Intersectional Organizing and Education Justice Movements: Creating Solidarity Across Communities and Issue-Based Movements

• In Event: Thursday Roundtable Session 12:40 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Solidarity Matters! Collective Organizing to Amplify Community Voices (Table 33)

Abstract

This paper reports findings from a participatory action research project designed to build knowledge about how community organizers experience and understand intersectional organizing in ways that promote solidarity across issue-based movements and communities often separated by race or other identities. We are a research team of organizers and scholars, members of a grassroots think tank composed of forty community-organizing groups in the educational justice movement. Data come from in-depth interviews with thirty community organizers whom we invite to build relationships with members of our think tank; we conduct a self-study of these real-time solidarity-building efforts. Our findings challenge traditional academic understandings of intersectionality, open new ways of thinking about solidarity, and identify key processes and strategies that build solidarity.

Authors

• Mark R. Warren, University of Massachusetts - Boston

• Vajra M. Watson, University of Redlands

• Bianca Ortiz-Wythe, University of Massachusetts - Boston

• Shaun de Vera, California State University - Sacramento

• Jonathan Stith, Alliance for Educational Justice

• Letha Muhammad, Educational Justice Alliance

• LuzMarina Serrano, Genders & Sexualities Alliance Network