Developing Strong Relationships With Each Other and With Our Teachers Makes Us Feel Safe: Redefining Safety and Galvanizing Our Peers

• In Event: Stakeholder Examination of Equity Concerns, Student Learning, Safety, and School Policing

Abstract

This paper and presentation will use participatory action research and ethnographic methods to explore how youth organizers from numerous schools in a single school district built power among students and developed coalitions with teachers and adult-led community organizations to impact education policy regarding safety, policing and financial resources for targeted academic support. This is a first-person, student account that is guided more by the social movement praxis of the Black Panther, Party and Black Lives Matter Movement, than by a specific theoretical perspective, we describe our experiences. Specifically, we describe: how we engaged peer students on our campuses; worked together in formal meetings across campuses; and built strong coalitions with adult-led organizations. We will utilize video from demonstrations and public actions to illustrate points made. The result of our collective actions were numerous, including: we were directly responsible for the re-allocation of money diverted from policing to support Black students socially and academically; change in policy regarding the use of ‘pepper-spray’ on students; the removal of police from high school campuses. Through direct engagement in this work, we learned that developing strong relationships with each other and with our teachers make us feel safe. Our aim in this essay is to educate other youth and the general public about how they can mobilize their own communities in the same manner. This paper has enormous significance in terms of research and scholarship on youth civic engagement, social justice movements in education. It also underscores resistance theory, the importance of coalition building between teachers and students.

Authors

• Miguel Casar Rodriguez, University of Alabama

• Kahlila Williams, University of California - Los Angeles