Intersectional Organizing and Education Justice Movements: How Organizers Understand and Experience Cross-Issue and Cross-Movement Solidarity

• In Event: The Role of Movement-Building and Cross-Sector Partnerships in Organizing for Educational and Racial Justice

Abstract

Using community-engaged, participatory methods, we describe and analyze the experiences and views of education justice organizers about intersectional organizing and solidarity-building. Data come from in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 28 organizers. While academic knowledge emphasizes recent developments highlighting intersectionality, organizers understand intersectionality as deeply rooted in African and Indigenous traditions. They emphasize the commonalities across communities of color in the experience of racism and struggles against it. Organizers highlight the obstacles dominant systems create and identify processes that promote solidarity. Knowledge from this study will help identify emergent intersectional organizing strategies to build solidarity across issues and communities of color to build power and increase impact on educational and related policies to create more equitable outcomes for low-income students of color.

Authors

• Mark R. Warren, University of Massachusetts - Boston
  Presenting Author

• Vajra M. Watson, California State University - Sacramento
  Presenting Author

• Bianca Ortiz-Wythe, University of Massachusetts - Boston
  Presenting Author