W.E.B. Dubois Movement School
The W.E.B. Du Bois Movement School for Abolition & Reconstruction is a political education program for aspiring revolutionaries and movement leaders from those communities most impacted by poverty, policing, and mass incarceration.
Hide nothing from the masses of our people. Tell no lies. Expose lies whenever they are told. Mask no difficulties, mistakes, failures. Claim no easy victories.”
Amílcar Cabral
We study the World to change it
Our home is Philadelphia, crossroads of Harriet Tubman and Octavius Catto, W.E.B. Du Bois and Paul Robeson, Mumia Abu-Jamal and Maroon Shoatz, a critical hub for abolitionist militancy in the past and a thriving and powerful movement ecosystem today.
Through participatory and collective study of political economy, the history of global resistance movements, and the theoretical and practical aspects of social change, we aim to teach a new generation of organic intellectuals not only how to understand the world, but more importantly, how to change it.
What We Do
The Du Bois Movement School trains aspiring and current movement organizers in how to understand the world and how to change it. We do so through a combination of history, political economy, strategy, and skills. Through concise readings and seminar-style discussion, students study the historical emergence of the world we inhabit and the forces shaping it today. In the process, they develop an understanding of the mutual constitution, past and present, of economic exploitation (capitalism), racial domination (slavery and colonization), and sexual and gendered oppressions (patriarchy)—which, understood together, provide a roadmap for the sorts of movements and strategies that will be their undoing.
Our students are aspiring revolutionaries and abolitionists of all ages and backgrounds who want to acquire the analytical tools and practical skills necessary to set political change into motion and sustain it through struggle. But we seek above all to help build the leadership capacity of organic intellectuals, those most directly impacted by oppressive structures—policing, mass incarceration, environmental racism, and poverty—and those closest to the struggles to dismantle them.
To do so entails teaching aspiring organizers young and old about their own power and encouraging them to see the world as shaped by human forces—forces that can be undone through the work of organized movements. This means that our pedagogical approach is above all critical: we seek not to deposit preexisting knowledge in the minds of students, but to empower them to shape and reshape theory through their own experiences of the world and encounters with injustice.
Study with Us
Abolition and Reconstruction: An Emergent Guide for Collective Study
Contributors
Geo Maher, Coordinator
Geo Maher, Ph.D., is a writer, organizer, and popular educator who has taught in colleges and universities, in prisons, and in the barrios of Caracas, Venezuela—learning an immense amount from his students in the process.
Christopher R. Rogers
Christopher R. Rogers, Ph.D., is an educator and cultural worker from Chester, PA. He serves on the National Steering Committee for Black Lives Matter at School, supporting movements for racial justice in K-16 education.
Anthony Smith
Anthony Smith is a West Philly based organizer and educator. He worked as Social Studies teacher, having had the honor of working with and teaching Philadelphia youth for 7 years.
Nneka Azuka
Nneka is a North Philly-based organizer who focuses on community support and defense, community garden development, and international class solidarity.
Talia Charidah
Talia, MPH, is a public health researcher and poet whose work has focused on the impact of displacement on identity formation and mental health, particularly for refugees and immigrants from the SWANA (Southwest Asia and North Africa) region.