Walking Tour: Gentrification, Privatization, and the Struggle to Defend Oakland's Public Schools

Session Type: Off-Site Visit

Abstract

This guided walking tour takes place around Lake Merritt in Oakland, California. Participants will visit sites that have served as contested spaces in the struggle against neoliberal school reform. We will explore how processes of dispossession and accumulation take place within a rapidly gentrifying city, engage in a grounded examination of the ongoing privatization of the school district, and learn from the ways that communities have organized to resist these efforts. The experience will be facilitated by educational researchers who are also longtime community members and educators. We will be joined by local leaders in both the site-based struggles and broader movements for racial justice in Oakland over the past two decades, including the historic teacher strikes of 2019.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Grassroots Community and Youth Organizing for Educational Reform

Visit Leaders

• Frances Free Ramos, University of California - Berkeley

• Nirali Jani, Holy Names University