About Free Minds Free People Education for Liberation Network

Free Minds Free People (FMFP) is a bi-annual national conference that brings together teachers, young people, researchers, parents and community-based activists/educators from across the country to build a movement to develop and promote education as a tool for liberation. Since 2007, FMFP has been held six times in six places that are listed below alongside the Indigenous people on whose lands we gathered:

Chicago (2007, 2013) - Potawatomi, Miami & Illinois; Houston (2009) - Karankawa, Sana, Atakapa-Ishak & Coahuiltecan; Providence (2011) - Narragansett; Oakland (2015) - Ohlone; Baltimore (2017) - Piscataway; and Twin Cities (2019) - Ojibwe, Dakota & Sioux

FMFP is hosted by Education for Liberation Network and planned by volunteers from across the country in a highly collaborative, consensus-building process. In non pandemic years we meet in person for a planning retreat in the city where the upcoming conference will be held, then reconnect in person 10 months later at FMFP. This year our planning and conference has been virtual.

Education for Liberation Network (ELN) was founded in 1999 by Charles Payne (a scholar of urban education, school reform and social inequality). After moderating a panel at an American Educational Research Association conference on liberatory education, he, Lisa Delpit, Theresa Perry and others decided to work together to combat the isolation many of them were experiencing doing liberatory work in academia. ELN began as a listserve to convene its members, with Charles as the Director. In 2006, he convened Tara Mack, Mariame Kaba and Susan Wilcox to help him think through a strategy to revitalize ELN, and Free Minds Free People was born.

Tara went on to become ELN’s first paid executive director, a position supported by an advisory board that has steadily comprised over 85% BIPOC people. ELN’s mission also expanded to actively support the development of individuals and groups practicing liberatory education, and to connect educators with activists, locally and nationally. After Tara’s departure in 2013, Thomas Nikundiwe, became the next executive director. He was known to describe ELN as generating power from the ground up and as punching above its weight. FMFP 2021 marks the first days of ELN’s newest executive director, Awo Okaikor Aryee-Price.

ELN currently has more than 1300 members affiliated with: Okaikor showed up to our interview process, graceful and with intentionality and a depth that we knew we needed but didn’t know what form it would take until we imagined working alongside Okaikor. We are honored to continue this centuries-long work with her. - ELN Board

K-12 public schools

Local & national youth organizations (Chicago

Freedom School, Youth in Action, Young People’s Project, Philadelphia Student Union, Baltimore

Algebra Project, Make the Road New York) Teacher organizing groups including New York Collective of Radical Educators (NYCoRE), People’

Education Movement (Los Angeles) & Teachers for Social Justice (Chicago) Policy organizations such as the New York Civil Liberties Union & Justice Matters (CA) College & university professors including from University of Minnesota, University of San Francisco,

University of Pittsburgh, Harvard University

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