Training organization that teaches radical activists tactics of direct action, targeting, confrontation, and intimidation
The Midwest Academy (MA) is a training organization for a variety of leftist causes and organizations. It describes itself as "one of the nation's oldest and best known schools for community organizations, citizen organizations and individuals committed to progressive social change."
MA was founded in 1973 by radical activists Heather Booth and her husband Paul Booth, a founder and former National Secretary of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and former President of Chicago's Citizen Action Program (CAP), formed in 1969 by trainees from Saul Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF). Mr. Booth is currently an assistant to Gerald McEntee, President of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), a public employees union.
The Midwest Academy's methods were adopted by the AFL-CIO's "Union Summer" training camp, which has imbued thousands of labor organizers with radical values and ideas. MA's training sessions, typically five days long, teach techniques of "Direct Action," i.e., of confrontation and intimidation. One such "high power tactic" is what it calls an "accountability session." This involves singling out a "target," e.g. an appointed government official who can make a desired decision, for what he or she is told will be an ordinary meeting to explain a government policy or plan. This official will then face a large number of activists directed by an experienced organizer who has analyzed the official's personal and family life, political connections and career to find vulnerabilities where pressure can be applied.
Such "Direct Action" is used, an MA web page explains, because "we want to give people 'a sense of their own power.' … Because people who develop a sense of their organized power are more likely to stay active and take on larger issues."
The Midwest Academy recruits people by teaching them how to use radical techniques to win on a local community issue of interest to them. It also indoctrinates its students in "us-versus-them" leftist ideology, thereby turning out an ever-growing cadre of radicalized activists who can be called on to "take on larger issues," including anti-war protests, labor rallies and political confrontations.
One prominent Midwest Academy graduate is Service Employees International Union (SEIU) President Andrew Stern, one of the most radical leaders in the labor movement, who supported the creation of "Union Summer."
The Midwest Academy's 425-page manual Organizing for Social Change is widely used by radicals as a textbook on how to conduct direct action organizing. AFL-CIO President John Sweeney and the Rev. Jesse Jackson have encouraged their supporters to read it.
In January 2004 Heather Booth was featured at the National Conference on Organized Resistance at American University in Washington, D.C. This radical conference featured speakers on such topics as "An Analysis of Politically Motivated Property Destruction as a Legitimate Tactic." Booth participated in a panel discussion with former Black Panther Party leader Elaine Brown and Cathy Wilkerson, who had been Editor of the SDS magazine New Left Notes and a member of the domestic terrorist radical group the Weathermen. Booth identified herself at this conference as the founding director of the Midwest Academy "that has helped to build the field operations and/or strategic plans for such organizations as Sierra Club, NARAL [the National Abortion Rights Action League], United States Student Organization [and] Children's Defense Fund."
