Reclaiming Radical Healing: Exploring the Promise and Tensions of Youth Healing Through Activism and Youth Participatory Action Research

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

The youth organizing field--and critical youth voice work in general--is embracing and adopting radical healing and healing justice in our work (Eagle Shield et al., 2020; Fernandez & Watts, 2021; Ginwright, 2015; Greene et al., 2021; Valladares et al., 2021). Organizers in communities of color draw on ancestral traditions, including Indigenous Knowledge Systems, Chicana feminisms, and the Black African diaspora, to invite young people to anchor their activism in a healing framework. This welcome development calls for systematic inquiry about how to practice and sustain the many “both/ands” of healing justice, including individual/collective, healing/activism, self/other, ancestry/futurism, and acceptance/critique. This session will introduce theoretical and practical tools that foster critical healing praxis in community organizations and schools.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Grassroots Community and Youth Organizing for Educational Justice

Chair

• Carlos P. Hipolito-Delgado, University of Colorado - Denver

Papers

• A Healing and Liberatory Community of Practice for Transformative Student Voice in Community Schools - Julissa Ventura, Marquette University

• Youth Participatory Action Research and Sociopolitical Development as a Healing Approach for Youth - Dane Stickney, University of Colorado - Denver; Jane Smith, The Park People: Denver Digs Trees

• A Sacred, Communal Pause: How Marginalized Youth’s Commitment to Healing Expands Our Understandings of Activism - Alexis E. Hunter, University of Colorado - Boulder; Chanelle Jones, Young Aspiring Americans for Social and Political Activism (YAASPA)

• Failure and Hummingbird Medicine - Beatriz Salazar, University of Colorado - Boulder; Elizabeth Mendoza, HEAL Collective; Adria Padilla-Chavez, University of Colorado - Boulder

Discussant

• Maria Elena Torre, The Public Science Project