On November 16th at 4pm PST, join us on alongside Education for Liberation Network and Critical Resistance in celebration of the release of Lessons in Liberation: An Abolitionist Toolkit for Educators (forthcoming September 2021). This is the fifth of a six-part webinar series dedicated to supporting abolition across educational contexts

Register here!

All webinars will be streamed via YouTube and Facebook. ASL Interpretation will be provided by Certified Deaf Interpreters and Deaf Interpreters. We will also provide CART Captions. Please contact Sheeva (she or they) at abolitionisteducation@gmail.com for any additional accessibility needs or accessibility questions.

Bridging Abolition to School Leadership will feature the following speakers and contributors:

– Jen Johnson
– Emily Bautista
– Sagnicthe Salazar
– Talia “TL” Lewis

Emily Bautista bridges her experiences as a student organizer, social studies teacher, school leader, scholar-activist, and founding member of the People’s Education Movement Los Angeles in her consulting work with educators, organizations, and communities to anticolonial, ethnic studies, critical pedagogy, community organizing, healing justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.

Talila “TL” Lewis is an abolitionist organizer and community lawyer who works to ground social justice movements in disability justice by helping people recognize the links between ableism and all forms of systemic/structural inequity and violence. Lewis’ work primarily focuses on abolishing the medical-carceral industrial complex; correcting wrongful convictions of deaf/disabled people; and supporting multiply-marginalized disabled people affected all forms of incarceration. Lewis, who taught at Northeastern University School of Law and Rochester Institute of Technology, co-founded the cross-disability abolitionist nonprofit HEARD and co-created #DisabilitySolidarity.

Jen Johnson taught high school history in Chicago Public Schools for ten years before joining the staff of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) in 2013. She has a BS from Northwestern University in Secondary Education and an MA from Northeastern Illinois University in Community and Teacher Leaders. She is currently the CTU Chief of Staff and believes that teacher union organizing for public schools and the teaching profession is part of a larger struggle for social, economic, and racial justice, which connects educators with students, parents, and communities.

Sagnicthe Salazar is a first generation migrant, a grassroot organizer and educator who has dedicated the last 18 years of his life to organizing for cultural, educational, work and human rights of Raza communities and other Third World Communities. He is the Dean of Restorative Discipline at Elmhurst United Middle School in Oakland and trains educators and other communities in transformative justice through Rigorous Love where he serves as co-founder.

“Abolition is a theory whose time has come in classrooms and schools, but those of us practicing in these spaces need a more complete picture of what that looks like on the day to day. Lessons in Liberation is just that. Each page is an invitation to dream and create a new world, but also how to build that world and what tools we may need to do so.”
—Teachers 4 Social Justice

Lessons in Liberation: An Abolitionist Toolkit for Educators offers entry points to build critical and intentional bridges between educational practice and the growing movement for abolition. Designed for educators, parents, and young people, this toolkit shines a light on innovative abolitionist projects, particularly in Pre-K–12 learning contexts.

The Education for Liberation Network & Critical Resistance Editorial Collective are a team of writers, educators, and thinkers from various backgrounds and social movements working toward abolition in our time.