"Its More Than a 'Safe Space'": Care and Activism in Community-Based Educational Organizations

• In Event: 66.064 - Youth and Community Voice? Perspectives on Challenging a Racial Politics of Inclusion

Abstract

Overview: Previous work on community-based education organizations in the Midwest reveals that young organizers of color found their definitions of activism and resistance at odds with the goals and desires of the youth workers and broader local community - most of these odds blooming from guilt-driven approaches to working with youth of color. In this study, despite these obstacles, both black youth workers and young organizers worked to create a truthful, healing space in the midst of a highly racialized and contentious terrain.

Theoretical & conceptual framework: Ginwright (2009) illuminates the formation of caring relationships between youth and adults can be catalysts for community organizing and activism. Specifically speaking about youth who internalize deficit-based narratives of agency in regard to violence and other community problems, Ginwright says that care is needed to both heal and redefine orientation with the environment. The relationships built from these experiences foster political consciousness and action as result of how youth and adults can express themselves.

Questions: Knowing this, how do youth workers within a non-profit community-based organization, centered in an economically contentious and highly racialized context, engage marginalized youth in activism and community organizing? How and in what ways does “care” work to create a healing space in this environment?

Methods: This project used ethnographic methods of inquiry centered on participant observations and triangulated with individual interviews and discourse analysis. Altogether, this project conducted 30 semi-structured interviews with participants from “Rainier Community Center’s AYE (Action and Youth Empowerment) Program”, a youth organizing program within a large community organization. In addition to the interviews, participant observations research has been conducted since 2015.  

Findings: A key aspect to Rainier’s impact in the lives of AYE’s participants – both past and present – was Louis, the heart and backbone of Rainier programming. One of three youth workers of color in the center, Louis consistently made it a priority to be everything to the youth and youth workers that walked through the door. Erica described the relationship between herself and Louis to that of a father and daughter. “…Louis is like my dad and Louis has a kid now and it’s just like oh my gosh. I went to Louis’ wedding you know. You don’t, you don’t do that with teachers you know. You’re just not.”-Erica. “It was just nice to know you have an advocate who’s always there for you no matter what. [Field Notes from May 2016].”

Implications: The impact of individual youth workers on the center’s culture make it a
second home, cultivating the long-term relationships that are cornerstone to the AYE’s existence. Many of the high schoolers disconnect with formal schooling and connection with the community center matches other work on how young people in other contexts perceive community spaces and programs. The young participants in this often verbally expressed their dislike for schooling, while praising the center’s close and connectedness to Kennedy High. Similarly, the importance of “flexibility” alongside “healthy adult relationships” helped to tie the young people in their study to community-based organizations (Baldridge, Hill & Davis, 2011).

Author

• Marlo A. Reeves, Independent Consultant