Youth Power

2017

The Love to Liberation Pipeline: Disability Justice & Solidarity featuring Talila Lewis and Dustin Gibson

Water is Life featuring Mama Lila Cabbil, Tabor White Buffalo & Ziad Abbas

Radically Healing Schools and Communities featuring Farima Pour-Khorshid, Christina “V” Villarreal & Cory Green

Our Title is a Secret ‘cause the Government is Watching (Youth only) featuring Cesia Celero & Yaslin Machuca

2019

School-to-Prison Nexus and Abolitionist Teaching

Afro-Futurism, Futures and the Radical Imaginary

Ethnic Studies Now! Use Your Voice to Get What Students Need (Youth only)

2021

Connecting Sites of Carceral Logics and Practices featuring Rahsaan Mahadeo, Camille Fair, Peter “Comrade Pitt” Mukuria, Dustin Gibson & Talila “TL” Lewis

A Conversation on Healing + Decolonization featuring Ashley Sarracino, Dr. Andy Nez,

Steph Cariaga, Trisha Moquino & Stacey

Gibson

Organizing Nationally for Anti-racist,

Decolonial, Liberatory Ethnic Studies featuring Jody Sokolower, Awo Okaikor

Aryee-Price & Lara Kiswani RadPD RadPD (Radical Professional Development began at FMFP 2011 to provide an immersive experience for classroom teachers to sharpen their political clarity and add tools to their repertoire to take action for educational justice. Through interactive workshops, they examine issues facing K-12 students, educators and communities, and have the opportunity to grow and build with educators across geographic regions and grade levels. RadPD takes place the day before FMFP opens and is usually hosted by a local school. Participants pay an additional registration fee to attend that comes with the latest edition of Planning to Change the World:

A Lesson Plan Book for Social Justice Teachers

(first published for 2009-2010 school year by Education for Liberation Network & NYCoRE, and currently in a partnership between ELN & Rethinking Schools).

2011

Teachers Are Destroying America: Frameworks Undermining Public Education and What We Can Do About Them featuring Bree Picower

Panel discussion featuring NYCoRE

2013

Racism, Privatization & the Attack on Public Education featuring Brian Jones, educator and activist in New York City, doctoral student in urban education at the CUNY Graduate Center, member of Movement of Rank & File Educators (social justice caucus of the UFT)

14

2015

Featured Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales, San Francisco State University, Asian American Studies Department with Mahalaya Tintiangco-Cubales; and Shawn Ginwright, San Francisco State University, Africana Studies Department

2017

Lessons From the Resistance featuring Camika Royal, Loyola University of Maryland, Co-Director, Center of Innovation in Urban Education

2019

Confronting the Oppressor from the Inside Out featuring Jamila Lyiscott, Assistant Professor of Social Justice Education, University of Massachusetts-Amherst

2021

ALL Black Lives Mattering in Class featuring Dominique Williams, Abby Rombalski, Lisa Kelly & Madelyn Morrison

Challenging our classroom pedagogy at the intersection of abolitionism and disability justice featuring Elisa Lee, Aja Reynolds, Bree Picower, Ki Gross & Maya Henry

Being in Right Relationship with Land,

Water and Our Bodies featuring Mariana

E. Ramírez, Cindy Mata, Steph Cariaga,

AnMarie Mendoza & Sara Díaz-Montejano

Connecting our Ethnic Studies Classrooms through Transnational Solidarity featuring

Liza Gesuden, Raquel Saenz & Farima

Pour-Khorshid Our desire to be free has got to manifest itself in everything we are and do.

– Assata Shakur

Remember to imagine and craft the worlds you cannot live without, just as you dismantle the worlds you cannot live within. — Ruha Benjamin

15

Free Minds Free People has always endeavored to center youth, particularly Black and youth of color, because they are most directly affected by the nation’s inequitable public education system. They are not leaders of tomorrow, but capable activist and organizers now. Young people help to organize, host and facilitate FMFP and take advantage of the different opportunities to explore, exchange and envision together.

Young Activists/Free Young Minds The Young Activist workshop track was launched in Providence 2011, renamed Free Young Minds in 2019 and went back to Young Activists in 2021. What has remained constant is offering workshops designed for and often by youth. For FMFP 2021 the planners of this track organized Freedom Fridays, weekly multi-medium events for young people ages 5-12. (See page 15.)

We know how important children are in fighting for a world where there is justice, care, and love for all people, all other living things, and for the planet. We need your smarts, creativity, imagination and energy!”

-Freedom Fridays organizers Through educating the community on LGBTQ issues, the young generation can create a world where they would want to live. Through engaging the older Southeast Asian generation, young people can educate and create dialogue with them on the topics of sexuality and gender identity and come to a mutual understanding and support for change. Involvement in seaQuel develops young people’s leadership so they are able to create the change they want to see in their community. Our generation is the generation of change, and through our work, we will make a difference for our community.

Kathy Vang, Southeast Asian Queers United for Empowerment and Leadership @ PrYSM

An excerpt from Vue, published by Annenberg, that featured Education for Liberation and FMFP. (http://vue. annenberginstitute.org/issues/34)

16

17

Asked to reflect on their experiences planning Providence 2011, Youth in Action alumnae shared these thoughts:

What I remember most about my FMFP organizing experience was being listened to. I also remember feeling like I was an integral part of the success of the conference; holding such responsibility inspired me to continue to engage in similar work following my tenure with FMFP. . . . FMFP instilled confidence in my ability to lead efficaciously and think critically about the lived experiences of the conference participants. Throughout the process, I never felt as though my opinions or thoughts weren’t valid because I was always regarded as equal by the folks in the room. I am forever grateful for the experience. . . . Using the FMFP as a model, in college, I felt empowered me to develop the first ever studentled conference at my undergraduate institution. This conference, similar to FMFP, has a central focus of social justice education and youth/ adolescent empowerment. The FMFP conference also further solidified the value I placed on education as a significant entry point for enacting widespread social change. I carry the skills that I learned in FMFP in my role as a higher education professional, as a graduate student at a highly selective institution, and as a budding scholar-activist.

– Brandy Jones

18 ...helping to plan FMFP was impactful for me because I was able to take on responsibilities on a very large scale for an impactful project that I knew would reach people that I work closely with in the community. . . .it was interesting to see how many pieces went into planning an event like this. I have participated in conferences in the past but never really understood the intricacies necessary to bring a project like this into fruition, from logistics, to coordinating food, to running tables, and check in, to parking etc., I found it to be stressful, but the kind of positive stress that fuels someone’s passion and brings visions to life.

– Michaelle Larracuente

The strategic planning retreat to be specific was the highlight for me. Going around the room of locals and finding out what made our city special and what would leave the biggest impression when visiting Providence, allowed me to really appreciate the little big city I grew up in. . . . . It was incredible to see a conference from the ground up. It’s very easy to show up to a conference, go to panels, and leave but organizing each component is a challenge and reward in itself. . . . . The FMFP partnership allowed me to network with individuals from all over the country and that spilled over into my adult life. I still keep in contact with individuals that planned the conference [and] use those skills . . . . in New York to create a collaborative network to end the epidemic of HIV.

– Christopher Castro

national student bill of rights The National Student Bill of Rights (NSBR) started at Free Minds Free People in Houston in June 2009. During a youth strategy meeting, participants decided to develop a national bill of rights as an organizing tool. Representatives from Oakland, Providence, Baltimore, Chicago and Salt Lake City continued to meet by phone throughout the following year. In June, 2010 they organized a People’s Movement Assembly at the US Social Forum to share with each other and other youth what they had accomplished on the local level. At FMFP 2011 in Providence they held a national gathering for over 250 youth from over two dozen cities, and NSBR as further expanded and the idea for a National Youth Vote Campaign was developed.

NSBR is not a legislative bill, but its organizers think it should be. They understand a much larger effort will be needed to involve thousands, even millions of young people and their communities.

NSBR targets youth ages 13 to 24. Older people can join the Adult Allies support committee. The voting process will help define a national youth vision for education justice and what needs to happen within our communities and schools to create educational justice and a social justice youth movement in the US.

National NSBR Taskforce co-chairs

Niqua Douglas & Jamal Jones

Organizations on NSBR Task Force

Project South - Atlanta, GA Baltimore Algebra Project (BAP) - Baltimore, MD Boston-area Youth Organizing Project (BYOP) - Boston, MA Sunflower Community Action - Wichita, KS Youth United for Change (YUC) - Philadelphia, PA Coleman Advocates - San Francisco, CA Alliance for Educational Justice (AEJ)

Additional support provided by

Education for Liberation Network, Californians For Justice

fb.com/groups/96854348156

@NSBRmovement

Information on NSBR was adapted from: https://nationalstudentbillofrights.wordpress.com/the-rights-weshould-have/

Check out the Report Cards on NSBR on the FMFP 2021 Whova conference site!

19