Political education is another core function of our programming at the CRJ. Through collective study, we understand that our struggles are linked and our liberation is, too.
There are a few distinct ways that political education occurs in this space, whether through center programming and events, other connected projects, or community struggles.
Political Education at the CRJ
CRJ Summer Institute
The CRJ Summer Institute is an event centered on themed political education. Often starting out with a local focus, the Summer Institute aims to define connecting threads between the local and the global. The Summer Institute is held every other year.
*Module under construction
How can critical study disrupt the violent systems and processes we live under?
Freedom Schools
We formed these in response to the failure of the prior PVUSD school board to heed the community’s call to support ethnic studies. From a foundation of community knowledge, we learn from each other and engage in collective study in order to organize for justice and enact social transformation.
In the tradition of freedom and liberation schools, the Watsonville Ethnic Studies Freedom School fosters a space of political education in the service of local communities most impacted by structural violence.
How is our local history tied to movements against racial injustice, dispossession, labor exploitation, deportation, neoliberal trade policy, imperialist wars, regional militarization, police violence and repression, displacement and gentrification, environmental racism, and educational inequity?
Santa Cruz in Color
Santa Cruz in Color is a digital people’s archive and multimedia community storytelling repository that documents local grassroots social movements for justice throughout the Central Coast, with a focus on the greater Santa Cruz area.
Below: A 32-page news-magazine that showcases their coming collections & digital archive exhibits. The accompanying essays, written by CRJ interns, expose a darker side of the sunny Central Coast. Read it here.
Connected Struggles & Projects
The CRJ lends support to and helps to anchors these organizations, campaigns, and collectives.
The Ethnic Studies Council at the University of California
Representing nearly 700 ethnic studies scholars and practitioners across the UC system, the Ethnic Studies Council first formed in response to highly coordinated, politicized attacks against our field and its world-transforming potential. In keeping with the grassroots movement tradition of the struggle that birthed the field, the council includes not just faculty, but also, students and staff in its organizing core. As with the CSU and California Community College councils, the Ethnic Studies Council at the University of California furnishes an urgent space of convergence that enables us to leverage our collective strength in advocating for our field, carrying out its critical work, and enacting its legacy of grassroots political education and collective action in the present. During a time of unabating state violence, imperialist aggression, and naked fascism, the Council has led campaigns for K-12 ethnic studies, promoted a UC systemwide ethnic studies admissions requirement, and taken robust part in the defense of students, staff, faculty, and community members targeted for protesting the ongoing Nakba of the Palestinian people. Our organizing includes systemwide initiatives that have exposed UC complicity in genocide. The Council issues a weekly newsletter with updates on relevant news, events, and campaigns. We produce our own podcast, The Lower Frequencies, and each quarter we convene ethnic studies practitioners from across the ten UC campuses and beyond in general assemblies organized around pressing issues related to our field.
Website: https://ethnicstudiescouncilatuc.org/
Podcast: Listen to The Lower Frequencies here
Newsletter: Read and subscribe here
