Growing, Sharpening and Envisioning Our Tools: The Mapping Carcerality, Imagining Freedom, and (Re)Membering Selves Project

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

Rooted in abolitionist praxis and concretely situated within a movement for youth justice in Los Angeles County, this symposium centers the Mapping Carcerality, Imagining Freedom, and (Re)Membering Selves Project (MIR), a collaboration among system-impacted youth, scholars, and grassroots organizers. By exploring how mapping, freedom dreaming, and (re)membering can function as transformative tools for collective liberation in and through education, each presentation delves into an exercise from a weeklong retreat in Alabama—an epicenter of resistance and freedom struggles. Engaging poetry, critical cartography, ancestral practices, and different forms of collective praxis; this session explores how the group developed, sharpened, and envisioned a set of tools to disrupt that which is egregiously taken-for-granted (carcerality) and make space for an emancipatory otherwise.

Sub Unit

• Division G - Social Context of Education / Division G - Section 5: Inquiry, Transformation, and Communities

Chair

• Dyoni Isom, Arts for Healing and Justice Network

Papers

• Mapping Our Selves and Our Embodied Freedom Dreams through the Tree of Life - Shena Sanchez, University of Alabama; Luis Fierros, Learning Works

• “To Resee, To Refeel, To Rehurt”: How Mora Supports Us to Resight/site/cite Freedom - Casey Philip Wong, Georgia State University; Mora Greer, Arts for Healing and Justice Network

• “All of ‘em Things I haven’t Felt, I haven’t Seen;” Mapping Geographies for Collective Liberation - Miguel Casar, University of Alabama; Ka'Lee Matthews, Arts for Healing and Justice Network

• Curanderxs of Freedom: Learning Practices for Reclamation and Liberation with Youth - Kevin Hernandez, Arts for Healing and Justice Network; Joaquin Noguera, Loyola Marymount Universtiy

Session Organizer

• Miguel Casar, University of Alabama

Discussant

• Lindsey Eichenberger, Arts for Healing and Justice Network