"Lift Us Up, Don't Push Us Out!": Voices from the Front Lines of the Educational Justice Movement

As a graduate student, Warren (public policy & public affairs, Univ. of Massachusetts, Boston) gained firsthand experience with a number of community coalitions seeking a more racially and economically equitable public school system. He found that these groups were too often siloed and unaware of potential allies working on related issues. To help build a national movement out of these disparate organizations and to raise awareness of their achievements, he's teamed with journalist Goodman (The Vermont Conversation) to present a work that eschews the usual scholarly format, as the authors step aside and allow activists—many of them parents, youth, and teachers, mostly from communities of color—to speak for themselves. Warren points out that all too frequently, social change movements falter because they lack the involvement of those most impacted by the policy changes. Chapters emphasize the importance of organizing across social movements and demonstrate how educational justice is intimately related to racism, economic inequality, and other issues.