https://padlet.com/ate111/gve2ig5hvb5ak1fe Made with serendipity en-us 2022-04-21 22:04:40 UTC 2022-05-02 20:18:22 UTC hello@padlet.com ate111 https://padlet.com/ate111/gve2ig5hvb5ak1fe/wish/2152729336 2022-04-21 22:08:48 UTC https://padlet.com/ate111/gve2ig5hvb5ak1fe/wish/2152729336 https://padlet.com/ate111/gve2ig5hvb5ak1fe/wish/2157155330
Something I have been thinking a lot about and that I briefly brought up in class is the role of art in liberation. Art seems to take on two forms. There is art for mobilization, dissemination and consciousness-raising as we see with Lords and Panthers newspapers as well as their flyers and posters. The Zines also exemplified sex education through engaging artwork and visuals. There is also art as personal development, growth and community building. The East jazz club, which was frequented by incredibly famous Black artists such as Sun Ra, and provided a space for the community to come together through music. As Alaina had mentioned in class, the Harlem Renaissance saw a boom of Black art, which makes me think about the intersection between art/cultural movements and social justice movements since they seem to nurture each other. I wonder, what is art’s role in liberation and mobilization? 

]]> 2022-04-25 18:41:45 UTC https://padlet.com/ate111/gve2ig5hvb5ak1fe/wish/2157155330 https://padlet.com/ate111/gve2ig5hvb5ak1fe/wish/2157164097 On another hand, I’ve also been thinking about the role of unions. More so, if unions are not only meant to protect workers, but to actively participate in the fight for social justice and liberation. The divide between the Teachers Guild and the Teachers Union made me wonder if unions are meant to assume a conservative role in order to be sustainable. This also reminded me of the supplemental reading on the International Garment Workers Union and how workers, in order to maintain the union, had to be very discrete on how they tackled racism and injustices within the union if at all. Other organizations/districts separated from the union and were formed in order to better respond to the needs of workers of color and to further their civil rights agenda, which included public education and police brutality. We often view unions as an example of social justice. Yet, unions have hindered further advancement for marginalized peoples. Can radical/more progressive unions be possible and sustainable? ]]> 2022-04-25 18:47:13 UTC https://padlet.com/ate111/gve2ig5hvb5ak1fe/wish/2157164097 https://padlet.com/ate111/gve2ig5hvb5ak1fe/wish/2160519949 HI Gaby, Thanks for bringing up unions. This was a topic where I felt the class probably had so much more to say. I think for me, I tend to begin with the idea that unions are responsible to their members, and what they advocate for should at least initially be reckoned with in that context. To me, private sector unions are not inherently liberal or conservative. In theory they are fighting for workers’ rights, and efforts like the Staten Island Amazon campaign seemed to be able to do that while also holding together a diverse coalition of working people from all different backgrounds. But each union is making choices within a sexist/racist/Christian society that ends up both influencing their external demands and their internal power structure. I am not sure what that suggests exactly… maybe that without being deliberately against oppression, they can easily replicate it, the same as every other institution in this country?

]]> 2022-04-27 14:45:52 UTC https://padlet.com/ate111/gve2ig5hvb5ak1fe/wish/2160519949 https://padlet.com/ate111/gve2ig5hvb5ak1fe/wish/2161005211 Consciousness-raising continues to feel like a critical element of activism of all forms, and really is an effort to provide a different form of education that institutional education will rarely provide. We've seen/read about the various forms of consciousness-raising from the Black Panthers, the Young Lords, Ella Baker, Evelina Antonetty, and even from queer youth in the YELL Zine, and spaces like the Basement Workshop for Asian New Yorkers. From our early reading of the Combahee River Collective statement to now, it seems clear that consciousness-raising creates a path to self-determination, and builds a base of supporters that ultimately contribute to movements for change. I wonder where we see efforts of consciousness-raising today? I'm also thinking specifically of how many decades it has taken for Black activists broadly to build a support base for much of their work and how much literature and documentation there is. While as we've seen with Asian Activism, the literature is very limited maybe because of the newer and slowly growing collective consciousness. (Immigration patterns feel central to this as well, but that is a whole other thread.)]]> 2022-04-27 19:38:05 UTC https://padlet.com/ate111/gve2ig5hvb5ak1fe/wish/2161005211 jv27421 https://padlet.com/ate111/gve2ig5hvb5ak1fe/wish/2167160916 Perhaps because I've lived it, I'm curious about the lineage between education activism then vs. ed activism now. How do we understand the work of AQE, CEJ, and so many other orgs in the context of all that we've studied post Ocean Hill/Brownsville, and potentially, how much we've lost by not having a DOE admin (Bloomberg/Klein) that believed in archiving things ...

How does NYCoRE fit? NYU Metro Center? CACF? What stories will be told? These are open curiosities and perhaps undefined.]]> 2022-05-02 17:49:22 UTC https://padlet.com/ate111/gve2ig5hvb5ak1fe/wish/2167160916