-resource the necessary work of building a shared analysis and set of values to guide our vision and strategy for change. When we invest in leadership development, it is focused solely on “how” skills (how to do a one-on-one, how to speak to a decision-maker, how to develop an action), but very seldom on the “why” or “for what”.

This type of orientation is understandable. Our members and our grant deadlines often demand a timetable that is oriented toward immediate action and doesn’t allow for “non-essential” work. Our organizations have limited capacity to do deep member engagement. And our ecosystem hasn’t created the institutions that can do this kind of popular education at scale. But even if it is understandable, it is not acceptable if we want to win in the long term. A lack of investment in robust and comprehensive member education builds weak movements.

A recent article in The Nation Magazine, To Build Working Class Power, We Need a Workers' Education Movement, reminds us that we have had this infrastructure before in our movement environment. The article highlights the century-old history of Brookwood Labor College, an institution that supported a generation of labor leaders who intensively studied strategy, political history, and economics in order to orient a growing labor movement towards a more radical north star. As the article says, this effort (and others like it) were born of the recognition that “political consciousness does not spring organically from being a member of a union, or even from going on strike” but needs to be actively cultivated through member education.​

We at Movement Matters have lived by this sentiment. Organizing work (whether labor or community oriented) needs to be built on a robust foundation of not just member education, but popular education. We need to create strong systems where members are supported in examining their lived experiences and existing understandings of the world; where they are challenged to contextualize these experiences within a framework of history, race, politics, gender, and economics; and where they envision and embody systems that can create true alternatives to the racialized capitalism that is destroying our people and our planet. We continue to support our labor and community partners in building these kinds of spaces, ones that merge the thinking with the doing, to build for the long term.

We greatly appreciate the author, Daniel Judt's call to remember this history, as well as their highlighting spaces where unions are reinvesting in these kinds of efforts. As we all learn and navigate the current political moment, grounding ourselves in what was and what should be is necessary. And investing in the popular education of our members is the foundation of the transformative organizing that we need.

​Connect with us for more information on our member development work and unique popular education approach.

Movement Matters is based in Washington, DC.
We work regionally and with national and international partners.
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