Healing Through Action: Organizer Identity Projects as a Vehicle for Radical Healing

• In Event: Roundtable Session 7
  In Roundtable Session: Parents, Students, and Communities Organizing for and Against Educational Change

Abstract

Drawing on interview and observation data from a study in the Philadelphia Student Union (PSU), this paper uses the framework of identity projects (Harré, 2007) to understand how socially marginalized adolescents can experience radical healing (Ginwright, 2010) through their youth organizing work. The findings reveal that PSU members' organizer identity projects were based on an ethic of love; they were rooted in a positive, long-term vision for their communities; and they were premised on the development of important leadership skills that empowered youth to act on their social environments. With these three characteristics, organizer identity projects inhabited intellectual, emotional, social, and temporal space in members' lives, fostering individual and community-level well-being, promoting unity, and encouraging hopefulness among PSU members.

Author

• Sonia M Rosen, Arcadia University