Motown and the Making of Working-Class Revolutionaries: Jerome Scott in Conversation with Anne Olson

Name: Motown and the Making of Working-Class Revolutionaries: Jerome Scott in Conversation with Anne Olson
Start: 2025-10-29T19:30:00-04:00
Location: 184 S. Candler St. , Decatur, GA, United States, Georgia 30030

Schedule

Wed, 29 Oct, 2025 at 07:30 pm

UTC-04:00

Location

184 S. Candler St. , Decatur, GA, United States, Georgia 30030 | Decatur, GA

This event takes place in person at Charis and on Crowdcast, Charis' virtual event platform. This event is free, but registration is required for virtual attendance. Register at the link above to attend virtually. Please read the in-person event guidelines at the bottom of this page to be sure you can participate in the event.
Charis welcomes Jerome Scott in conversation with Anne Olson for a discussion of Motown and the Making of Working-Class Revolutionaries: The Story of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, which draws on more than forty hours of interviews with former members of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers to share the rich story of the League.
Motown and the Making of Working-Class Revolutionaries offers a fresh perspective on class, race, and revolution in the United States. Drawing on more than forty hours of interviews with former members of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, Scott and Katz-Fishman share the rich story of the League, including the women and students. That story includes the history of the automotive industry in Detroit, the 1967 Detroit Rebellion, and the wildcat strike that sparked the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM). The authors describe the rise of the League from 1968 to 1971. They explore the centrality of struggle and political education as the League split and a section of League comrades moved into revolutionary organizations and social movement spaces, many of which remain active today. League comrades share their analysis of the current moment and staying the course of revolutionary struggle.
About the Author
Jerome Scott is a former autoworker, labor organizer in Detroit auto plants, and member of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. The founding director of Project South: Institute for the Elimination of Poverty & Genocide, he is a contributing author or editor of popular education toolkits and books, including The United States Social Forum: Perspectives of a Movement and The Roots of Terror, among others.
About Event Partner
Project South is a Southern-based leadership development organization that creates spaces for movement building. They work with communities pushed forward by the struggle– to strengthen leadership and to provide popular political and economic education for personal and social transformation. They build relationships with organizations and networks across the US and global South to inform our local work and to engage in bottom-up movement building for social and economic justice.
About the Conversation Partner
In the seventies, Anne Olson found Charis Books and More, joining book groups, volunteering and became a founding member of Charis Circle. At the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta (UUCA), she was deeply involved with programing and yes, another book group.
It was the presentation at the Atlanta Book Club, organized by Jerome Scott of Project South: Institute for the Elimination of Poverty and Genocide, that got her attention. The author discussed their book and an activist and a scholar responded with their understandings from the book. Then a question/answer period followed; everyone was invited to become involved. She was hooked!
Busy training as a human rights educator, popular education skills learned with Jerome improved her communication when training others. It was a new way to strengthen both her leadership and those she was training. These tools also helped her to improve voter education and registration skills, a deep interest of hers.
Another form of training came at he People’s Movement Assemblies organized and coordinated, usually by Steph Guilloud and Emery Wright. Here was another opportunity for “bottom up” involvement of all participants. She is not sure how many of these assemblies she both attended and offered workshops, often focusing on the importance of human rights. Along with PS staff, she took the training to colleges in the metro area. Like Charis Books and More and UUCA, Anne was heavily involved. And best of all, found many new friends.
Fundraising is not a skill she had but after a session with Kim Klein from California, she became better at that task. Will Cordery, Steph, and Anne tried to create “an elevator speech” for PS. No luck; it felt to important to keep the vision as described even if too long.
With Anne's involvement and human rights knowledge, she was asked to be part of the Leadership Team. She served in that role with pleasure, earning a “Movement Educator Award” in 2011.
The event is free and open to all people, but we encourage and appreciate a donation of $5-20 in support of the work of Charis Circle, our programming non-profit. Donate on Crowdcast or via our website: www.chariscircle.org/donate or in person at the event.
Charis Books is a fully wheelchair accessible space with on site van accessible parking, two ramps, and additional overflow accessible parking nearby. Additional accessibility information can be found on the Accessibility page of our website.
In-person event guidelines:
- All attendees must wear a face mask during the event.
- We will begin seating people at 7:00 PM ET.
- This event will be live-streamed via Crowdcast. Register at the link above to attend virtually.
- As a reminder: If you are not feeling well, please do not come to the event.
If you have any questions regarding these guidelines or to request specific accessibility accommodations, please contact [email protected] or call the store at 404-524-0304.
Please contact us at [email protected] or 404-524-0304 if you would like ASL interpretation at this event. If you would like to watch the event with live AI captions, you may do so by watching it in Google Chrome and enabling captions: Instructions at https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/10538231?hl=en. If you have other accessibility needs or if you are someone who has skills in making digital events more accessible please don't hesitate to reach out to [email protected].
By attending our event, whether in person or virtually, you agree to our Code of Conduct: Our event seeks to provide a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of gender, gender identity and expression, age, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, ethnicity, religion (or lack thereof), class, or technology choices. We do not tolerate harassment in any form. Unsolicited sexual language and imagery are not appropriate. Anyone violating these rules will be expelled from this event and all future events at the discretion of the organizers. Please report all harassment to Charis staff immediately or email [email protected].