# data[].attributes.body
Social justice is the practice that changes our society into a more equitable place for all. Social justice often goes against the grain in the dominant culture because of the deeply in-bedded complacency.

# data[].attributes.body
The center on Race and Social Justice has worked to create a space that actively works towards a more active society. In this article one of the employees explains what brings her zeal in the workplace.

“The catalyst for the center, in my mind, is how do we change the sense of ‘we’re going to class’ to ‘well, how do we engage with the issues in the world around us and how do we bring forth meaningful change?’” Tyner said.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Artika Tyner, the current associate vice president of diversity and inclusion, will lead a new center for students to expand the ways they look at race, leadership and social justice opening in the fall of 2019, located on St. Thomas' Minneapolis campus and School of Law.

Tyner is an alumna of St. Thomas and was a faculty member and administrator before her time as associate vice president.

"The catalyst for the center, in my mind, is how do we change the sense of 'we're going to class' to 'well, how do we engage with the issues in the world around us and how do we bring forth meaningful change?'" Tyner said.

Not only does this new center provide Tyner with ways to connect with more students, this new role will bring her back to the classroom as well.

"I miss the podium," Tyner said.

Beyond the study abroad J-term programs she has lead the past couple years, the last classes Tyner taught were for the St. Thomas School of Public Policy four years ago. These classes included research administrative law, public policy advocacy and one of her favorites: critical reflection.

"The learning in the classroom happens outside of the classroom," Tyner said.

A highlight of her administrative law class was surprising the students who expected to write a paper for their capstone by instead taking them to the Somali Federation Center to teach people about their rights.

In an email President Sullivan sent to faculty, staff and students in January 2019, Sullivan touched on the interactive experiences students will gain through this center, "Students will interface with lawyers in the community who are fighting for justice and equity and gain in-depth insights related to civil rights, human rights law, and advocacy."

Tyner's main goal of the center is to further give students the tools to be able to navigate social justice issues, tools she felt St. Thomas gave her.

Robert Vischer, St. Thomas' dean and Mengler chair in law describes Tyner as the perfect candidate to lead the center.

"The center is going to be bringing together a focus on scholarly research, student learning, public advocacy and community partnership," Vischer said. "That is what Dr. Tyner has been doing over the course of her career."

Tyner plans to incorporate a number of visiting fellows to provide support and diverse views on the key themes and topics that the center will cover for the students involved.

In addition, Tyner plans to reach out to graduate research assistants she has had over the years to create somewhat of a "formal advisory board" for the center.

Tyner also plans to someday develop an "open call" for scholars and individuals looking to be involved with the center.

For now, the center will not be a new physical building. Students will meet with Tyner in her office or in one of her classrooms.

"You see a problem, you create a solution," Tyner said regarding her taking actions with the development of the center. "Students will be able to engage with their learning tools and make a broader impact. For me, it is just an opportunity to take their work to scale."

Taylor Shupe can be reached at shup9397@stthomas.edu.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Center on Race, Leadership and Social Justice brings another competitive edge to St. Thomas

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Artika Tyner, the current associate vice president of diversity and inclusion, will lead a new center for students to expand the ways they look at race, leadership and social justice opening in the fall of 2019, located on St. Thomas' Minneapolis campus and School of Law. Tyner is an alumna of St.

# data[].attributes.body
Angela Davis is an activist, scholar and writer who advocates for the oppressed. She has authored several books, including Women, Culture & Politics.

Who Is Angela Davis?

Angela Davis, born on January 26, 1944, in Birmingham, Alabama, became a master scholar who studied at the Sorbonne. She joined the U.S. Communist Party and was jailed for charges related to a prison outbreak, though ultimately cleared. Known for books like Women, Race & Class, she has worked as a professor and activist who advocates gender equity, prison reform and alliances across color lines.

U.S. militant Angela Davis puffs a pipe in Helenski, Finland, to promote her book, 'An Autobiography.' (Photo date: Sept. 12, 1975). (Photo: AFP/Getty Images)

Early Life

Writer, activist and educator Angela Davis was born on January 26, 1944, in Birmingham, Alabama. She grew up in a middle class neighborhood dubbed "Dynamite Hill," due to many of the African-American homes in the area that were bombed by the Ku Klux Klan. Davis is best known as a radical African-American educator and activist for civil rights and other social issues. She knew about racial prejudice from her experiences with discrimination growing up in Alabama. As a teenager, Davis organized interracial study groups, which were broken up by the police. She also knew some of the four African-American girls killed in the Birmingham church bombing of 1963.

Parents

Davis' father, Frank, owned a service station, while her mother, Sallye, taught elementary school and was an active member of the NAACP. Sallye would later pursue her masters degree at NYU and Davis would accompany her there as a teenager.

Academic Career, The Black Panthers and Communism

Davis later moved north and went to Brandeis University in Massachusetts where she studied philosophy with Herbert Marcuse. As a graduate student at the University of California, San Diego, in the late 1960s, she was associated with several groups including the Black Panthers. But she spent most of her time working with the Che-Lumumba Club, which was an all-black branch of the Communist Party.

Hired to teach at the University of California, Los Angeles, Davis ran into trouble with the school's administration because of her association with communism. They fired her, but she fought them in court and got her job back. Davis still ended up leaving when her contract expired in 1970.

Soledad Brothers

Outside of academia, Davis had become a strong supporter of three prison inmates of Soledad Prison known as the Soledad brothers (they were not related). These three men — John W. Cluchette, Fleeta Drumgo and George Lester Jackson — were accused of killing a prison guard after several African-American inmates had been killed in a fight by another guard. Some thought these prisoners were being used as scapegoats because of the political work within the prison.

Charged With Murder

During Jackson's trial in August 1970, an escape attempt was made and several people in the courtroom were killed. Davis was brought up on several charges, including murder, for her alleged part in the event. There were two main pieces of evidence used at trial: the guns used were registered to her, and she was reportedly in love with Jackson. After spending roughly 18 months in jail, Davis was acquitted in June 1972.

Angela Davis Today

After spending time traveling and lecturing, Davis returned to teaching. She was a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she taught courses on the history of consciousness, retiring in 2008.

Davis has continued to lecture at many prestigious universities, discussing issues regarding race, the criminal justice system and women's rights.

In 2017 Davis was a featured speaker and made honorary co-chair at the Women's March on Washington after Donald Trump's inauguration.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Big Impact : Leadership through the Lens of Social Justice - Baruch College DML: Digital Media Library

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The conversation will explore themes from the book Big Impact: Insights & Stories from America's Non-Profit Leaders, including lessons learned about philanthropy and nonprofit leadership at a time when civil society is more important than ever.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
What can we do to prepare new civil rights advocates and leaders?

# data[].attributes.body
By 2018, he had also co-founded a science- and tech-focused center for underprivileged youth in the neighborhood; a WeWork-style coworking space was attached. He spoke of finding inspiration in Silicon Valley leaders like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, so-called disruptive thinkers. (He was also a fan of bitcoin.)

“What Silicon Valley is saying to justify that lack of diversity is that there’s no pipeline from the inner city to Silicon Valley,” he told Complex in 2017. “The reason that there’s no pipeline is that we lack science, technology, engineering, and math skills, and you can’t teach a 13-year-old that; it’s too late. They gotta be trained in that.”

Those communities will hopefully continue to benefit from Hussle’s work to give back to the neighborhood that raised him.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
You may not have heard the name Nipsey Hussle before he was shot and killed on Sunday in Los Angeles. But news of Hussle's death went viral and led to an online outpouring of grief and love from huge names in the music industry and beyond, from Chance the Rapper to Colin Kapernick to Ava DuVernay. Some of popular culture's biggest tastemakers mourned, while many casual observers asked: Who is Nipsey Hussle?

Hussle, who was 33 years old when he died, was a Grammy-nominated rapper - as well as an entrepreneur, community activist, and father of two. Within the music industry, he was an established presence who had collaborated with artists as big as Drake and Diddy.

He also had a violent past and had spoken publicly about his long affiliation with the Rollin' 60s, an LA-area gang that is connected to the Crips. But more recently, it seemed as though Hussle had distanced himself from the gang. He was involved in community activism, working to empower and employ underprivileged groups through real estate investments, science and tech learning centers for teens, and other efforts in inner-city Los Angeles.

Hussle was reportedly planning to attend an anti-gang violence meeting on Sunday, scheduled for not long after he and two other men were shot outside a store he owned called Marathon Clothing.

While early news reports suggested Hussle's murder was gang-related, the Los Angeles Police Department's ongoing investigation has revealed that Hussle and his suspected killer - a man named Eric Holder, who was arrested Tuesday night - got into a heated argument prior to the shooting. While Holder is alleged to be a gang member himself, the New York Times reports that the LAPD does not believe the argument or shooting was gang-related. There is still no clear motive. (Additionally, a vigil held for Hussle on Tuesday erupted into chaos when a fight and alleged sounds of gunshots caused a stampede that injured 19 people. However, police have confirmed no one was shot at the scene.)

Hussle's death continues to boost the artist's renown within a mainstream that hardly knew him. Social media eulogies from celebrities have started to familiarize those unaware with Hussle's music, but Hussle was much more than that. His death has made it clear that his legacy will also be anchored to his successful journey out of the roughest corners of LA to become a community-focused business leader.

Nipsey Hussle was an indisputable force in the West Coast rap scene, even though he wasn't a household name

Born Ermias Davidson Asghedom in 1985, Hussle had been a force in the SoCal rap scene for nearly 15 years. He released his first mixtape, Slauson Boy Volume 1, in 2005, when he was 20 years old and dedicated to living up to the name he chose for himself, "hustle." His sound was defined by a reverence to the West Coast gangsta rap of the 1990s, his flow markedly different from the more pop-adjacent hip-hop dominating the radio in the mid-aughts.

His sound left an impression among the local indie scene he toured in. And buzz around the 2005 tape caught the ear of executives at Epic Records. In 2008, Hussle released two mixtapes with the label: Bullets Ain't Got No Name Vol. 1 and Vol. 2.

Though hip-hop fans lauded the albums, Hussle's releases under the Epic Records umbrella failed to make much of an impression on the Billboard charts and received little radio airplay.

Epic Records began to unravel financially in 2010, and Hussle took the opportunity to go independent, shifting his priorities to the audience that had already proven its loyalty. He put out mixtapes for free at a steady clip. And by 2013, he'd built up a large enough following to try a unique business model for his next release: His mixtape Crenshaw - an ode to the predominantly black, tight-knit Crenshaw District in the southern LA area, where he grew up - made waves because Hussle opted to make all digital copies of his album available for free, while selling 1,000 physical copies for $100 each.

"The reason I chose to charge $100 dollars each copy and only start with 1000 units is because I tailor making my music for those who are listening ... it's not about stepping outside of what I'm known for in hopes of new discovery. What that means less is fans that are better served," he explained in a statement to Rap Radar.

Jay-Z reportedly snapped up 100 copies, helping fuel a responseto the Crenshaw stunt that raised Hussle's profile. After that,Hussle continued to tour and release mixtapes for free on a regular basis, while drawing on the Crenshaw experience to further revolutionize his business.

"I think you can give a pure artistic product if you understand how to build your own industry," Hussle told Forbes in 2015, following the release of his independent album Mailbox Money, which saw him up the ante on his Crenshaw release model: This time, he made only 100 physical copies of the new album available, for $1,000 each. "A solution built by an artist serves the artist more than the solution the capitalist comes up with," he said.

The move once again put Hussle the radar of music industry execs, and eventually led him back to the studio with a new label, Atlantic Records, which he said in a Billboard interview would help bring him "to the next level." In 2018, he released Victory Lap, featuring collabs with CeeLo Green and Kendrick Lamar.

"Debuts are usually albums of firsts, but Victory Lap is full of sequels and standards [...] it is returning to Nipsey's well for hard-nosed bully rap," reads a positive review from Pitchfork. "The hour-long album honors all the work he's put in and looks back at all he's achieved, but it also looks forward to all he has yet to build and all those he can still inspire."

A spot on the Billboard album charts and a Grammy nomination for Best Rap Album followed; Rihanna and LeBron James counted themselves as fans. Just last week, John Legend had filmed a video with Hussle, which he tweeted about on the night Hussle died; Drake said on Instagram that he and Hussle had recently discussed working on a song together.

Hussle channeled a violent past into community activism and philanthropy that will define his legacy as much as his music

Hussle's music was deeply connected to his history with the Rollin' 60s, a group connected to the Crips largely based out of Crenshaw. He was open about his membership in the gang, which started when he was a teen, as he told WBUR in 2018. But in the same interview, he spoke proudly of "making it out"unscathed.

"In my section of the Crenshaw District in the Rollin' 60s, none of my peers survived. None of my peers avoided prison," he said. "None of 'em. Everybody got bullet wounds and felonies and strikes. So to make it out mentally stable and not in prison and not on drugs, that's a win."

Hussle's evolution from self-proclaimed gang member to major-label signee was bolstered by several philanthropic efforts, which he began in earnest in 2017.

In 2017, Hussle bought real estate in the Crenshaw District (with DJ Khaled as a partner), including what became his clothing store, Marathon. Marathon was conceived both as a way to promote commerce in a lower-class area and as an experiment that blends smart technology with brick-and-mortar retail: Consumers can use their smartphones in the store to order directly from the brand, and Hussle described the environment as having a Starbucks-like vibe.

By 2018, he had also co-founded a science- and tech-focused center for underprivileged youth in the neighborhood; a WeWork-style coworking space was attached. He spoke of finding inspiration in Silicon Valley leaders like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, so-called disruptive thinkers. (He was also a fan of bitcoin.)

"What Silicon Valley is saying to justify that lack of diversity is that there's no pipeline from the inner city to Silicon Valley," he told Complex in 2017. "The reason that there's no pipeline is that we lack science, technology, engineering, and math skills, and you can't teach a 13-year-old that; it's too late. They gotta be trained in that."

Those communities will hopefully continue to benefit from Hussle's work to give back to the neighborhood that raised him.

It's hard to say why Hussle - despite his activism, investment portfolio, critical accolades, famous fan base, and even occasional controversy, like being called out for making homophobic comments - didn't gain a wider audience before his death. Perhaps it's due to his prominence in what GQ's Mark Anthony Green called "the branch on the pop-culture tree" that Anthony thinks of as " The Branch White America Hasn't Exploited Yet. " In other words, Hussle catered his efforts to, and attracted the attention of, primarily black audiences.

"The artist part of me always wants to be appreciated," Hussle told GQ in February, speaking about his more niche fame. "I read every review. But I never wanted to seek validation by awards or anything controlled by politics."

But his efforts didn't go unnoticed by the community he availed himself to. Like Hussle, actress Issa Rae of HBO's Insecure grew up in South Los Angeles, and in the days following Hussle's death, she spoke about growing up with the rapper in an interview with Buzzfeed News, recalling Hussle's eventual support of and influence over local residents, including herself.

"In my mind, I was like, 'Cool, as soon as I get coin, that's the same thing I'm gonna do,'" Rae told Buzzfeed. "And for him to invest so much, to be of the community and then to be gunned down in that same area is just heartbreaking."

In the wake of Hussle's death, his most famous fans have surely already done wonders for a career that mostly flew under the radar. But Nipsey Hussle will always be Nipsey Hussle's best promoter.

"It was the culture that taught me to keep going," Hussle wrote last October for the Players' Tribune, in which he explained why he was devoting time to refurbishing an old neighborhood basketball court. "To bet on myself. As an individual, as an artist and as a leader of a crew - I carry that mentality with me wherever I go. It's not just me, it's a lot of us from L.A. It's the mentality of, We ain't turning down nothing. We here for all requests and invites. We not making excuses. We going forward."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Rapper Nipsey Hussle's death put an inspiring life in the spotlight

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
You may not have heard the name Nipsey Hussle before he was shot and killed on Sunday in Los Angeles. But news of Hussle's death went viral and led to an online outpouring of grief and love from huge names in the music industry and beyond, from Chance the Rapper to Colin Kapernick to Ava DuVernay.

# data[].attributes.body
Teachers are always on the cutting edge of what social justice leadership in this country looks like. Teachers have organized strikes and catalyzed movements over time.

Teachers across the country are beginning to realize that these two sharks are our enemies, and we are taking action against both of them. In West Virginia, they first struck against budget cuts to public education, and then they came back this year and struck to stop a bill proposing a new charterization program.

At the root of austerity and privatization is a business model for education. This model disciplines educators to teach to the test and ties funding to those results. That testing regime has, in fact, become a big for-profit business in its own right.

This model is ruining teachers’ and students’ experience of school. We did a study in LA that revealed that a student will take over 100 standardized tests by the time they get to sixth grade. This testing regime reinforces teachers’ feeling of being disrespected and powerless, because we have to teach to a test that we didn’t choose and don’t believe in.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The teachers' strike wave began in West Virginia and spread across several red states, and then into blue states with work stoppages in Los Angeles, Denver and Oakland.

Leading teacher militant Gillian Russom has been a high school history teacher in Los Angeles for 18 years. She's been an activist-member of the United Teachers Los Angeles for most of that time and currently serves on the union's board of directors. She is a contributor to the book Education and Capitalism, published by Haymarket Books.

She spoke to Truthout about the causes of the new teachers' movement and how labor activists must move toward social justice unionism. The following transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Ashley Smith: The teacher's strike wave has swept the country and looks like it's becoming a national movement. What's behind this?
Gillian Russom: There are a few factors that come to mind. One reason, which I didn't know until recently, is that teachers have had the greatest downward mobility since the 1970s. It's a profession that's in crisis; that has experienced a devaluation over a long period of time.

Another one is how the recession impacted education and teachers. States and school boards imposed austerity on public education. People saw co-workers laid off, class size increased and relentless cuts to programs. As a result, the downward mobility we've experienced over decades got dramatically worse since 2008.

On top of these, there's the experience of being a teacher in an economic crisis and what you see and experience. I remember West Virginia teacher Emily Comer talking about teachers witnessing the impact of the opioid crisis, job losses, poverty and homelessness on their students and families.

We teachers see these problems on a daily basis in our students' lives, and because of the nature of the profession, we are made to feel like we have to solve them and make things tolerable for the kids in our classes. Eventually, you reach a breaking point when it's no longer possible to cope, and you start demanding accountability from school boards and the government.

Teachers do more unpaid overtime than any other profession.

All of this is happening amid an official political debate in which neither party has been speaking for us. Both have carried through attacks on public education and the media has parroted their positions, relentlessly targeting teachers as the source of the problem. There was the Time Magazine cover with former chancellor of Washington, D.C., public schools Michelle Rhee declaring that the whole problem in education was the "bad apples" (bad teachers) that should be fired.

All of this public discourse was at odds with our experience as teachers. We know politicians' so-called solutions of austerity and scapegoating teachers has only made things worse. We also feel that our immediate community actually supports us. Over the last few years, we have started to speak for ourselves and put forward our solution to the crisis in public education.

We tried to do all sorts of things before we started this strike wave. In West Virginia, where it all started, teachers said, "We tried lobbying; we wrote letters; we organized town hall meetings, but nobody listened." So, it finally boiled over and produced this enormous explosion of strikes in which we took matters in our hands and have started to force on the system solutions in the interests of teachers, students and the whole working class.
Let's delve a bit deeper into what the ruling class and its two parties have done to education. How have their neoliberal policies created the conditions that led to this strike wave?
In general, the state and billionaires have systematically tried to impose the logic of the market onto public education. They want to reduce the state's responsibility and fiscal support to schools as much as they can. So, they have tried to privatize through charters, increased class sizes and cuts to budgets for everything from salaries to teaching materials.

We saw the devastating impact of all this in videos from the teachers in Arizona and Oklahoma showing that teachers have no materials for their classrooms because their budgets have been cut so much. In blue states, we're experiencing the same cuts in funding. For example, California's cuts to taxes on the wealthy and corporations over decades has led us to drop to 41st in the nation in per-pupil funding despite being the fifth-largest economy in the world.

Black teachers with connections to struggle and militancy are a threat to our bosses' ability to carry through austerity and privatization.

So, austerity and privatization are the biggest causes of teachers' grievances. I once did a diagram for a meeting that represented these two issues as two sharks devouring public schools: The two reinforce each other.

First, they starve schools of funding, then claim that they are failing; finally, proposing charter schools as a solution. Privatization then drains even more funds from the schools. A study by In the Public Interest documented that charters drain $57.3 million a year from public education in Oakland, California. The same is true for countless cities in California. These charters are privately run, unaccountable to the public and almost entirely non-union.

Teachers across the country are beginning to realize that these two sharks are our enemies, and we are taking action against both of them. In West Virginia, they first struck against budget cuts to public education, and then they came back this year and struck to stop a bill proposing a new charterization program.

At the root of austerity and privatization is a business model for education. This model disciplines educators to teach to the test and ties funding to those results. That testing regime has, in fact, become a big for-profit business in its own right.

This model is ruining teachers' and students' experience of school. We did a study in LA that revealed that a student will take over 100 standardized tests by the time they get to sixth grade. This testing regime reinforces teachers' feeling of being disrespected and powerless, because we have to teach to a test that we didn't choose and don't believe in.

It also introduces a big contradiction between our assumed mission of developing young people and the reality narrowing education down to test results. This becomes really painful for teachers as we watch our students stress out, cry about tests and hate school because of this business model of education that we have no voice in.

How do institutionalized sexism, racism and anti-immigrant policies impact the education system?
First let's talk about the sexism in the education system. Under capitalism, the rearing of a new generation of workers is privatized and disproportionately borne by women, who are not paid for their labor in the home.

The extent to which you can frame your strike around social justice is directly related to the kind of public support you're going to get.

This system of social reproduction shapes the education system, which for the capitalist economy, trains and develops the skills of the next generation of workers. Women are the majority of teachers that do this work, and that work has highly gendered and sexist dynamics.

We are expected to sacrifice everything for our students, help them with all the social trauma they enter school with, meet their huge needs, and help them overcome enormous skill gaps. We are expected to do this even as austerity and privatization are wrecking our schools.

We're expected to make up for this by doing more unpaid work. Many studies show that teachers, again mostly women, do more unpaid overtime than any other profession. That's rooted in the very gendered expectation that when it comes to the children, women just have to take care of them.

Further, conditions for teachers worsen for those responsible for educating our youngest children. They experience an even lower level of respect for their work. In LA, one of the things we won for the first time ever in our strike is a duty-free lunch period for teachers in early education centers. They had no lunch period! Those teachers are almost all women in LA.

During our strike, I remember the DJ at one of our rallies played Aretha Franklin's "Respect," and teachers started dancing in the streets. Women haven't been respected for the work that we do, and the strike was when we finally started demanding it. That was why it was so cool to see women in the forefront of these strikes.

We also see the same patterns in terms of racist and anti-immigrant structures in the education system. Our schools reproduce all these hierarchies. That's why the school-to-prison pipeline and the criminalization of Black students has come to the forefront through the Black Lives Matter at School movement.

In LA, they pull students out of class and use metal detectors to scan them as if they are suspects. We've had parents being picked up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) when they are dropping off their kids at school. These arrests actually violate federal policies that state that schools are supposed to be safe spaces and that ICE can't come into them.

But they patrol outside, arrest parents and then kids walk into schools having lost a parent. What do our schools do about that? We're not even equipped to have those conversations, never mind the actual support system that students and families need when they're going through this trauma.

We've also seen an enormous attack on Black teachers in particular. In Chicago in the last 18 years, the number of Black teachers has dropped from 40 percent to 23 percent of the teaching staff. This racist discrimination is built into the neoliberal program.

Black teachers, especially veteran ones with connections to struggle and militancy, are a threat to our bosses' ability to carry through austerity and privatization. They would rather bring in young, white teachers with no union or movement experience; they see them as much more malleable. That's why Black Lives Matter at School put forward a demand to hire more Black teachers.
The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) strike in 2012 set a precedent for unions taking up demands for broader social and economic justice. How have unions done this in the teachers' strike wave?
Some unions have taken up these issues, but it's been uneven. The LA strike gives us something to build on. We added demands that addressed questions of racism and anti-immigrant policies.

In some cases, even in this strike wave, unions haven't raised social justice demands. That's a mistake because it weakens our ability to fight.

We included demands like stopping random searches, having green space at every school, support for immigrant families dealing with deportation, and many more. The entire time we were bargaining our contract we were told that these were outside the scope of bargaining, which is legally the case.

Right before we struck, though, we had to take those demands off the table in order to move toward impasse and strike. In order to legally strike, you can't have "permissive subjects of bargaining" on the table.

So, we took those demands off the table, but said we're going to fight for them anyway. Once we were on strike, we put them back on the table as conditions for returning to our classrooms. I was honestly not sure if it was going to work and wasn't sure that the bargaining team would stick to the demands and keep them on the table.

But they did, and we won things on all of those demands. We must now build on this victory. We need to argue that not just teachers' unions, but all unions must raise these kinds of common good demands.

It is essential for unions to do this because the extent to which you can frame your strike around social justice is directly related to the kind of public support you're going to get. In LA, I was amazed about the extent to which we were able to do that.

We were so successful because we spent so much time framing the message around economic and social justice. We learned so much from CTU, who led with the slogan of "the schools our students deserve." So, when we went on strike, the bosses' attempt to say that "strikes hurt kids, and you will just harm the students" lasted only a couple of days because it was so obvious that our strike was about the needs of young people that have been ignored by the system for decades.

They couldn't get away with that argument anymore. It was laughable. Our city, which is majority Black and Brown, rallied to our side because we were fighting for demands that they supported. That's why and how we won. We were leading the whole city.

Our bosses were terrified by this and wanted to end that strike so damn bad that they gave us a bunch of stuff that they did not want to give us.

The strike proved two things to me. First, that we have power as workers because the bosses depend on our labor, and when we don't work, the system shuts down; our ability to do that is the only reason we were listened to. Second, we have to go on strike in a way that wins broader working-class support. If you do that, you can amplify your power and can be decisive in how successful you are.

This is not yet common sense in the union movement. In some cases, even in this strike wave, unions haven't raised social justice demands. That's a mistake because it weakens our ability to fight.

In Kentucky, for example, the teachers' union protested over bread-and-butter demands about school funding and wages but failed to oppose a racist, anti-gang bill that will increase youth incarceration that disproportionately affects Black students. Not taking up that bill meant Black teachers, students and the broader Black community did not see the union as fighting for them.

None of this is easy. Think about Arizona: One of the things that they really need to do to embody social justice unionism is to present an immigrant rights platform as teachers. Raising demands about immigrants in Arizona won't make them immediately popular because there is so much racism and anti-immigrant sentiment. So that will be a harder fight to carry in places like Arizona, but just as important, if not more important. If we don't make social justice unionism central and raise common good demands and demands for especially oppressed groups, we become isolated and are not looked upon as leading all workers and oppressed people.

Copyright © Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Teachers' Movements Gain Community Support by Centering Social Justice

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The teachers' strike wave began in West Virginia and spread across several red states, and then into blue states with work stoppages in Los Angeles, Denver and Oakland. Leading teacher militant Gillian Russom has been a high school history teacher in Los Angeles for 18 years.

# data[].attributes.body
Malala Yousafzai (Malālah Yūsafzay: Urdu: ملالہ یوسفزئی‎; Pashto: ملاله یوسفزۍ‎ [məˈlaːlə jusəf ˈzəj];[2] born 12 July 1997)[2][3] is a Pakistani activist for female education and the youngest Nobel Prize laureate.[4] She is known for human rights advocacy, especially the education of women and children in her native Swat Valley in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, northwest Pakistan, where the local Taliban had at times banned girls from attending school. Her advocacy has grown into an international movement, and according to former Pakistani Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, she has become "the most prominent citizen" of the country.[5]

Yousafzai was born to a Pashtun family in Mingora, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. Her family came to run a chain of schools in the region. Considering Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Benazir Bhutto as her role models, she was particularly inspired by her father's thoughts and humanitarian work.[6] In early 2009, when she was 11–12, she wrote a blog under a pseudonym for the BBC Urdu detailing her life during the Taliban occupation of Swat. The following summer, journalist Adam B. Ellick made a New York Times documentary[3] about her life as the Pakistani military intervened in the region. She rose in prominence, giving interviews in print and on television, and she was nominated for the International Children's Peace Prize by activist Desmond Tutu.

On 9 October 2012, while on a bus in the Swat District, after taking an exam, Yousafzai and two other girls were shot by a Talibangunman in an assassination attempt in retaliation for her activism; the gunman fled the scene. Yousafzai was hit in the head with a bullet and remained unconscious and in critical condition at the Rawalpindi Institute of Cardiology, but her condition later improved enough for her to be transferred to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, UK.[7] The attempt on her life sparked an international outpouring of support for Yousafzai. Deutsche Welle reported in January 2013 that Yousafzai may have become "the most famous teenager in the world".[8] Weeks after the attempted murder, a group of fifty leading Muslim clerics in Pakistan issued a fatwā against those who tried to kill her.[9] The Taliban was internationally denounced by governments, human rights organizations and feminist groups. Taliban officials responded to condemnation by further denouncing Yousafzai, indicating plans for a possible second assassination attempt which was justified as a religious obligation. Their statements resulted in further international condemnation.[citation needed]

Following her recovery, Yousafzai became a prominent activist for the right to education. Based in Birmingham, she founded the Malala Fund, a non-profit organisation,[10] and in 2013 co-authored I Am Malala, an international best seller.[11] In 2012, she was the recipient of Pakistan's first National Youth Peace Prize and the 2013 Sakharov Prize.[12]

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Malala Fund | Working for a world where all girls can learn and lead

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Founded by student and Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai, Malala Fund invests in girls’ education programmes to help girls go to school and reach their full potential.

# data[].attributes.body
Transformative leadership (as opposed to either transactional or transformational leadership) takes seriously Freire’s (1998) contention “that education is not the ultimate lever for social transformation, but without it transformation cannot occur” (p. 37). Transformative leadership begins with questions of justice and democracy; it critiques inequitable practices and offers the promise not only of greater individual achievement but of a better life lived in common with others. Transformative leadership, therefore, inextricably links education and educational leadership with the wider social context within which it is embedded. Thus, it is my contention that transformative leadership and leadership for inclusive and socially just learning environments are inextricably related. In the past few years, there have been several conceptual studies addressing transformative leadership (e.g., Quantz, Rogers, & Dantley, 1991; Shields, 2009; Weiner, 2003).

Shields, C. M. (2010). Transformative Leadership, In E. Baker, P. Peterson, & B. McGaw (eds.), International Encyclopedia of Education, 3rd Edition, Oxford, UK: Elsevier.

# data[].attributes.body
I have personally enjoyed the work that I am currently doing. I have been fortunate to participate in activism in multiple communities. (Pictured below- Me on the right side). For me it is ever evolving. Working in education has given me a vehicle to reach black and brown students in my day to day operation. I have designed program for my job that creates leaders that are more social justice minded and have more proximity to the community.  outside of that I have had the time to engage in Social Justice leadership outside of work. According to my definition I am actively working to make the world more equitable primarily by pushing the envelope and not choosing the complacent culture we live in.

# data[].attributes.headline
(Text taken from reflection with picture) 

# data[].attributes.subject
(Text taken from reflection with picture) 

# data[].attributes.body
We think so much alike Kristen McCollum I was also reflecting on this today after the verdict thanks for tagging me 😘..

We rode to Baton Rouge so excited. We had prepped our signs apart and packed all our snacks for a full day of activism. I guess a little part of us felt like if we joined the sheer energy in Baton Rouge then we would be closer to justice. Justice for unarmed black bodies. For people’s parents, sisters, brothers, children and all other affiliations of unarmed black bodies that were ended at the hands of someone else. Someone who today we were told were determined to be not guilty. Not guilty is something that I still cannot digest.

The day that started off so exciting with bands, chants and dancing from other protesters quickly turned. It’s interesting because my guilt was not on trial that day in Baton Rouge but yet we were met with dogs, tear gas and riot gear. We were threatened and pushed and prodded. I was a peaceful protestor but in that case that didn’t matter.

How could the police put on riot gear for children and elderly and peaceful protesters smudging with sage and dancing in flip flops. That night I went to bed unsettled in my thoughts.

Allot of days I go to sleep unsettled because of my perception of the way things are and how emotionally taxing it is to actively work to change things and be so close to the work. I am usually unsettled because just like that day and allot of days I am prematurely judged because of my identity.

It’s easy to focus on the negative, but now I’m pushing myself to hold on to what’s energizing. What is energizing is the shift in telling our stories and becoming clear on who we are and what we need to change our communities. It’s energizing to know people doing the work in classrooms, writing policies, organizing, and running for office. It’s something I can hold in me and feel proud of. So although we haven’t received perceived justice from the system we can hold on to the progression in our spaces. Until the system shifts from criminalizing us and our communities we can hold on to something lighter. Here’s to healing our communities and healing ourselves. ✨