"They have created a desert and called it peace"
P&D #3: popular education in a time of war
In this issue:
Musings: "They have created a desert and called it peace”
Toolkit: A People’s Timeline
Story: Dissent both Noisy and Quiet
Links, Etc.
"They have created a desert and called it peace”
I began practising popular education just as the 70s made way for the 80s. As an editor of the McGill Daily student newspaper I found I had a ready context for applying the radical practices of learning and teaching that I was learning from Paulo Freire's work. The student newspaper was also a vantage from which to see and quickly participate in a variety of social movements, the first of which, for me, was the anti-apartheid struggle - and which remained my principle commitment for many years - even while I found myself connected with anti-nuclear activism, feminist and anti-racist struggles, Latin American solidarity and more.
As a student journalist I was able to contribute a bit to these various struggles, producing 'zines, workshop plans, facilitating training, assigning reporters to cover these issues. And I was getting a powerful education in media literacy. My years of involvement with the student press proved a lasting influence on my relationship with media.
Now, as Russia wages the largest war in Europe since World War II, my solidarity with the Ukrainian people is galvanized. Even while I am simultaneously mindful of the ongoing war in Yemen, the always-seemingly-easily-forgotten oppression of Palestinians, as well as other less "newsworthy" conflicts around the world. I do admit, though, that I had forgotten that Russia was still a nuclear power and Putin's threat possibly to use nuclear weapons woke me from a disturbing complacence. Thus have I been reflecting on popular education's history with anti-war and peace movement activism. At first I felt my memory was poor and examples were sparse. But then I caught the thread of my experience of the 80s and I was surprised by how much I'd forgotten.
It was 1978 when I first saw Peter Watkins' The War Game, which he made in 1965 for the BBC but who immediately banned the film as they felt that it was too "horrifying" to broadcast. It did have a limited theatrical release and was shown internationally, also winning the 1967 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. It was, however, a pseudo-documentary - a fictional depiction of a nuclear strike on a British city. When I met Watkins in the 80s he virtually repudiated his film saying that it gave an entirely false notion that a nuclear strike was survivable, something he'd learned in subsequent years was a ridiculous notion.
I was shocked by the film and also intrigued. I realize now that it was quite likely the beginning of my interest in both media and storytelling. Shortly after seeing The War Game I watched Watkins' previous film Culloden, also shot in the style of a documentary. The film was a re-enactment of the 1746 Battle of Culloden which was the final battle of the Jacobite uprising against the English crown, after which the English proceeded with what became known as the Highland Clearances, the mass eviction of Scots tenants and the enclosure of land for pasturing sheep. As with The War Game, this film is deeply affecting. It ends with the line "They have created a desert and called it peace" - words attributed to the Caledonian chieftain Calgacus by the first Century Roman historian Tacitus. I felt gutted as this film ended. And my disposition as an anti-war activist solidly established.
It was 1984 or 85 that I learned that Peter Watkins was coming to Montreal and seeking support for a new film project about nuclear war and mass media. I jumped at the opportunity to be part of this and accepted the invitation from Watkins and his lead organizers Christine Burt and Peter Wintonick to do whatever needed doing. This involved lots of fundraising but it also included some very interesting media analysis work as well as some research about Canada's weapons industry.
Watkins was shooting his film in eight locations around the world. The final film, The Journey, came in at a staggering 873 minutes (just shy of 15 hours). You can now watch the whole thing on YouTube. It amazes me that it was made at all. But it remains one of the most remarkable educational experiences of my life. I can't recall if I thought of it at the time as popular education. But in retrospect, it was certainly that. The amount of learning-by-doing (the facts of nuclear armaments and mass media coverage, the skills acquired to research and organize, and the friendships forged) was immeasurable.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLa_FsFEfGzp5s37ANsBuOweOmfrpDXbLQ
It was in those years that I also co-founded a youth leadership program called the International Youth for Peace and Justice Tour which brought dozens of teens from across Canada and internationally to share their stories of resistance to violence (of many kinds). These teen activists were sent across Canada to share testimonies with Canadian high school students. I lead the orientation, training, and debriefing processes, applying everything I knew about popular education. The NFB's Studio D made two short films of this project. Somewhere in the midst of all that I managed to co-found with Lanie Melamed and others The Peace Education Network of Quebec. Lanie was a proponent of play and playfulness in learning, something about which I will write in a future issue of the newsletter.
http://www.acsqc.ca/content/lanie-melamed-1928-2003
I have not thought of these many experiences for some time and I'm not sure I've ever integrated all this into my history of popular education. But now, as I seek connections between popular education about resistance to war, I see many connections. Popular education emerged in Canada and Quebec in the 70s as Latin American experience intersected with local histories of social movement activism. It was taken up very quickly in Quebec where it remains a vigorous practice with many institutions practicing it explicitly. It was slightly slower in its uptake in the rest of Canada but by the mid-80s you could find popular education projects from coast to coast. (In the United States it was even slower to be taken up.) However, all this is only true if we limit ourselves to the term popular education.
For there were numerous processes of radical, participatory learning happening around the world as far back as the early 20th Century that shared much in common with what eventually emerged as popular education. Many of these were described as adult education and community development efforts. Some examples that span the late 19th Century through the mid-20th include: The Antigonish Movement in Canada's Maritimes (promoting co-ops and credit unions); The Chautauqua Movement in rural United States; The Canadian Farm Radio Forums broadcast by the CBC from 1941-1965; Highlander Folk School founded in 1932 in Tennessee by Myles Horton (and still going strong); The Nordic Folk School Movement founded by Nikolaj Frederik Severin Grundtvig; Les mouvements d'action catholique in Quebec.
And, apropos of this moment of resisting war, there is the "teach-in", a participatory form of learning that also mobilized action against war. The first teach-in happened in 1965 in Ann Arbor, Michigan organized by university faculty and the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780809089390/studentsforademocraticsociety
Popular education has a much deeper and more complex history than I imagined when I tripped into it in the late 70s. And, while there are many examples of popular education being used today, there are far more examples of radical learning and teaching happening that do not use the term popular education but which are, perhaps, the same. This is certainly part of what I plan to learn more about.
Meanwhile, we face two powerful conditions that make popular education for peace and against war uniquely challenging: the ongoing global COVID pandemic and the ubiquity and power of social media (and, more generally, the information-gushing-fire-hose that is the internet). Popular education is about collective learning and the spaces for such have been severely constrained these past two years. I am still assessing the consequences of the isolation that the pandemic has necessitated. Coincidentally, before the pandemic began I decided to do a PhD to examine the history of Canadian popular education. I don't know what I would have done without the internet and Zoom. And still I feel like I've been moving through molasses (with the rather intriguing exception of how well Zoom has worked for playing Dungeons and Dragons with friends far away - more on this another time).
Finally, on the matter of social media and the internet I feel that critical media literacy has never been more crucial. So, to end on this point, please see a selection in the Links section below of a few sources that can contribute to better critical understanding of the permanent information storm of modern life.
A Tale for the Telling: Dissent both Noisy and Quiet
Apropos of the work I described above on Peter Watkins' film The Journey, here's an account of an escapade from that time. It began with a phone call from Christine which had me leaping onto my bike and barrelling down Park Avenue to reach the Ritz Carlton Hotel on Sherbrooke St. in downtown Montreal. I'm trying to keep this newsletter on the shorter side so will simply share here a link to the full story which I published on my Comeuppance blog some years ago. But I'd love to hear back whether you prefer the newsletter text all in one place. You can read the story at this link:
http://comeuppance.blogspot.com/2016/01/dissent-both-noisy-and-quiet.html
Toolkit: A People's Timeline
Timelines are seemingly simple tools for sharing group knowledge quickly. But there is a surprising degree of complexity that can be achieved with very little effort. Below is a brief description of one way to do a timeline.
Timeline activities can be done as quickly as 30 minutes or can structure the entire morning of a workshop (90 minutes to 3 hours). What you'll need is the basic supplies of large chart paper, index-card sized paper (sticky notes are great), a selection of coloured markers, masking tape. Label the timeline with the dates and sections in which you are interested. Then:
Introduce timeline and point out the sections and the events that facilitator has placed there. Personal experience includes both what has happened to us and what we know about (through family, friends, reading, etc.) that has affected us in some way
Distribute sheets of paper (half of letter-sized page or index-card-sized post-it notes). Ask participants to do two things: 1) “Consider instances in your life when you have felt most secure” (look at definitions or quotations if that helps). Write an example or two of this and put it on a post it. 2) Think about examples of events that have happened in Canada and the world that have either increased or decreased human security. Think of as many examples as you can. For these examples all the “hurts” should be on one colour and all of the “helps” should be on another. Participants may find working with partners helpful.
After 15-20 minutes ask participants to post their contributions on the timeline. Once they are all posted ask everyone to come up as a group for a “museum tour” – to get a general look at the timeline. After a few minutes ask for volunteers to talk about something they put up. If volunteers are scarce read some of the examples and ask if the person that put it up would be willing to talk about it.
Links, Etc.
Some sources for critical media literacy:
Books I am currently reading:
Paulo Freire: A Philosophical Biography by Walter Omar Kohan (Bloomsbury, 2021)
Wild Seed by Octavia E. Butler (in Seed to Harvest, Warner Books, 2007, 1980) (this is a re-read, actually)
Dub: Finding Ceremony by Alexis Pauline Gumbs (Duke University Press, 2020)
Comic Books I've Read Most Recently:
Monstress #37 - w: Marjorie Liu; a: Sana Takeda (Image Comics, Feb. 2022)
Adventureman #8 - w: Matt Fraction; a: Terry Dodson, Rachel Dodson (Image Comics, Mar. 2022)
Saga # 56 - w. Brian K. Vaughan; a: Fiona Staples (Image Comics, Feb. 2022)
Love and Rockets Vol. IV, # 11 - w/a: Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez (Fantagraphics, 2022)