Interpreting Our Past Freedom Dreams for the Present and Future

• In Event: Imagining Liberatory Futures: Pedagogical Resistance in the Past, Present, and Future through Abolitionist Place-Based Methods

Abstract

Facilitator 5 draws methods for this workshop from a case study of how one left-leaning educator collective, the New York Collective of Radical Educators, participated in three social movements and connected those movements to education. The study examined the strategies NYCoRE educators used when participating in the antiwar movement, Occupy Wall Street, and the 2020 Uprisings and how educators brought their learnings from those movements into schools. In my research, I brought together NYCoRE members into movement-specific focus groups to discuss and evaluate strategies as well as reflect on their past movement dreams.

In this workshop, I will share findings from one focus group interview where I drew inspiration from scholars like Robin D. G. Kelley (2002) and abolitionist organizers like Mariame Kaba (2021) who call on us to not only identify what we’re fighting against but also imagine (dream) and experiment around what we’re fighting for. I asked participants to create a collective collage to answer the question: What were you dreaming of at the time? For schools, your teaching, NYCoRE? Participants then reflected on what they noticed and answered questions like: Looking back, what do you wish happened? Knowing what you know now, what would have been helpful to know then? In these questions and activities, the goal was to bring together the past and the present to then begin to dream for the future by having participants write letters to current/future NYCoRE organizers about their hopes for NYCoRE’s work moving forward.

My segment complements the overall workshop’s broader goals by demonstrating how past freedom dreams can be recalled in creative ways to inspire futuristic, abolitionist imaginations. Workshop participants will engage their own past freedom dreams using collage-making and other art practices to reflect on the present and envision liberatory, educational futures.

Author

• Jennifer Queenan