our website is currently undergoing maintenance

Political Education

We are excited and honored to announce the newest expansion to NSM’s programming. While NSM has always been based on collective learning, not until now have we had an intentionally designed, comprehensive political education curriculum.

POLITICAL EDUCATION IS...

Popular education guides the vision and practice of NSM’s education programming. Popular education rejects the “banking” method of education in which a teacher holds all of the knowledge and is responsible for depositing it into the “empty, passive” brains of students. On the contrary, political education considers all people involved in the learning process to be both teachers and learners. Popular education starts from the assumption that everyone’s experiences contain valuable knowledge. This definition of popular education can be accredited to Brazilian educator Paolo Freire as well as the incredibly influential peoples movements across Latin America and around the world in the 20th century.

13669155_1212005335476237_4237019740050390647_n
Bertha, one of the Promotores of New Sanctuary Movement of Philadelphia

KNOW YOUR RIGHTS

Accompaniment

We offer education programming within four overarching themes:

linda-and-katie

Immigrant rights and access to services

Everyone has the right to know their rights. We offer education about the immigration system, access to social services, and tenant rights in order to support immigrants to claim more agency in their daily life. Our workshops respond to changing policies and requests of our community members. This education is accomplished through collaborations with local organizations. This definition of popular education can be accredited to Brazilian educator Paolo Freire as well as the incredibly influential peoples movements across Latin America and around the world in the 20th century.

Community-led, relational, multicultural organizing

We believe in the power of the people. Our organizing is rooted in the conviction that everyone contains value and skills necessary for collective liberation. Relationships are the building blocks of trust and thus the building blocks of NSM’s organizing. Our goal is to identify and support the organizing strengths people carry within them from their home countries and merge those skills with an anti-racist, interfaith framework. We center on organizers who cannot be contained by the limited mold of Western, white, professionalized ideals of who constitutes an “Organizer”. Instead, we believe in supporting everyone’s self-defined visions of strength and building accessible communities toward a more just world for all immigrants.

unnamed (2)
Credit Rodney Atienza

Intersectionality

A term coined in the 1980s by Black feminist Kimberlé Crenshaw in the context of a legal challenge to the hiring practices of General Motors. Ms. Crenshaw and other legal scholars argued that the experiences of Black women in the workplace were not captured solely by the fact they were Black nor solely by the fact they were women. Rather, these workers’ experiences – like everyone’s experiences – are crafted by the simultaneous implications of these realities. While “intersectionality” is a big word, it represents a concept each us navigates daily. How we experience the world is shaped by the simultaneous impact of our multiple social identities and how the world values or doesn’t value these identities. Like an intersection, we inhabit the coming together of the many parts of ourselves.

Cultural Wellness & Celebration

Our differences are beautiful. Our unique cultures, traditions, and histories are inextricable from who we are and what we envision for our futures. This education initiative is dedicated to integrating cultural lessons and celebrations into all branches of our work.

NSM13 (1)

let's Stand Together

Get Involved​

We work to end injustices against immigrants regardless of immigration status!