Work People's College
In 2012 the Twin Cities branch of the Industrial Workers of the World relaunched Work People's College on a limited basis as a summer training camp for the group's activists and organizers.
[1] Education was a valued part of Finnish immigrant life and the desire for institutions of higher learning in their own language extended across generational and ideological boundaries.
[3] Finnish immigrants in this period constituted nearly 40 percent of the population of Northern Minnesota,[4] with a goodly number of these working in the mining and timber industries or on the docks of Duluth, a major port on the southernmost tip of Lake Superior.
[2] In an intense economic and political environment, marked by labor strikes and the emergence of the Finnish Socialist Federation among the immigrant community, these factions vied for control of the school.
[2] The students of the Finnish People's College and Theological Seminary resisted the school's educational regime, which imposed mandatory prayer while forbidding discussion of social issues.
[2] With enrollment tailing off, the board of directors initially considered closing the school but found financial rescue through the sale of stock in the institution at the rate of $1.00 per share.
[5] Frustrated by the lack of advanced secular education in their own language, the Finnish Socialist Federation (FSF) became actively involved buying stock at the behest of board member Alex Halonen.
[5] The 1912 convention of the FSF voted to reduce this subsidy to 50 cents per member per year, at the same time adding its opinion that the school's curriculum should be tailored to the needs of future socialist and trade union activists rather than to a general course of study.
Beginning in the summer of 2012, the Twin Cities General Membership Branch of the Industrial Workers of the World in partnership with IWWs from around the country restarted the Work People's College, hosting a 5-day retreat bringing together nearly 100 rank and file organizers from around North America.
