I am beyond excited to join my dad, Gerald Lenoir, in an online conversation about the struggle for racial justice in the schools during the COVID era on Wednesday, February 10th, at 7pm EST/4pm PST. From racial justice in schools during COVID, to the fight led by teachers’ unions to ensure safe school re-openings, and the role unions can play in broader social justice struggles, will will have a lot to talk about.
We will be joining the Frontline Dispatches program, an Organizing Upgrade show intended to amplify the voices of organizers and activists who are engaged in important, lesson filled, on-the-ground organizing, protest, or activism. Whatever the work, these talks engage with those on the frontlines of the most current and urgent work facing our movements.
My dad is a life long organizer for racial and social justice and recently came out with fire book of protest poetry. As a young college student, Gerald was part of the student strike at University of Wisconsin–Madison that shut the campus down to demand Black Studies. I’m excited to see what questions he has in store for me about how we build the Black Lives Matter at School movement and organize for racial justice in these times.
Join us for this conversation at this link–then join the BLM at School movement!
Gerald Lenoir is the Strategy Analyst at the Othering & Belonging Institute. He works with community, advocacy, labor and faith partners to organize the research, development and promotion of a strategic narrative that fosters structural inclusion and addresses marginalization and structural racialization. Gerald was the founding Executive Director of the Black Alliance for Just Immigration, the Executive Director of the San Francisco Black Coalition on AIDS and a co-founder of the HIV Education and Prevention Project of Alameda County. He serves on the board of the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights and Priority Africa Network.
Jesse Hagopain is a high school teacher in Seattle and a co-founder of Black Lives Matter at School, a national initiative. He is the co-editor of four books: Black Lives Matter at School: An Uprising for Educational Justice, Teaching for Black Lives, Teacher Unions and Social Justice: Organizing for the Schools and Communities Our Students Deserve, and More Than a Score: The New Uprising Against High Stakes Testing.