Building the School We Need, Not the One We Were Given
Lab Report I: Introducing our developing worker-owned co-op digital school for Movement and Popular Education.
By JAMILA HAMMAMI
“Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.”
— Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Welcome to Lab Reports, Liberation Movement Lab’s Newsletter.
Welcome to Lab Reports, the official newsletter of Liberation Movement Lab.
Liberation Movement Lab is a developing worker-owned cooperative building a digital Movement and Popular Education school. This is Lab Report I, the first in our series where we will document our journey to build the school we need, not the one we were given.
Liberation Movement Lab’s vision is rooted not just in critique but in active experimentation toward collective freedom, a reaction to the chronic failures and ongoing attacks on public and liberatory education spaces. We are not here to replicate the structures thrust upon us, but to build, cooperatively and openly, the kind of school our movements actually need.
Education Under Siege
We all deserve access to liberatory education. But the current landscape is broken by design and under attack at every corner, from the dismantling of DEI to the annihilation of Gender and Race studies, and the defunding of public institutions.
Movement and Popular Education training often remain top-down, extractive, incredibly expensive, or disconnected from the material conditions of learners and movement workers on the ground. Worse, there is no formalized, democratic community to anchor the building of a school in the traditions of Paulo Freire, Zapatista Autonomous Schools, and the Black Radical Tradition. We are left with fragmented resources and a lack of collective ownership over the means of knowledge production.
Who We Are
Liberation Movement Lab (LML) is a developing worker-owned cooperative digital Movement and Popular Education School and community. We are co-creating an alternative space for learning. One that emphasizes the importance of reflecting on language and deprogramming from institutionalized practices, and of an organic process for course development that involves participants in deciding the content and format of the classes, without grades, and to build a robust community of learners.
LML’s work is rooted in abolitionist and anticolonial thought, Movement and Popular Education, disability justice, queer/trans movements, Black and Indigenous Radical traditions, and solidarity economics.
We aren’t just building a school, we’re cultivating a community of co-learners. We are committed to accessibility, expanding community access to education outside traditional academic paradigms, and fostering a community of learners.
Why a “Lab”?
We call ourselves a Lab because education and liberation are not static destinations; they are collaborative, dynamic, iterative processes. While we are a School committed to sharing the rich traditions of Movement and Popular Education, we recognize that the conditions of our oppression are shifting faster than any fixed curriculum can keep pace.
As a Laboratory for education, we abandon and reject the belief that there is a pre-packaged “correct” way to learn and organize in the digital era. Instead, we treat every facet of our learning community and community building, from each class, workshop, community gathering, and digital interaction, as a site of collective inquiry.
Here, we are experimenting with the community to:
- Stress-test frameworks: Taking theories of Movement and Popular Education, applying them to the messy, unpredictable reality of the modern digital era to see what holds up and what breaks.
- Prototype new structures: We are moving beyond traditional academic paradigms and non-profit hierarchies to test what a truly anti-extractive worker-owned cooperative actually looks like in practice.
- Iterate in real time: We do not treat failure as a defeat, but as vital data. We analyze what didn’t work, adjust our variables, and rebuild with intention.
In the Lab, we don’t just teach the history of capitalism or organizing; we are actively co-authoring the next chapter of Movement and People’s Education Schools through rigorous, community-led experimentation. We are building the tools we need by testing them in our collaborative learning spaces, struggling together through study, and by deploying them directly into the fire of the struggle.
What to Expect from Lab Reports and Liberation Movement Lab
This space, Lab Reports, is one of Liberation Movement Lab’s vehicles to jump-start fundamental change. Here, we do not just critique and theorize. We dissect education, examine alternative approaches, and create a space for rigorous dialogue. As well as the tools, frameworks, and hard-won reflections that actually move the needle in real campaigns and movement work. We are co-building the futures we all deserve.
Keep an eye out for:
- Dispatches from the Frontlines: Raw accounts from our Digital Movement and Popular Education School Pilots and the messy, beautiful process of building a co-op.
- Theory Meets Praxis: Book reflections and resource deep-dives grounded in the dirt of actual Movement and Popular Education, not the ivory tower.
- Resisting Weaponized Literacy: Practical tools for media literacy, narrative power and shifting, as well as communications and messaging that serve our communities and the movement, not the algorithm.
- Action: Announcements for classes, workshops, webinars, group coaching, and community events designed to sharpen your learning and strategic edge.
Join us on our Journey.
We are building this together. A school owned by its workers and rooted in its community doesn’t guess what it needs; it asks and builds collaboratively with our communities. Before we launch our inaugural Rise Up Summer School cohort this summer, we want to build community with and hear from you.
We are co-creating a path collaboratively: a school, a lab, and a community engaged in learning and organizing on our terms. If this connects to you, you are welcome to co-create with us.
In the spirit of rigor, hope, and boundary-driven Movement and Popular Education, welcome to The Lab.
Let’s get to work.
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