By Twin Cities FMFP Youth Team. This post is the fifth in a blog series on stories of education for liberation work happening in the Twin Cities and surrounding region, leading up to the 2019 FMFP conference.

The FMFP youth team consists of 11 members from middle school, high school, and college. In the months leading up to the Free Minds, Free People conference the youth team embarked on a series of field trips and FMFP planning. Our goal through these field trips, was to build connections, community, and learn about educational activism happening in the Twin Cities.

For example, when we went to the Minnesota Writing Project, we discussed what it means to be a writer, activist, and how writing can add value to our activism. We also visited Youthprise, where we learned about how researchers don’t have to be old white men in lab coats; anyone can be a researcher regardless of background, age, and race. Our other field trips and meetings, to UROC, Como Conservatory, etc. were centered on the importance of building community and networking. We learned that many educational organizations are facing challenges including funding and involvement, but the work they do is necessary and valuable in youth’s educational journeys.

In all these organizations a key aspect of their work is youth involvement. Without the voices of young people the work they are doing is incomplete, which is why they work so hard to be youth centered. As a team we came up with 6 reasons we need youth educational activists, inspired by the field trips and discussions we had leading up to FMFP. We hope that reading this will encourage you to teach others about why we need more young people to be activists. Young people have so much to contribute to this work, we just have to have the space to lead.

1. Students know what students need better than anyone—if we don’t speak up, we risk someone else doing it for us

Image by Anna Reishus

School Boards only know so much, and they can’t rely only on their educational experiences from their time in school. Youths need to have their voices be heard, and not just as a last resort or an afterthought. Why should people who aren’t experiencing the current school system be making policies and rules for us, the ones who are being affected? We need our voices to be heard, loud and clear.

2. Nobody else knows schools the way students do – we’re experts in all the flaws and successes happening in schools

Image by Ricardo Levins Morales

No one understands the school system like us youth do, we’ve experienced it, we’ve seen the good and the bad, we’ve just seen it all. Growing up I didn’t really like school much because I never felt that I was good enough or smart enough for it, but as I grew older I began to start speaking with teachers and asking a lot more questions than I did before and from there on I began to develop a better relationship with my teachers. Soon I started to realize my grades were a lot better and also I was a lot happier so my emotional health was going in a better direction.

3. We want education to be challenging AND supportive

Photo credit: Leyla Suleiman, FMFP Youth Team

I remember my first ever ESL (English second language) was horrible because my teacher:

1. Lacked Patience
2. Lacked Respect
3. Lacked Teaching Ability
4. Was A FLAT OUT RUDE PERSON

She would put language books and cards down, expect us to know the words just because we know our ABCs. So I wasn’t learning anything new. The T.V was my best teacher honestly. Boy my self esteem skyrocketed when I stop Swiper from swiping. I come into that class with my head up high reading the books and cards better each time. How is it that Dora was a better English teacher than the one I had in school?

4. We want to invest in the future.

Image by Phil Roeder

The education of future generations in our community and those across the globe matters as much as ours does. American schools are becoming more and more diverse, it should show with the teachers being employed to the students you see in class. Future generations are what will change the world after our own generation. Think of your younger siblings, nieces, nephews, as well as your future kids, grandchildren, and so forth.

5. Unsatisfied with at least one thing in your school? Change it!

At home, I spoke only one language to my grandma, speak two different languages to my parents. Kids learn fast but they forgot just as fast. Language is the base of culture and it’s hard when the foundation isn’t solid. Schools should promote a broader language program instead of just French and Spanish. Also, as an activist you can create or advocate for a program for your culture and language in school so you can create a place of comfort in school. In my school, looking at the general demographic of students, I don’t see that being shown in my AP classes. There is also a lack of diversity with the staff also, from their race and background.

6. Education issues still exist after you leave school. Stay young, stay connected to education!

As we go through school, we feel deeply connected to educational issues. Every day we are faced with the problems that happen when schools are underfunded, when teachers don’t have equity training, when school lunches are low quality, and the list goes on. When most people leave high school and don’t have to experience those frustrations and struggles on a daily basis anymore, fighting against those issues becomes a distant memory.

As young people who are still in the trenches so-to-speak, we don’t want anyone to forget what it was like to be a student. The parts of yourself that developed when you were in grade school are still a part of you, and they always will be there. If you are a youth activist, we hope that you will reflect on the reasons we shared so that you can encourage more of your peers to join in this work. If society no longer identifies you as a youth, we hope that you never forget the high schooler and middle schooler inside of you who is restless for change.

By Poder Unidos and Jose Alvillar. This post is the fourth in a new blog series on stories of education for liberation work happening in the Twin Cities and surrounding region, leading up to the 2019 FMFP conference.

The Poder Unidos team.

About a year ago Navigate MN, a grassroots power-building organization that builds power for gender, racial and economic justice, asked itself: Why do our schools continue to fail our students? Though the answer in itself is complex, one thing became clear and that is that we need to invest in our own learning, relearning, and unlearning as a community. As many before us have created their own curriculum centered in our own stories, we sought to do the same.

In the summer of 2018, we launched our first ever Youth Action Summer Camp. Its intentions like many other action camps across the country were centered in honoring the dignity and self-determination of our youth. The camp was grounded in a Nican Tlaca (people of the Americas) perspective through a popular education framework that interconnected our struggles, but also reframed youth organizing, not as our future leaders, but our current ones. It was out of this belief and investment in their leadership that our work for ethnic studies came about.

The reality became clear that much of what we do and learn in community is not reflected in our schools, that the knowledge of our ancestors and our own histories are not present in our schools, or if they are, they are through a deficit lens that portrays our people as relics of the past when we know very well that we’re still here, that our elders struggles were not and are not in vain. For that reason among many others our youth from Poder Unidos, a youth group of predominantly Latinx youth, have been working on ethnic studies work across the Minneapolis Public Schools district and have developed a plan to take it to the state via an ethnic studies bill.

However, like any struggle, there will always be barriers. Currently, we face a lack of funding, not enough teachers of color, implementation challenges, outdated and irrelevant curriculum, accountability from districts and leadership, among many other things. However, these barriers have only reminded us how important this work is and why we need ethnic studies in our schools. As some of our youth so beautifully say: we need it because it’s “our history, our schools!”

One of our youth leaders, Adriana Castaneda, expresses her journey via our camp: “I joined one of Navigate’s group called Poder Unidos after participating in their Youth Action Summer Camp in the summer of 2018. Through Poder Unidos, I’ve learned that many schools in Minneapolis do not offer Ethnic Studies as one of their classes. Ethnic Studies teaches the history of people of color. Since I am the daughter of two Mexicans, I would’ve liked having this class in my school because me, along with others could learn about the history of people with different racial backgrounds.”

As they/we continue on this journey we are reminded that we do this for others and ourselves. That the struggles of our elders, parents, and our young ones will be worthwhile. We are also reminded that we cannot win this on our own, that for us to win ethnic studies, we must do it in community and with the community. That the stories of our parents, educators, organizers, and younger ones are just as important because these are our schools!

By Dr. Brian Lozenski, an Assistant Professor at Macalester College and a member of the Twin Cities Solidarity Committee. This post is the third in a new blog series on stories of education for liberation work happening in the Twin Cities and surrounding region, leading up to the 2019 FMFP conference.

As we celebrate the 50th anniversary of Ethnic Studies in higher education at institutions like San Francisco State, Cornell University, and the University of Minnesota, it is imperative to recognize that for the vast majority of people in the US, Ethnic Studies remains inaccessible.

K-12 schools largely continue to dispossess youth of their own histories, cultural knowledges, and lived scientific and mathematical expertise. A Free Minds, Free People podcast documented the St. Paul Public School’s Student Engagement and Advancement Board’s (SEAB) campaign to make Ethnic Studies a requirement in the district. SEAB is a youth committee, demonstrating the desire and passion that youth have for being subjects of their own educational journey.

With K-12 schools and institutions of higher education steeped in Eurocentric curricular and cultural paradigms, the question must be asked: “Where can people go to experience an educational environment based in the knowledges and experiences of people of color?” Historically, community-based institutions have filled this void, and they continue to do so.

One such community-based entity that has met this need for the last four years is the Nu Skool of Afrikan American Thought in St. Paul, Minnesota. The Nu Skool is the brainchild of Elder Mahmoud El Kati, a stalwart of Black education in the Twin Cities, who has built institutions (e.g. U of MN Afro Studies Department, The Way), community forums (e.g. Communiversity, Friday Night Black Film Series), and myriad intellectual spaces for the masses of Black people for over fifty years. The Nu Skool is a monthly topical lecture and dialogue series, facilitated by a volunteer collective called the Twin Cities Solidarity Committee made up of educators, activists, and scholars of African descent.

The Nu Skool’s mission is “to engage people of African descent in their own liberation through historical, political and cultural education”. Solidarity works to accomplish this mission by creating a space, based in dialogue, where anyone can come to learn from and with Afrodiasporic scholars who have expertise in disciplines that bridge the field of Africana Studies. Nu Skool presenters have included academics, journalists, community organizers, ministers, college students, and social service providers. Participants have ranged in age from 10 to 90, spanning racial, ethnic, and linguistic identities.

The Nu Skool is an unapologetically Black space that approaches all of its content through a black liberatory lens. That being said, the presenters and attendees bring various political, cultural, and social ideologies such as Afrocentrism, Black Radicalism, Black Nationalism, Black Feminism, and Black Liberalism. The intersection of these philosophical traditions makes the Nu Skool a lively and generative space for debate, conversation, and love among people of African descent.

The following video was created to celebrate the fourth anniversary of the Nu Skool in March, 2019. It shows the Nu Skool’s origins at the Black owned Golden Thyme Coffee Shop in the historic Rondo neighborhood of St. Paul. As the Nu Skool grew it moved to the High School for Recording Arts (HSRA), a Black-run charter school. The Nu Skool meets at HSRA on the fourth Friday of every month.

By Dr. Peter Rachleff, co-executive director of the East Side Freedom Library. This post is the second in a new blog series on stories of education for liberation work happening in the Twin Cities and surrounding region, leading up to the 2019 FMFP conference.

In June 2019, the East Side Freedom Library celebrates our fifth anniversary. Located in St. Paul’s most diverse neighborhood, ESFL inspires solidarity, advocates for justice, and works toward equity for all.

We locate ourselves at a number of intersections: between, among, and within a range of communities; between the labor movement and social movements, between books and programs; between the past, the present, and the future; between education and entertainment. We use art and culture to facilitate story-telling, and we see story-telling—the sharing of experiences—as a means to overcome the otherization promoted by our dominant culture and, instead, to build bridges.

For hundreds of years, the East Side was Dakota land, and ESFL recognizes that our Dakota relatives and other native peoples are part of this community’s present and future, as well as our past. We have been working in collaboration with them in discussing representations and reflections of their history, including the history of settler colonialism and treaties, the name and functions of “Indian Mounds Park,” the murals at St. Paul City Hall, and the creation of the Wakan Tipi Interpretive Center.

We have also collaborated with them to educate our neighbors, from the descendants of European immigrants and enslaved Africans to the newest arrivals from southeast Asia, central America, and east Africa, in the practices of expropriation and genocide which have shaped our country’s history. We also seek to explore the ways that these practices shaped their pasts and led to their emigration journeys. Together, we hope to build a new understanding of what this country can be, and to build our capacity to realize it.

ESFL sees the labor movement as a central agent in this process. Most of us know little of the labor movement’s past, both its achievements and its shortcomings. We seek to educate working class people, union members and non-members, from middle schoolers to retirees, about this rich, complex, and mostly untold history, in order to engage the present and shape the future.

We provide resources and mentorship for middle and high school students pursuing “History Day” projects. In partnership with the St. Paul Regional Labor Federation, we have organized and hosted a Union Job and Resource Fair, not just to place job-seekers but also to educate our neighbors about what it means to “work union.”  In partnership with the SPRLF, SEIU Healthcare Minnesota, the Minnesota Nurses Association, and other unions, we have launched the New Brookwood Labor College, a project committed to promoting critical thinking and educating activists “into the working class.” ESFL has also hosted summer book groups with the St. Paul Federation of Educators and a labor film series with AFSCME. All of this work is as attentive to the ways that racism, patriarchy, and elitism have limited the labor movement, as it is to labor’s heroic triumphs.

ESFL also celebrates cultural work and brings it and its producers into this space and into this community. We have hosted art exhibits, plays, concerts, poetry readings, and art-driven workshops, particularly those which engage our mission. We have pursued this work in collaboration with such groups as theater companies directed by people of color, Rhythmic Literature, an organization of Ethiopian poets and artists, and Hmong women writers groups, on the one hand, and such local institutions as the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Schubert Club, and Park Square Theater.

Most of this work has been accomplished with volunteer labor—by friends and neighbors we call “collaborators.” They have cataloged and shelved books, built shelves, gardened, blogged, cleaned bathrooms, and organized and hosted events. Through this work, they have built a community, a community which keeps growing, deepening, evolving.

ESFL continues to seek productive relationships with other institutions: Metropolitan State University; Minnesota Historical Society; Minnesota Humanities Center; the St. Paul Public Library System; local colleges and universities. This has been a slower process than we had anticipated, but we do see progress here. Indeed, our connection with Free Minds, Free People will—hopefully—bring us an additional step in this direction.

You can read more about East Side Freedom Library, including events and other opportunities to get involved, on their website.

By Dr. Rose M. Brewer, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. This post is the first in a new blog series on stories of education for liberation work happening in the Twin Cities and surrounding region, leading up to the 2019 FMFP conference.

Afro 50 signals the 50^th anniversary of the establishment of the Department of African American & African Studies at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. Black student struggles and protest were the catalysts for the establishment of the Department. The resistance had been months in the making. Black students attempted to go through official channels, to little avail. Students decided that “enough was enough”. The powers that be were not listening. The students took over Morrill Hall 50 years ago on January 14, 1969.

The resistance and courage of these Black students lives on. They demanded an education that reflected who they were. They demanded full scholarships for Black Students. They demanded Black faculty and staff. And, the key demand was for the establishment of a Department of Afro-American Studies (as it was named in the official demands).

Indeed, Black students all over the country were engaged in struggles for relevant education. The story of the University of Minnesota is very much the story of Black student upheaval in the late 1960s on 100s of campuses. The demand to dismantle Eurocentric education located elitism within racism. By the late l960s the decolonization struggles internationally had begun to influence U.S. activists. Black community uprisings, Black Power and Internationalism, were catalytic. Black Studies pivoted on the idea of relevant education, serving the interests of the people.

The founding of the field involved overt struggles with the state, the police, the Eurocentric institutional actors. San Francisco State is a case in point. Karenga (1993) aptly points out what is often missed in unearthing the history of the field is its intellectual activism. He asserts that one of the most important concepts in the general student movement and especially in the Black Student Movement, which waged the struggle for Black Studies, was the concept of relevance—in its academic and social dimensions.

Relevance is the lynchpin of higher education’s contribution to liberation and a higher level of life for Blacks student activists notes Karenga. The first chair of the first Black Studies program at San Francisco State College, Nathan Hare called it education that would contribute to solving “the problems of the race” by producing persons capable of solving problems of a contagious American society. To not do so, to not center relevance, would make education useless.

Even earlier, by 1966 The Negro Students’ Association changed their name to the Black Student Union (BSU), representing a new identity and direction. Oppositional identity was folded in the use of the term Black to denote pride and commitment to liberation. The organization also became involved in San Francisco State’s tutorial program for the surrounding community. This and other community service activities signaled the social commitment and service Black student activists would place at the center of the academic and social mission of Black Studies (Karenga 1993).

Black Studies in its inception positioned itself as transformational. This is beyond a “helping “ and “aid” approach. It pushed beyond the dominant discourses and assumptions about Black inequality. Questions such as, what about the indigenous knowledge(s) of marginalized peoples? What of oppositional histories, the challenges to disciplinary hegemony? What about the history of Black resistance? These important challenges to the academic status quo embed a legacy central to articulating a critical epistemology, rooted in deep level critique and practice, taking seriously African epistemologies and culture.

It is in this intellectual and political context that students at the University of Minnesota made seven demands. “We demanded an education that prepared us in the development of skills that taught us how to think from a Black Perspective, and to put that thought into action” said Dr. Horace Huntley, one of the student leaders of the Morrill Hall Take-over and occupation.

The change charge was lead by Rosemary Freeman, President of the Afro American Action Committee along with student leaders Huntley, Marie Braddock, Manuel Woods, Lester Cannon, Warren Tucker, John Wright, Anna Stanley and a number of others asserting their rights as human beings.

Dr. Horace Huntley returned to the University of Minnesota to kick off the 50^th anniversary commemoration, February 25, 2019. This initial teach-in 101 featured Huntley who was a week long Visiting Scholar. A second teach-in “Critical Black Feminisms, Black Lives and Black Student Protests” is scheduled for April 25 and will feature scholar-activist Dr. Barbara Ransby. The Department of African & African Studies is the anchor sponsor of the Free Minds Free People Conference, July 11-14, 2019 to be held on the campus of the University of Minnesota. A graduate and undergraduate student symposium will follow in the Fall of 2019 and the year will culminate with a final teach-in on November 22. 2019.

A luta continua!

Over 50 people representing nearly 40 organizations and institutions from across the New England region came together in Boston last Saturday, June 16^th, to launch a new regional education for liberation initiative.  The event, which was sponsored by the national Education for Liberation Network (EdLib) and the Providence, RI based Annenberg Institute for School Reform (AISR), brought together a diverse crowd of teachers, activists / organizers, youth leaders and researchers to develop a region-wide network, to share valuable resources and to collectively work towards building an Education for Liberation Movement. Check out the great photos below.  

Some of the issues addressed during the event included teacher practice, ethnic studies, the privatization of public education, arts education, high stakes testing, and the National Student Bill of Rights, all of which were topics proposed by those attending the gathering.  

The New England gathering is part of a series of regional gatherings, which are being organized by EdLib in order to help support and advance local and regional education rights efforts.

Inspired by this successful event, EdLib is committed to continuing building a New England region-wide network in support of education for liberation work and to building partnerships with local and regional organizations and institutions to develop sustainable movement-building capacity and initiatives aimed at addressing education rights issues such as privatization of public education and high stakes testing.

We had a great gathering in Chicago to talk about how to connect Chicago educators, activists and youth to Free Minds, Free People 2013. It is the first of several meetings we hope to have across the country as we build toward this amazing event. The next meeting will be in Boston on June 16. Please join if you are in the area (register here: bit.ly/edlib-ne. In the meantime, check out the photos from Chicago. Thanks to all those who participated.

By Malayafudeezy

Wow wow wow.  This weekend was incredible.  How, how, how could I have forgotten what was for so long, life blood for me?! For a minute there, I forgot that Free Minds Free People was what I did in order to re-energize for the work we have to do every day!  I thought I had nothing to give to the space, but forgot that by being in the space and giving to the space, it gives back to us all of what we give and more.

Here’s how to do 24 horus in Salt Lake City and come back joyful, energized and loved, insetad of oppressed and exhausted:

Read more from the Malaya blog…

Barbara Fields on Charter Schools from Next Generation Media on Vimeo.

Barbara Fields weighs in during this spirited plenary session. Although the panel was mixed with people who were both for and against charter schools as summarized by one of the panel organizers, Barbara's opinions are just as eloquent and skeptical as Dr. Michelle Fine's.  

Michelle Fine on Charter Schools from Next Generation Media on Vimeo.

On the heels of the footage of Dr. Warren's panel on white activism, Next Generation Media sent us a video of the plenary on Charter schools. The clip above is of Dr. Michelle Fine's introduction to the panel discussion. I know a lot of you have been asking for this. Watch Barbara Fields opinions here and a summary of the session by Dr. Leigh Patel Stevens here. 

Some argue that racial justice activism is incomplete without the involvement of white people, that the movement of racial equality requires allies of the dominant American majority. It isn't difficult to see some truth in a statement such as this. One need only look to the Freedom Riders of the 1960's for an example of what can be accomlished when white and black folks get together. But, as we fly out of the time zone of the civil rights movement and turbulently descend into the struggles of the new century, how do white educators become involved in today's racial justice challenges? 

That was the theme of the panel discussion, Does it Matter if I'm White: The Role of White People in Racial Justice Activism. A widely discussed workshop at the FMFP conference, the attendance was good, but it was far from packed. If you happened to miss the panel check out some of the footage I caught with background beats by DJ-by-night Marketing and Communications Committee Chief, Julian Lute.

Watching these student testimonials justifies my desire to continue working in education as I was very impressed with the sincerity of those who were interviewed. New Lens Production did a fantastic job of giving people a brief idea of the youth experience at the Free Minds, Free People conference. They also show that young people are incredibly passionate about their own education.

According to Rebecca, who sent us the clip, it was the first time one of their youth ever edited a video before. Not bad, Dominic.  

We didn't expect to put this footage up, but one of the conference members were so insistent that we just couldn't say no. The Asian American Youth Rising panel features youth leaders from Vietnamese American American Leaders Association (New Orleans), The Asian Student Association (Philadelphia) and Yoojin Lee of Health Resources in Action. During the discussion, panelist shared “inspiring stories and provide[d] examples of youth-led change efforts.”

The entire event minus the last few minutes has been uploaded onto our YouTube page. It was far too long to post it on the blog and we had to upload it in five different parts. If you want to know more about the youth panel read Biba Fullon's write-up of it here. 

And, on a side note: If you have keen eyes and ears you might even catch our plenary keynote speaker Dr. Vincent Harding participating from the audience.