Presentations 3, 4 and 5

• In Event: Re-remembering the Past and Envisioning the Future to Mobilize the Present: Community Organizers, Activist Scholars, and Funders Connecting Movements for Educational Justice

Abstract

Community organizer #1 is the executive director of a local organizing group in Raleigh, NC, the leader of a statewide network defending and transforming public education, and a national leader in the Dignity in Schools Campaign; this organizer also has experience with conducting participatory action research with activist scholars in the grassroots think tank.
This participant will draw from the history of Black southern organizing traditions and her contemporary work organizing with Black and Brown parents and students in North Carolina and as a national leader in the Dignity in Schools Campaign to end the school-to-prison pipeline, reminding us that our contemporary challenges are not new even as they require bold new visions of solidarity and liberation.

Community organizer #2 is the director of national campaigns and Two-Spirit initiatives for a national network (organization) of trans, queer and two-spirit youth with local chapters; this organizer also has experience with conducting participatory action research with activist scholars in the grassroots think tank.
This participant will draw from the often unknown history of trans/queer/two-spirit organizing and her Latinx/Indigenous traditions as well as her contemporary work organizing around education, Indigenous sovereignty and gender justice, to ground organizing deeply in natural systems and in family and community traditions of healing, wellness and care.

Community organizer #3 is the former national director of an alliance of youth organizing groups and co-director of a national alliance advocating for police-free schools, and the current national organizer for a network supporting Black organizers across educational justice and a wide range of racial justice organizing.
This participant will draw from the Black radical and maroon traditions and his organizing as a national leader in the police-free schools movement to anchor and re-imagine educational justice as central to and emanating from the Black liberation movement.

Authors

• Patrice M. Hill, University of California - Davis

• Letha Muhammad, Educational Justice Alliance

• LuzMarina Serrano, Genders & Sexualities Alliance Network