Arizona #RedForEd: Teachers and the Shaping of Contested Subjectivities

• In Event: Latinx American Scholars and Teachers Making the Decolonial Turn a Reality

Abstract

From Oklahoma to Kentucky, West Virginia to North Carolina, teacher strikes have garnered national attention. In Arizona, over 50,000 teachers came together in 2018 in a mass demonstration under the slogan/movement, #RedForEd. While much has been publicized about the challenges and strife in Arizona related to anti-immigrant rhetoric, attacks on ethnic studies, and various other issues, very little has been documented about how teachers in historically “red” states like Arizona engage in social action.

Arizona teacher activists like teachers Noah Karvelis and Marisol Garcia were pivotal in organizing educators and the larger community around underfunded schools and overall neglect related to teacher pay and other salient issues. The public discourse, especially in 2018, consisted of multiple layers of media, organizing, and tensions around who gets to decide the “common sense” around what Arizona’s educational/schooling future should look like. This also was juxtaposed within a timeframe where many Arizona politicians were running for office and some aligned themselves with the #RedForEd movement like Tempe, Arizona legislators, Isela Blanc and Athena Salman.
Finally, drawing from over two-years of semi-structured interviews of activist Arizona teachers involved in #RedforEd, I will theorize using elements of Ross & Vinson’s (2013) notion of dangerous citizenship and Quijano’s (2000) work on the coloniality of power to examine how teachers involved in Arizona’s #RedForEd movement mobilized to push back against silencing and erasure, and I shed light on the ongoing struggles enacted by multiple constituencies seeking to reframe the colonial roots of the state’s power structure, all while outlining possibilities for reimagining the epistemic foundations of teaching and curriculum in Arizona. Links to frameworks and theories from the global south will also be made to unpack the prospects of developing critically conscious teachers in Arizona.

Author

• Juan F. Carrillo, Arizona State University