Flight School: Engage

Last Tuesday, C-Roots, a potential TA Wing, hosted the first Flight School. We conversed, we changed, we criticized and we arrived at a set of principals and goals for the study group. Here are some of our thoughts.

1. The desired goals of Flight School
• To self-educate
• To spread and share a similarity of thought and knowledge
  
• To engage in learning that will lead to action
  
• Praxis - to incorporate our theories into our everyday lives/ to live our ideas, not just think about them
  
1. To make activism more than something we try to affect the world, but something we do to try and change and affect ourselves
2. To create productive habits from our studies
3. To connect our private lives with our community and to help build ourselves as well as our community
• To develop empathy
• To empower ourselves by which we create our own reality, our own world, where we don't wait for the world to happen, but the world happens because of us
  
• To stay abreast of and tie our studies into current events
• To help motivate and inspire ourselves, those like us, and those yet to realize their ability and power for change and progress
  
• To change ourselves to conform with our ideas rather than changing our ideas to conform with ourselves
• To find truth
2. To help us achieve this we will
• Be critical of ourselves, our knowledge, and each other by trying to be honest with ourselves and each other
• Not fall into the trap of group think, but always maintain an ability to criticize and question each other within the group
3. The proposed structure of the group
• We'll meet every three weeks
• One or two people will be in charge of selecting and disseminating the reading or viewing materials which in someway help to accomplish our goals
• At the following meeting the the people will lead the discussion to help accomplish our stated goals
  

Imagine flight schools all over the city. One downtown, one in Harlem, one in Washington Heights, one in Queens, one in Bedstuy, one in Brownsville, one in the South Bronx, each with their distinct character, flavor, and goals, but each tied by a common search for truth and significant social change. Imagine these schools lifting their respective areas to a revolutionary consciousness, a shared consciousness with which we move together, with which we coordinate our activities like a flock of falcons to change wind patterns and to change our world. You may realize that falcons don't fly in flocks... We're doing something new.

Much thanks to C-Roots, an NYU organization aimed at uniting groups on campus for social change and fostering seeds of justice in the youth, that will grow to combat injustice. Transform America cannot fly without its Wings.

Stay tuned for the next Flight School