Center for Popular Economics

The Center for Popular Economics needs your help to make the Summer Institute accessible to all!

Since our founding in 1979, the Center for Popular Economics (CPE) has demystified the economy for thousands of activists engaged in the fight for economic justice. Our Summer Institute – a weeklong residential and intensive program that draws activists, media makers, teachers and community groups from around the world – has always been the centerpiece of our popular education programs.

CPE is partnering with the Center for Economic Democracy (CED) to run the 2019 Summer Institute in Boston from June 25th - 29th. This year's theme is Economics for Emancipation: Building on the Legacy of Radical Struggles . 

After decades on the defensive from neoliberal onslaught, where activists and communities have been fighting to preserve prior gains in social security, migrant rights, public education, etc., we now have the opportunity to push for the world we want to see. Designed to address the movement’s knowledge gaps and counter conservative economic myths, the Center for Popular Economics’ Summer Institute provides an intensive training in the economics needed to advance a different vision.

CPE and CED are committed to popular education, relating political and economic concepts to people’s concrete lives and using games, theater, music, and film to make this information accessible and fun. The updated CPE curriculum covers the history of capitalism and of movements against class, race and gender oppression; the nature of capitalist exploitation, progressive approaches to fiscal and monetary policy, the economics of climate change, racism and patriarchy; current international architecture for trade and finance; and alternative economic systems.  

Lack of money should not be a barrier to participation in the Summer Institute, but we need your help to make that happen!

CPE is working towards being able to offer scholarships to every applicant that might need one - and we have generously received several grants and many member donations -  however these $2,500 would go a long way towards making the institute more accessible!

For more information: visit our website, www.populareconomics.org, and follow us on Facebook  & Twitter. Read more about our co-organizer, the Center for Economic Democracy, at www.economicdemocracy.us. 

We are deeply grateful for your contributions that make our popular education institutes, workshops, and publications possible.

In solidarity,
The CPE Summer Institute Committee


Past participants on the value of the CPE Summer Institute:

“... we tend to blame a lot on individuals...that person is oppressing me,...that person is the man, but not really understanding what’s really going on...Who is oppressing us, what forces are against us? The international class gave me a clearer understanding of the global struggle”
--Hakim Cunningham, Boston Workers Alliance

“The Summer Institute has provided us with skills, tools and resources that will allow us…to become better strategic planners and thinkers, thereby increasing our organizational capacity and long-term sustainability.”
--Summer Institute participants from Community Against Pollution, Anniston, AL

The Center for Popular Economics needs your help to make the Summer Institute accessible to all!

Since our founding in 1979, the Center for Popular Economics (CPE) has demystified the economy for thousands of activists engaged in the fight for economic justice. Our Summer Institute – a weeklong residential and intensive program that draws activists, media makers, teachers and community groups from around the world – has always been the centerpiece of our popular education programs.

CPE's 2018 Summer Institute “People & Planet Over Profit: Understanding Capitalism and Building Economic Democracy”  (July 29th-August 4th, in Amherst, MA) - will address such topics as “free” trade agreements and international finance, corporate power, economic and military imperialism, and global environmental justice. We will also explore existing and proposed alternatives for  more democratic economic institutions, fairer trade and migration systems, and equitable solutions to the climate crisis. Our analysis takes us beyond harmful myths and tropes – like from the notion that jobs come at the expense of the environment, and to the idea that hierarchy and inequality are necessary parts of a successful economic system – to help us move toward broad-based solidarity between diverse groups and beyond national boundaries.

Lack of money should not be a barrier to participation in the Summer Institute, but we need your help to make that happen!

CPE is working towards being able to offer scholarships to every applicant that might need one - and we have generously received several grants and many member donations -  however these $5,000 would go a long way towards making the institute more accessible!

For more information on the Summer Institute and the Center, please visit us on our website (www.populareconomics.org), and on Facebook & Twitter .

We are deeply grateful for your contributions that make our popular education institutes, workshops, and publications possible.

In solidarity,
The CPE Summer Institute Committee


Past participants on the value of the CPE Summer Institute:

“... we tend to blame a lot on individuals...that person is oppressing me,...that person is the man, but not really understanding what’s really going on...Who is oppressing us, what forces are against us? The international class gave me a clearer understanding of the global struggle”
--Hakim Cunningham, Boston Workers Alliance

“The Summer Institute has provided us with skills, tools and resources that will allow us…to become better strategic planners and thinkers, thereby increasing our organizational capacity and long-term sustainability.”
--Summer Institute participants from Community Against Pollution, Anniston, AL