Communiversity uplifts the tremendous knowledge that exists in communities and invites community members to build and share their own courses on things they care about, things they’re interested, and things that make their lives and the lives of communities better.  We also provide courses taught by leading activists, organizers, academics, researchers, and public intellectuals that community members otherwise wouldn’t be able to access.

The goal of Communiversity is to open access to vital information about history, politics, organizing, and power. We are shifting mindsets from rugged individualism to community cooperation. With basic needs/Human Rights met through guaranteed income, housing, and healthcare, participation in Communiversity has been rich, full, engaging, and extremely successful.

From the school-to-prison pipeline to divestment from public education in poor, criminalized neighborhoods to the race and class based tracking of students of color, to the invalidation of truthful history, the relationship between the education system and communities decimated by mass incarceration has been adversarial. Communiversity is community-led, community-created, and community-curated to meet our wants and needs.

Impact

After the course on Community Land Trust, community members created and executed a campaign in Bed-Stuy to provide door-to-door education and information about building a Bed-Stuy community land trust.

After the course on soul-writing, gang leaders in Brooklyn organized meditation circles for members.

After the course on cooperative business, 2 community food establishments partnered with Green Workers Cooperative to begin the transition from sole-proprietorship to co-op.

After the course on financial empowerment, community members applied for and secured a grant from Prospect Hill Foundation to open investment accounts for people using recycled bail funds.

2021-2022 Courses:

• All Art is Political: Sharing Complex Ideas Graphically 

• Build your own Cooperative Business

• Building Community Generational Wealth: From Guaranteed Income to Guaranteed Investment

• Comparative systems: Capitalism vs socialism vs communism

• Estate and end-of-life planning

• Financial Empowerment and Independence

• Gangs: Myths, Truths

• Graphic Design: From Canva to Indesign

• Ideation to Execution: Community Improvement Projects

• Indigenous Land-Based Healing Practices

• Local to Global: Pan African Community Organizing

• People’s History: Local and Global

• Professionalism vs. Leadership

• Reparations Now: Examples and Applications

• Soul-Writing: Writing As Medicine

• Understanding the Inequitable Distribution of Wealth

• What is a Community Land Trust

• What is Mutual Aid

• Understanding Local Governance Structures