Since 2001, the New York Collective of Radical Educators (NYCoRE) has been in the struggle for justice both inside and outside of the classroom. The election of Donald Trump highlights the necessity of radical educators, given that 53% of White women voted for Trump and White women make up approximately 65% of the US teaching (P-12) force. While Trump has created a sense of urgency, we know that many students, schools, and communities have been living this urgency prior to Trump and will live in this urgency after Trump. As educators we must re/commit ourselves to this struggle now and for the long haul. We must re/commit ourselves to this work for our students’ lives, not for our own comfort and self-gratitude. We must re/commit ourselves to this work for actual change against and beyond racial capitalism, not for feel-good liberalism.
To be clear, neutrality is not an option. Bipartisanship does not exist. For there is no such thing as an apolitical teacher or an apolitical education. We are either on the side of oppression or we are on the side of ensuring our young people have a future in which liberation is a reality. This is our call to action: educators must see schooling as part of the larger liberation struggles of the United States and across the globe. We must do this work both inside and outside the classroom because the struggle for justice does not end when the school bell rings.
Please see the list of education specific resources and readings below to help you get connected.
-The New York Collective of Radical Educators (NYCoRE)
Get Active/Get Connected
New York Collective of Radical Educators (NYCoRE) (NYC)
Teachers Unite (NYC)
Movement of Rank and File Educators (MORE) (NYC)
Showing Up for Racial Justice (New York) — for White folks
Teacher Activist Group – Philly (Philly)
Caucus of Working Educators (Philly)
Teacher Activist Group – Boston (Boston)
Teachers for Social Justice (Chicago)
Association of Raza Educators (San Diego & Oakland)
The People’s Education Movement (Los Angeles)
Institute for Teachers of Color Committed to Racial Justice (Los Angeles)
Teachers 4 Social Justice (San Francisco)
Education for Liberation Network
Teachers Activist Group – National
Readings:
- Alexander, M. (2012). The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
- Anyon, J. (2005). Radical Possibilities: Public Policy, Urban Education, and a New Social Movement
- Au, W., Brown, A. L., & Calderón, D. (2016). Reclaiming the Multicultural Roots of US Curriculum: Communities of Color and Official Knowledge in Education
- Bale, J., & Knopp, S. (2012). Education and Capitalism: Struggles for Learning and Liberation
- Bonilla-Silva, E. (2006). Racism Without Racists: Color-blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States.
- Canning, D. (2016). Nunca Mas! People Powered Strategy in the Time of Trump. https://medium.com/@doylecanning/nunca-mas-people-powered-strategy-in-the-time-of-trump-a10c214b05db#.iw7phw7xv
- Chacon, J. A. and Davis, M. (2006). No One is Illegal
- DiAngelo, R. (2011). White fragility
- Dumas, M.J. (2016). Things Are Gonna Get Easier: Refusing Schooling as a Site of Black Suffering
- Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
- Grande, S. (2015). Red pedagogy: Native American Social and Political Thought
- hooks, b. (2014). Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom
- Jacobin Magazine. Class Action: An Activist Teacher’s Handbook
- Mayorga, E., & Picower, B. (2015). What’s Race Got To Do With It?: How Current School Reform Policy Maintains Racial And Economic Inequality
- Morris, M. W. (2016). Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools.
- Podair J. (2002) The Strike that Changed New York
- Samudzi, Z. (2016). We Need a Decolonized, Not a “Diverse” Education
- Tuck, E., & Yang, K. W. (2012). Decolonization is Not a Metaphor.
- Schools in Transition: A Guide for Supporting Transgender Students in K-12 Schools
- #WhiteGirlsDoItBetter: Why White Women Remain One of Racism’s Most Slept on Weapon
- What If We Talked About Monolingual White Children the Way We Talk About Low-Income Children of Color