Lift Us Up features voices from the frontlines of a new movement for educational justice that is growing across the United States. Organizers and Activists recount their journeys to movement building, lift up victories and successes, and offer practical organizing strategies and community-based alternatives to confront systemic racism in our educational system.
Published by Beacon Press in August 2018, Lift Us Up, Don’t Push Us Out! will outrage, inform, and mobilize parents, educators, and concerned citizens about what is wrong in American schools today and how activists are fighting for and achieving change.
“Lift Us Up, Don’t Push Us Out! is a bold and exciting book that presents the stories we never hear — powerful stories of successful grassroots organizing in schools and communities across the nation led by parents, students, educators, and allies. The lessons we can learn from these inspiring activists and campaigns need to be spread far and wide. They show how social justice unionism plays a vital role in the fight for equity and justice for all our children and in the growing movement against privatization of public education.”
— Karen Lewis, Chicago Teachers Union President
“Each one of the essays in “Lift Us Up” is a tour de force. You are captivated by the passion, the fury, the courage, the honesty, and the determination that is expressed so brilliantly by the writers, each who have found a way, by working arm-in-arm with others, to fight for educational justice for all children. I plan to assign this book to all of my students to bring the powerful and authentic voices of these parent and community movement leaders into my classroom.”
— Karen Mapp, Senior Lecturer on Education at the Harvard School of Education
Contributors
About the Authors
MARK WARREN
Mark R. Warren is professor of public policy and public affairs at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Mark studies and works with community and youth organizing groups seeking to promote equity and justice in education, community development and American democratic life. Mark is the author of Dry Bones Rattling: Community Building to Revitalize American Democracy, Fire in the Heart: How White Activists Embrace Racial Justice, and co-author of A Match on Dry Grass: Community Organizing as a Catalyst for School Reform. He recently published Transforming Public Education: The Need for an Educational Justice Movement. Mark is co-chair of the Urban Research-Based Action Network (URBAN), a national network of scholars and community activists designed to promote collaborations that produce research that advances racial equity and social justice. He is a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellow and has been a W.E.B. Du Bois Fellow at Harvard University.
David Goodman is a journalist for national publications, the bestselling author of ten books, and host of the weekly public affairs radio show The Vermont Conversation. His varied passions have led him to write about a diverse mix of topics, from world politics, the outdoors, and travel, to the impact of a natural disaster on his hometown in Vermont. He is a longtime contributing writer for Mother Jones. David’s Mother Jones articles were part of a package that won the prestigious National Magazine Award for General Excellence. His work has also appeared in the New York Times, Outside, Boston Globe, Travel & Leisure, Ski, the Los Angeles Times, and other publications.
Acknowledgements
Lift Us Up Don’t Push Us Out! was produced with generous support from the Ford Foundation, the Nellie Mae Education Foundation, the NEA Foundation, and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.