I have a thought to help grow OWS. Offer free adult education classes

[county worker]

teaching the main ideas behind OWS. The classes could be held in any number of ways, in churches or homes or night school or in parks etc. A curriculum could be developed by all the occupies so that the same message would be taught through out the country and maybe throughout the world.

[PDJane]

1. It's a decent idea.......

[Hell Hath No Fury]

2. They do.

Most of the larger Occupy camps have free libraries and classes -- SF sports quite a few classes, on everything from OWS ideas to Spanish to move your money to how to Occupy school boards/State capitols/etc.

[jwirr]

9. Are these just the speakers etc. that come to the camps. It would

be worthwhile to have classes in outlying areas for others to attend. For instance at colleges including smaller community colleges that reach into communities where there is no occupy.

[brooklynite]

3. Once when I was passing by the OWS encampment...

...the schedule was listing a teach-in on the Communist Manifesto. I can hazard a guess that the average voter has very little interested in a political philosophy class, much less one on "extreme" philosophies. The politically active people for whom this would appeal are already engaged in the debate.

[nadinbrzezinski]

7. I will have to do one on the wealth of nations

I guarantee you it IS that radical.

[Turn CO Blue]

4. offer free health clinic or dental clinic and 25K people will show up

The logistics are difficult to arrange of course, but if the larger OWS occupations used the funds in their media and donation accounts to hold free healthcare clinics, then as we've seen on the news for similar events, thousands of the uninsured (and insured, not funny) show up for care for their illnesses and pains.

[a simple pattern]

5. That's a great idea.

There must be some doctors and dentists among the 99%.

[jwirr]

10. It would be great if they combined this with the free health care

clinics that Big Ed is always talking about.

[Rabblevox]

6. Occupy Portland has an ongoing "free school" with 6-8 classes/day, along with...

a lending library and regular skill-sharing workshops.

Today's line-up includes:

White Privilege : What is it? How to challenge it
1:00pm
Education Braintrust
1:00pm
Participatory Economics
2:00pm
Open Forum
2:00pm
Ending Corporate Rights & Creating Community Rights
3:00pm
Money Does Not Equal Free Speech
3:00pm

Your idea is a great one, that I hope more Occupations adopt.

www.occupypdx.org

[jwirr]

11. How I would love to set in on the Ending Corporate Rights and

Creating Community Rights one.

[jwirr]

8. The "free universities" of the 60s. Anything from civics to survival.

They were more popular than the regular classes.

[LiberalEsto]

14. classes in balalaika music,

and the history of communism in Ireland

Those were 2 of the Free U. classes at Rutgers back then.

[sibelian]

12. That is a very good idea.

And who knows where it might lead?

Impressive.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

13. Glenn Greenwald was doing this in NYC a couple of weeks ago.

I saw a video of it.