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Original Articles

Popular Environmental Education: Lessons from the Labor and Civil Rights Movements

Pages 341-360 | Published online: 18 Aug 2010

  • Milbrath , Lester . 1989 . Envisioning a Sustainable Society: Learning Our Way Out , Albany : State University of New York Press . I am grateful to Russ Houldin, Sheldon J. Lipsey, Robert O. Matthews, the Journal editors, and anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. 1 The importance of promoting social learning is emphasized in
  • Princen , Thomas , Finger , Matthias and Manno , Jack P. 1994 . "Transnational Linkages," ” . In Environmental NGOs in World Politics: Linking the Local and the Global , Edited by: Princen and Finger . 217 London : Routiedge .
  • Wapner , Paul . 1996 . Environmental Activism and World Civic Politics , Albany : State University of New York Press .
  • Sanger , Kerran L. 1995 . "When the Spirit Says Sing!" ” . In The Role of Freedom Songs in the Civil Rights Movement , 107 New York : Garland . According to rhetorical theorist , the language in "Oh Freedom" is "general enough to express the feelings of any persecuted people, stressing the concerns and desires of the oppressed." The chorus, which remains much the same in the various movements, is as follows: "Oh Freedom, Oh Freedom/Oh Freedom over me, over me/And before 111 be a slave,/I'll be buried in my grave,/And go home to my Lord and be free."
  • Tracy . 1996 . Direct Action: Radical Pacifism from the Union Eight to the Chicago Seven , Chicago : Chicago University Press .
  • Feagan , R. 1994 . "Expanding Worldviews: Social Movements Background Bring Deeper Analysis to the Environmental Movement," . Alternatives , 20 : 27 – 31 .
  • McAdam , Doug . 1988 . Freedom Summer , New York Oxford University Press .
  • Rothschild , Mary A. 1982 . A Case of Black and White: Northern Volunteers and the Southern Freedom Summers, 1964-1965 , Westport, CT : Greenwood Press .
  • Evans , Sara . 1979 . Personal Politics: The Roots of Women's Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement and the New left , New York : Alfred A. Knopf .
  • Morris , Aldon . 1984 . The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change , 139 – 140 . New York Free Press .
  • Adams , Frank . 1975 . Unearthing Seeds of Fire: The Idea of Highlander , Winston-Salem, NC : John F. Blair .
  • Glen , John M. 1988 . Highlander: No Ordinary School 1932-1962 , Lexington, KY : University Press of Kentucky .
  • Paehlke , Robert . 1989 . Environmentalism and the Future of Progressive Politics , Princeton : Princeton University Press .
  • Dewey , Scott . 1998 . "Working for the Environment: Organized Labor and the Origins of Environmentalism in the United States, 1948-1970," . Environmental History , 3 : 45 – 63 .
  • Adkin , Laurie E. 1998 . Politics of Sustainable Development. Citizens, Unions and the Corporations , Montreal : Black Rose .
  • Robinson , Mike . 1992 . The Greening of British Party Politics , Manchester Manchester University Press .
  • Schlosberg , David . 1999 . "Networks and Mobile Arrangements: Organisational Innovation in the US Environmental Justice Movement," . Environmental Politics , 8 : 131
  • Bullard , Robert D. 1994 . Unequal Protection: Environmental Justice and Communities of Color , San Francisco : Sierra Club Books .
  • Sinclair , Upton . 1985 . The Jungle , 400 New York Penguin Books .
  • Ibid, pp. 372-373.
  • Ibid., p. 385.
  • Kipnis , Ira . 1952 . The American Socialist Movement 1897-1912 , 259 – 260 . New York : Columbia University Press . Sinclair's own life encompassed multiple and varied efforts at raising class consciousness. Besides writing books, Sinclair wrote many articles in the socialist press, and The Jungle was serialized in Appeal to Reason, the socialist national weekly, throughout 1905. In the same year, he founded the Intercollegiate Socialist Society after finding that "he had learned nothing of socialism in eight years of college and was determined that future college students should have the opportunity to learn about Socialist thought, if only outside the normal curriculum" (Ronald Gottesman, "Introduction" in Sinclair, op. cit., p. xxi). By 1912, the Society had 43 college chapters across America, held lectures, and distributed socialist literature. See . And in the early 1930s, he ran for (and almost won) the governorship of California, as the leader of the End Poverty in California (EHC) movement, a grassroots movement which relied on publications, mass meetings, and theater to promote its message.
  • Weinstein , James . 1967 . The Decline of Socialism in America 1912-1925 , 84 – 85 . New York : Monthly Review Press .
  • Shore , Elliot . 1988 . Talkin' Socialism: J. A. Wayland and the Role of the Press in American Radicalism, 1890-1912 , 111 Lawrence, KS : University Press of Kansas .
  • Teitelbaum , Kenneth and Reese , William J. 1983 . "American Socialist Pedagogy and Exerimentation in the Progressive Era: The Socialist Sunday School," . History of Education Quarterly , 23 : 434 – 438 . Kipnis, op. cit., pp. 241-265. Compare Weinstein, op. cit., pp. 84-93,
  • Altenbaugh , Richard . 1990 . Work for Struggle: the American Labor Colleges of the 1920s and 1930s , 66 84 Philadelphia : Temple University Press .
  • Ibid., pp. 19-55.
  • Ibid., p. 25.
  • Ibid., p. 93.
  • Zaniello , Tom and Stiffs , Working . 1996 . Union Maids, Reds, and Riffraff: An Organized Guide to Films About Labor , Ithaca : ILR Press . Later, labor films played an important educative role, beginning with the groundbreaking works of Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein. In the United States, a number of labor-oriented films appeared in the 1930s, produced mainly by Warner Brothers, whereas MGM films were typically bourgeois, and even aristocratic, and generally hostile to labor. For good reviews and analyses of labor films, see
  • Scher , Len . 1992 . The Un-Canadians: True Stories of the Blacklist Era , Toronto : Lester . Odef s play "Waiting for Lef tie" was banned in many Canadian provinces in the 1930s, but not in British Columbia, where Toby Gordon Ryan-an actor who was a member of Theater of Action and The Play Actors-notes "there were more performances of this play in B.C. than any other place in the world-sixty-two of them, all over the province." See
  • Ibid., p. 113.
  • Ibid., p. 105.
  • Seeger , Pete . 1965 . "Whatever Happened to Singing in the Unions?" . Sing Out! , 15 : 28 – 31 .
  • Greenway , John . 1970 . American Folksongs of Protest , 129 New York : Octagon Books .
  • Greenway , John . 1970 . American Folksongs of Protest , 148 127 New York : Octagon Books . Greenway notes that miners, followed by textile workers, have produced more songs of social protest than any other organized labor groups, particularly in the Appalachian region of the Southern states, due to a host of factors: "the rich tradition of folk singing in the Southern mountains, the long cultural isolation of the people, the uncompanionate nature of the work, and of course the bitter conflict with employers."
  • Ibid., p. 11.
  • IbId., p. 194.
  • Ibid., p. 82.
  • Ibid.
  • Ibid., pp. 38, 72,103-104.
  • Klandermans , Bert and Tarrow , Sidney . 1988 . "Mobilization into Social Movements: Synthesizing European and American Approaches," ” . In International Social Movement Research. From Structure to Action: Comparing Social Movement Research Across Cultures , Vol. 1 , 19 Greenwich, CT : JAI Press . Ibid., p. 96, italics added. In turn, movements of the 1960s, such as the student movement, adopted nonviolent action techniques from the civil rights movement. See
  • Ibid., p. 110.
  • Ibid., p. 115.
  • Ibid., pp. 86-87.
  • Ibid., pp. 129-130.
  • Ibid., p. 18. See also pp. 133-156.
  • Ibid., p. 35.
  • Ibid., p. 38.
  • Garofalo , Reebee . 1992 . "Popular Music and the Civil Rights Movement," ” . In Rockin' the Boat: Mass Music and Mass Movements , Edited by: Garofalo . 234 Boston : South End Press . Dunson, op. cit.;
  • IbId., pp. 231-240.
  • Williams , Raymond . 1977 . Marxism and Literature , Oxford : Oxford University Press .
  • Tompson , E. P. 1978 . The Poverty of Theory and Other Essays , London : Merlin Press .
  • Montgomery , David . 1981 . "History as Human Agency," . Monthly Review , 33 : 42 – 48 .
  • Dalton , Russell , Kuechler , Manfred and Bürklin , Wilhelm . 1990 . "The Challenge of New Movements," ” . In Challenging the Political Order: New Social and Political Movements in Western Democracies , Edited by: Dalton , R. and Kuechler , M. 3 – 16 . Oxford : Polity Press .
  • Garofalo , R. "Nelson Mandela, the Concerts: Mass Culture as Contested Terrain," ” . Edited by: Garofalo . 18 – 19 . Garofalo, op. cit., p. 3; op. cit.,
  • Krajnc , Anita . 2000 . "The Art of Green Learning: From Protest Music to Media Mind Bombs," . International Politics: A Journal of Transnational Issues and Global Problems , 37 March : 19 – 40 . For a model of progressive societal learning and social change, see
  • Robinson , John B. , ed. 1996 . Life in 2030: Exploring a Sustainable Future for Canada , Vancouver UBC Press .
  • Naess , Ame . 1989 . Ecology, Community and Lifestyle , Cambridge : Cambridge University Press .

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