1. Building Power through Racial Justice: Organizing the #BlackLivesMatterAtSchool Week of Action in K-12 and Beyond
- Author
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Morrison, Dana and Porter-Webb, Elly
- Abstract
On October 16, 1963, author James Baldwin delivered his well-known "A Talk to Teachers" in which he argued that the United States was "desperately menaced . . . from within" (p. 325) by centuries of racialized cruelty. In his speech, Baldwin (1985) implored educators to "go for broke" (p. 325) in their attempts to address the racism operating not only in their classrooms but in the very fabric of U.S. society. Speaking at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, Baldwin addressed New York City teachers who witnessed the active desegregation of schools across the country and the ongoing fight for racial justice in voting, housing, and employment. Yet 56 years later, Baldwin's call to action is regrettably just as relevant to the modern educator. Our schools remain racially and economically segregated (EdBuild, 2019; Orfield, Frankenberg, Ee, & Kuscera, 2014; Reardon & Owens, 2014) and racial injustices permeate our contemporary sociopolitical reality (Edwards, Lee, & Esposito, 2019; McKernan, Ratcliffe, Steuerle, & Zhang, 2013; Nellis, 2016; Shapiro, Meschede, & Osoro, 2013). Many educators in the current era, however, are breathing new life into Baldwin's charge that teachers commit themselves to fight for racial justice. In this essay, we highlight one important example of that fight, the Black Lives Matter at School National Week of Action. Entering its fourth year, we first contextualize this growing movement by discussing the historically problematic position held by teachers' unions on issues of race before situating the National Week of Action within the current wave of social justice unionism. We then share our work as organizers of the higher education outreach for the National Week of Action and call on higher education faculty members and unions to join the fight.
- Published
- 2019