Select FILTERS to search by keywords or presenter. Please note: there may be a delay as system processes.
Social Movements, Community Education, and the Fight for Racial Justice: Black Women and Social Transformation
Keywords
Black Lives Matter, social movements, anti-racist adult education, counterpublic, counternarrative, Black women
Session Abstract
Women, especially Black women, have often assumed the role of educative activist, generating collective agency and taking on the charge of organizing and educating as a means toward community survival, to fight for freedom, and to reclaim dignity and their inimitable human rights.
Session Description
This roundtable discussion will explore the role of community learning within social movements and the fight for social justice and human rights. To understand contemporary social movements and their role in community learning and advocacy for social change, it is essential to contextualize them within the long history of Black women’s activist labor and accomplishments. The #BLM movement is presented as a continuation of Black women’s longstanding inclusive activism, punctuated by the Abolition, Suffrage, Civil Rights, and modern feminist movements. Our discussion will highlight the efforts of specific Black women community leaders in creating counterpublics to make claims to power and work to change the status quo. Black women, through their inclusive, community-based activist endeavors, continue to carve out fugitive spaces and counterpublics where counternarratives are actively generated to fight for a more equitable and inclusive democracy that serves all. The aim of the discussion will be to conceptualize the role of adult education in social movements and transformative change.