Gina Womack

Succeeding WITH Race: Grassroots Parent Organizing for Systemic Change

This session will provide participants with lessons learned from, and an opportunity to examine, the role and impact of explicit racial justice framing in successfully organizing marginalized, grassroots parents of color for long-term systemic change. Participants will learn how explicit racial justice framing led to successful parent-led organizing victories in disrupting the school-to-prison pipeline. Leadership development and campaign stories from parent organizers in South Central Los Angeles (CA), West Dayton (OH), and New Orleans (LA), will then be followed by small group dialogue and practice with racial justice framing that illustrates new opportunities for parents to participate in advocacy and organizing. Participants will walk away with tactics and tools that can be applied to strengthening grassroots parent outreach, relationship building, political education, leadership development, and campaign development.

Speakers: Maisie Chin, Zakiya Sankara-Jabar, Gina Womack