YOU'RE INVITED!
Teachers for Social Justice Curriculum Fair 2023
Our Fight Is One:
Dismantling U.S. Imperialism, Teaching for Solidarity
November 11, 2023 (10:00 am - 4:00 pm)
Westinghouse High School, 3223 W Franklin Blvd, Chicago
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Join us for the 2023 Teachers for Social Justice Curriculum Fair in Chicago
Join us for the 2023 Teachers for Social Justice Curriculum Fair in Chicago
The TSJ curriculum fair brings teachers together for keynote speakers, workshops, curriculum sharing, and resources. It is an energizing experience that connects teachers with radical political education and each other - reaffirming a commitment to social justice teaching. The Curriculum Fair attracts roughly 1000 attendees, most of whom are practicing K-12 teachers.
This year's theme is Our Fight Is One: Dismantling U.S. Imperialism, Teaching for Solidarity.
This year's theme is Our Fight Is One: Dismantling U.S. Imperialism, Teaching for Solidarity.
We reject divide-and-conquer tactics that pit Chicago residents, particularly Black and Brown working-class folks, against migrants forced to come here. Our fight is one! The same racist, profit-driven, violent system responsible for the systematic divestment, racist policing, closed schools and mental health clinics, and lack of quality affordable housing, good jobs, and resources in Black and Brown communities is also behind the violence of economic sanctions, military invasions, and political destabilization that have driven migrants (particularly from Venezuela, Honduras, Nicaragua, Cuba, Haiti, Guatemala) to leave home and risk incredibly dangerous journeys to the US. We need to shift blame from migrants to the US government and capitalism, understand more deeply the roots of our common problems, build solidarity, and fight together for what we need. Racial capitalism and its global arm, US imperialism, inflict violence, poverty, and displacement around the world and right here in Chicago. As educators, how can we reframe the racial and political tensions that arise? How can we help our students and school communities understand the roots of our common struggles? How do we see each other in our full humanity and come together to demand the resources and power we all need?
Who Is TSJ?
Teachers for Social Justice is an all-volunteer grassroots organization of educators in the Chicago area committed to racial, economic, gender, and social justice in and out of the classroom.
TSJ formed 25 years ago in the midst of neoliberal education reform in Chicago, has worked in coalition with local and national organizations for education justice and social justice, ex: organizing against the militarization of schools, school closings, privatization, police in schools, racism, and more. We were honored to play an active role in the 2015 Dyett Hunger Strike and the city organizing against school closings and to support the CTU’s social movement unionism.
TSJ brings teachers together for political education, curriculum sharing, radical inspiration, and collective action - notably through curriculum fairs, teach-ins, inquiry-to-action groups, and active participation in the education justice movement opposing school privatization. Our keynote speakers at curriculum fairs over the years have been grassroots leaders (teachers, parents, youth) who have helped us better understand how to work for education and social justice in Chicago, nationally and globally.
Who is our Keynote Speaker? Dr. Toussaint Losier
Dr. Toussaint Losier is an Associate Professor in the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies and is the Director of the Social Thought and Political Economy Program at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Dr. Losier holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of Chicago, with his research focusing on grassroots responses to the postwar emergence of mass incarceration in Chicago. He is co-author of Rethinking the American Prison Movement (Routledge, 2017) with Dan Berger and is preparing a book manuscript tentatively titled, War for the City: Black Liberation, Street Organizations, and the Consolidation of the Carceral State.
In addition to his scholarly work, Dr. Losier has been an organizer with the Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign, coordinating the Campaign’s direct outreach to homes in foreclosure as well as the legal defense of families at risk of eviction. He also has sat on the board of Southside Together Organizing for Power (STOP) and worked closely with the community organizing efforts of its youth group in response to the mass incarceration of African American juveniles and the lack of adult trauma care on Chicago’s Southside. He also taught for six years at the St. Leonard’s Adult High School which provides a fully accredited secondary education for formerly incarcerated women and men in Chicago.
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