For the May 2019 podcast we welcome Jerome Scott, co-founder of Project South: Institute for the Elimination of Poverty and Genocide (f. 1986). Jerome visited my REL/EDU 385: Religion, Education, and Activism class in April and told his story of what led him to become an activist/scholar educator. He shared about his work in voting rights, worker and immigrant justice, coalition building, education, and movement support. Jerome’s main work has involved linking scholar activists with activist scholars in grassroots communities. And fitting for this time of high school and college/university graduations, he laid out his hopes for building the “beloved community” in the future.
Jerome has done so much social change work; here are links to more resources and the organizations he helped/helps lead as a model for the work of transformative change at the grassroots level.
Project South:
Democracy Convention:
https://www.democracyconvention.org/
Jerome is the co-recipient, with Dr. Walda Katz-Fishman, of the American Sociological Associations 2004 Award for the Public Understanding of Sociology:
Jerome serves on Move to Amend’s National Leadership Team:
https://movetoamend.org/move-amend-reports-us-social-forum-jerome-scott
Grassroots Global Justice Alliance:
League of Revolutionaries for a New America:
What to read to get started:
Walda Katz-Fishman and Jerome Scott, “Another United States Is Happening: Building Today’s Movement from the Bottom Up. The U.S. Social Forum and Beyond. Pp. 57-70 in The World and U.S. Social Forums: A Better World Is Possible and Necessary, eds. Judith Blau and Marina Karides. Brill 2008.
Intro and other interstitial music is by Lance Eric Haugan (theme music with Aviva and the Flying Penguins)
Otro music by Paul Myhre , “Zoe’s Moonrise–Year 1” (Myhre, 2019); available on ReverbnNation.com
