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Site Visits / Concurrent Workshops B
SITE VISITS (Friday, 2:00 pm)
Take a tour of five Chicago neighborhoods where Education for Liberation is having an impact.
Visit 1—Northside Youth Organizing Site Visit
Locations: Rogers Park, West Ridge, Edgewater
Come meet some of the most forward-thinking youth leadership of the Northside! All are engaged in impressive social justice organizing, facilitatory education, or community-based research efforts. We’ll meet Young Asians With Power! (YWAP) who are developing curricula that they hope will serve as a replicable teaching methodology that can be used as a resource for building youth leaders as facilitators, and the Korean American Resource & Cultural Center’s youth of Shout Out to hear about their lobbying to Congress for youth immigrant rights. Together, we’ll meet the Young Women's Action Team (YWAT) and the Young Women’s Empowerment Project (YWEP) who are creating zines, taking to the streets!, and building campaigns fueled by community-based research statistics to fight the ongoing struggle of violence against women and girls.
Visit 2—Gender Equity, Gender-Based Violence, LGBTQ Rights and Comprehensive Sex Education – How Chicago Youth are Pushing the Social Justice Field to New Heights
Location: Brighton Park
This site-visit, which is co-facilitated by the Women and Girls Collective Action Network (Women & Girls CAN)/FUFA (Females United For Action), the Illinois Caucus for Adolescent Health (ICAH), and the Brighton Park Neighborhood Council (BPNC), will feature interactive presentations and discussions around innovative Education for Liberation approaches as a means to promote gender equity, LGBTQ rights and comprehensive sex education and fight gender-based violence. Youth and adult allies will share successes and challenges of their cutting-edge work, which has been breaking new ground within Chicago’s social justice community and is receiving increasing national attention.
Site visit participants will have the opportunity to visit one of Chicago’s most expanding and diversifying gateway communities for immigrants (the community population almost doubled within the last decade). While facing many challenges as a low-income community of color, Brighton Park serves as a model for innovative social justice approaches that combine community organizing with a critical analysis based on the interconnections between identities, to ensure that the needs of all members of this community (including girls, LGBTQ youth, domestic violence survivors, ex-offenders, etc.) are addressed.
Visit 3—The Blue Line Transit Task Force
Location: Greater Lawndale
In the mid-nineties, the Douglas Branch of the Blue Line in Chicago was in poor working conditions and began to lose riders due to its slow zones that were a result of weakening support structures. Instead of attempting to fix the problem, the Chicago Transit Authority considered closing down the nearly 100 year-old line. The community responded by forming a multi-racial, multi-community (North Lawndale, Cicero, Pilsen and Little Village) coalition of community organizations and residents to keep the line open and secure dollars to rehab the line, which runs through four African-American and Latino neigborhoods, connecting residents to important downtown locations, the medical district and several schools and colleges. Over a seven-year period, these efforts resulted in 48 million dollars from the federal government to rehab the Blue Line, jobs for residents in the reconstruction work, the creation of a community advisory council and the restoration of weekend services after the reconstruction was completed. Hear from some of the key organizers and community members as they share their stories of community organizing, struggle and victory! The visit will also feature a video and a visit to a nearby Blue Line Stop.
Visit 4—From Community Organizing to Community Building
Location: Humboldt Park
See and experience how a community can transform itself into a model of sustained social change, community development, cultural expression and ethical leadership. You will visit:
1) Paseo Boricua—Home of the two largest monuments to a flag. Paseo Boricua is the cultural corridor for the Puerto Rican community of Chicago and Illinois. Enjoy the cultural flavor of Puerto Rico. 2) Division Street Business Development Association. Learn about the affordable housing initiative in the 26th ward, how they help community leaders become entrepreneurs and how they are combating gentrification and directing community-led economic development. 3) La Casita de Don Pedro, a cultural expression space used to housing the controversial statue of independence leader Don Pedro Albizu Campos. 4) Batey Urbano, a youth space used to organize against gentrification and create space for young people to express themselves culturally, politically and socially. 5) The Lolita Lebron Family Learning Center, which provides young mothers with an opportunity to continue their education while giving them the tools to discover their community and themselves as mothers, learners and Latinas. 6) Vida Sida/CO-OP Humboldt Park, two programs that are addressing some of the most important health care needs in the Puerto Rican community—HIV/AIDS and childhood obesity. 7) The Puerto Rican Cultural Center , the umbrella organization that brings much of the work in the Humboldt Park community together. The Puerto Rican Cultural Center building houses Centro Infantil Consuelo Lee Corrtjer, a bilingual and bicultural day-care for children ages three to five, and the Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos Puerto Rican High School, an alternative high school with 33 years of experience addressing the academic, cultural and social needs of its students.
COMMENTS
CONCURRENT WORKSHOPS (Friday, 2:00 pm)
Theme Key (Click here to see activities listed by theme)
| AS = Arts and Social Justice Education |
| AR = Action Research |
| CBO = Community Based Organizing |
| CC = Critical Consciousness (Racism, Sexism, Heterosexism etc.) |
| CD = Curriculum Development |
| CY = Criminalization of Youth |
| LA = Literary Analysis |
| PT = Parents as Liberatory Educators |
| SBO = School Based Organizing |
| SJ = Social Justice Schools |
| YL = Youth Leadership Development |
Documenting (In)Justice: Youth Participatory Action Research and Video (AR)
University of Utah
Two Salt Lake City youth research teams will present upon participatory research and video documentary projects they developed based on their concerns: 1. Equal access to higher education for undocumented students 2. Racial and ethnic stereotyping in Salt Lake City high schools. Youth researchers will screen their videos, discuss the challenges and joys of doing participatory research, and lead session participants in a hands-on workshop on video research methods.
JOTARIA (Queerness): Using multi-media theater as a tool to organize against homo-hatred (CC, AS, CBO)
Sister Outsider Entertainment, Chica Luna Productions
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The objective of this workshop is to demonstrate how participants whether they are educators, community organizers or youth can use theater for liberation. We specifically use JOTARIA a multi-media hip-hop cabaret as a tool to organize around homo-hatred toward women, Trans and Gender Queers of Color. This workshop will show participants how to organize around homophobia against people of color in their communities and schools. Among other things, participants discover how to utilize this medium as a way to transform art into action. |
Being the Change We Want to See: Adventures in Creating a Children's Defense Fund Freedom School in Durham, NC (LA)
The CDF Durham Freedom School at North Carolina Central University
This workshop will focus on the CDF Freedom Schools summer program model as a tool for liberatory education. Participants will experience the Freedom Schools curriculum by reading a culturally relevant children's book and engaging in self-reflective activities related to the book's themes. This workshop will also focus on the particular dynamics, demographics, and history of Durham, North Carolina that shape our Freedom School, and our visions and challenges as we launch this program for the first time in the summer of 2007.
Take Back the Halls: Ending Violence in Relationships and Schools (SBO)
Taking Back Our Lives, DePaul University
Representatives of Take Back the Halls, a teen violence prevention and community activism program, will educate participants about the program and share some of its methods, which link education, social justice and activism. Includes presentation of youth poetry and spoken word.
Empowering Student Leadership in Schools (YL)
Harris Fellows Student Leadership Initiative
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The Harris Fellows Student Leadership Initiative is an organization of high school students that supports the development of school-based leadership organizations. This workshop, facilitated by high school students, will introduce strategies to empower students to take action in their schools and communities through leadership development, organizational development, action research, action strategies and networking. It will include success stories from student leaders across Chicago. |
Youth Leadership in Community Organizing (CBO)
Make the Road by Walking
This workshop will use theater, video, interactive/experiential learning, handouts and extensive discussion with workshop participants to share the work of the Youth Power Project of Make the Road by Walking as an example of successful youth organizing/youth development. Participants will learn about the leadership structure, program offerings, campaigns, political education and youth development/youth organizing model of Youth Power. Participants will be encouraged to share their own experiences, as we believe that learning in workshops flows equally between participants and facilitators.
Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes (Friday, 3:30 pm)
Edwin Rodriguez, Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice; Xiomayra Lopez, Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice; Kevin Brown, Chicago Freedom School; Moderator: Javonie Regis
This documentary examines representations of gender roles in hip-hop and rap music through the lens of filmmaker Byron Hurt, a former college quarterback turned activist. Conceived as a “loving critique” from a self-proclaimed “hip-hop head,” Hurt examines issues of masculinity, sexism, violence and homophobia in today’s hip-hop culture by talking with rappers, moguls and fans. This film will be followed by a youth-led panel discussion.