Future Events
Political Education Study Group (starting February 2023)
Minnesota YPAR Summit (May 2023)
Let’s Get Free Saturdays! (July 2023)
Past Events
Facing the Unknown Kinship Event (January 2023)
Abolition. Feminism. Now. Book Group (November 2022)
The School-Prison Trust Book Talk (November 2022)
The internal political education committee hosted a hybrid book talk by the three co-authors of The School-Prison Trust, a book that explores the relationship of school-prison relations for young Native people, touching on important issues of Indigenous sovereignty, refusal, creativity, and survivance. The authors’ distinction between resistance (which still entails recognition from the settler-colonial nation-state) and refusal (which is about refusing the terms of the debate and asserting sovereignty) gave us a framework for analyzing the kind of work that we do as EdLibMN and which category our work might fit into.
Mutual Comradeship lecture and discussion (October 2022)
As the kickoff event for the internal political education committee, EdLibMN organizers and members attended a talk by Dr. Charisse Burden-Stelly titled “The ‘Late’ W.E.B. Du Bois and the Practice of Mutual Comradeship” at the University of St. Thomas. In a discussion following the talk, we discussed how the concept of mutual comradeship informed the work of EdLibMN as a space with a shared political analysis, shared expectations, and shared political goals for education.
EdLibMN Summer Retreat (July 2022)
The EdLibMN organizing crew spent a weekend at Philadelphia Community Farm reflecting on their work for the past two years and planning for the next year. We decided that we wanted to pursue a few different projects for the year and have created three committees to do so: (1) community healing/kinship building, (2) internal political education, and (3) political education with/for the broader community.
BIPOC Ethnic Studies Network Wrap Up Celebration (May 2022)
In May 2022, we celebrated the end of the second cohort of the BIPOC Ethnic Studies Cohort with a gathering at Minnehaha Park. In our second year of the cohort, we learned from outside speakers and artists such as Thomasina Topbear, Ricardo Levins Morales, Keith Mayes, Sydney Latimer and Leigh Patel. We also learned from our youth cohort members, Amina Smaller and Shaunassey Johnson, about Youth Participatory Action Research, and about critical art from Nic Salazar. The cohort members worked in small groups to focus on the intersections of Ethnic Studies and (1) curriculum, (2) pedagogy, (3) self/community care, (4) creative resistance, (5) policy, and (6) grassroots organizing.
BIPOC Ethnic Studies Learning Cohort 2021-22 Kick-off (Oct 2021)
BIPOC Ethnic Studies Mentoring Network Kickback (Sept 2021)
Inaugural Ethnic Studies Summer Camp (Aug 2021)
Social Justice & Teachers’ Unions (April 2021)
Ethnic Studies: From Policy to the Classroom (Nov 2020)
On Monday, November 23rd, 2020, Education for Liberation Minnesota hosted a panel of teacher/activists from states across the country that have passed or are currently considering some form of Ethnic Studies legislation. Panelists include Pang Yang (MN), Andrew Gonzales (Austin, TX), Ismael Jimenez (Philadelphia, PA), and Dr. Emily Bautista (Los Angeles, CA). The session was moderated by Curtis Acosta from the Education for Liberation Network.
Sponsored by the Education for Liberation Network and the Macalester College Educational Studies Department.
About the Panelists
Pang Yang is a dedicated multilingual veteran teacher and the mother of seven children. Pang is also a founder of Project Tshav Ntuj, a movement to destigmatize mental health in the Hmong community, and a new non-profit, MN Zej Zog, which empowers the Hmong community by nurturing the Hmong language, healing through the arts and wellness, and becoming more powerful through education across the generations.
Andrew Gonzales currently teaches middle school STEM, Ethnic Studies, and the History of Pop Music at Lively Middle School in Austin, TX. For the previous 5 years, he taught Ethnic Studies at the high school level, was a member of the curriculum design team, and a teacher of the Ethnic Studies course in Austin since its inaugural year.
Ismael Jimenez is a dedicated educator who, for the last fifteen years, has worked with students in Philadelphia from preschool age to high school. Currently, Ismael is a core member of the Racial Justice Organizing Committee, Black Lives Matter Philly, founding member of the Melanated Educators Collective, and co-founder of the Philadelphia Black History Collaborative.
Dr. Emily Bautista's commitment to advancing Ethnic Studies began as a youth organizer at UCLA and continued in her work as a Los Angeles high school teacher, school leader, and founding member of the People's Education Movement in Los Angeles. As a scholar-activist, Emily's research explores Transformative Youth Organizing as a decolonizing social movement framework.
Moderator: Dr. Curtis Acosta was a high school teacher for nearly 20 years in Tucson, Arizona, where he developed and taught Chican@/Latin@ Literature classes for the renowned Mexican American Studies program in the Tucson Unified School District. He is an award-winning educator was featured in the documentaries Precious Knowledge and Dolores.
Bipoc Ethnic Studies Learning Cohort 2020-2021 Virtual Kick-off (Aug 2020)
On August 6th, 2020, Education for Liberation Minnesota hosted a virtual kickoff event via Zoom to introduce the Ethnic Studies learning cohort to prospective mentees and mentors.
To watch the video with the chat messages (which include various links and resources), click here. Password: vp1gcQ&y
Info about and resources from presenters
Youth Ethnic Studies Coalition video
Link for youth in Minnesota to share their perspectives on Ethnic Studies via short videos
Article about the lesson plan Dr. McCoy shared: “Beyond Pocahontas: Learning from Indigenous Women Changemakers,” co-authored with Sarah B. Shear, Leilani Sabzalian, and Lakota Pochedly as the Turtle Island Social Studies Collective. Social Studies and the Young Learner 31, no. 3 (2019): 7–13.
Dr. McCoy requests that you support the work of local movements and organizations that support Native youth (such as MIGIZI) as a way to honor her work.
Chicano movement in Westside St. Paul
Pang Yang, Park Center High School, Osseo Public Schools
Rahel Tekam