Organizing to Resist the Far Right

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Thursday 4:15 pm - Gold 2
  In Roundtable Session: Culture Wars, Curriculum Battles, and Public Schools

Abstract

The far-right backlash to transformative and equitable education is not temporary.
The rhetoric and policies of far-right movements in education will likely intensify the symbolic, intellectual, cultural, and physical violence that marginalized students experience in schools (Goldberg & Abreu, 2023; Koyama, 2023; Mumma, 2023; Pollock et al., 2023; Woo et al., 2022). Counter-movements and creative resistance are necessary.

Currently, long-time civil-rights organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union and the Southern Poverty Law Center have won in court, filed temporary injunctions, launched public-awareness campaigns, and created toolkits for resistance. Education organizations such as the Intercultural Development Research Association have engaged in state-level policy advocacy in Texas and Georgia and teachers' unions have organized to resist federal and state anti-DEI and nativist policies. Meanwhile, community organizations like Public Schools Strong, Equality Florida, Honesty Ohio, Save Our Schools Arizona, and Stop Moms for Liberty are organizing person to person to bring awareness and build political will to resist far-right policies.


What are we learning from these efforts and how can we continue to build together?

In this final presentation of the symposium, advocates will share a quick summary of the organizing landscape collected through interviews of the Collaborative participants who are leaders of the organizations named above. We will share key successes and challenges. Then we will share the pressing needs that we hope the AERA community can support including continued documentation of the evolving harms of right-wing extremism in education, rapid response research necessary for resistance, deep listening for new points of solidarity across diverse communities for their hopes and dreams for education, and persisting questions on the changing alliances that comprise the far-right. Most importantly, we describe the need for a bold alternative vision for education.

Authors

• Natosha Folarin Daniels, University of Texas at Austin

• Lisa Vahey, Honesty for Ohio Education

• Liv Cook, Statewide Organizing for Community Empowerment

• sharon Kirsch, Save Our Schools Arizona Network