Model and Strategy
Californians for Justice (CFJ) is a statewide grassroots organization working for racial justice by building the power of youth, communities of color, immigrants, low-income families, and LGBTQ communities. Since 1996, we have centered Black and Latinx youth and other historically vulnerable communities to ensure their perspectives drive our work and are embedded in our organizational DNA. Led by students, we organize to advance educational justice and improve our social, economic, and political conditions.
Our proposed visionary Rebuild and Reimagine campaign project and ongoing work in the movement seek to build youth power to rebuild and reimagine racially just schools. We achieve our goals through three core strategies:1) Organizing and Advocacy: Leading campaigns to improve school systems and culture for low income students of color; 2) Alliance Building: Growing the leadership of alliances to win campaigns and hold decision-makers accountable, and 3) Leadership Development: Deepening the analysis and skills of youth leaders so they can advocate for student-centered reforms and hold decision-makers accountable.
Impact
For the Rebuild and Reimagine campaign project, we seek multi-level impact, most significantly securing large investments from our districts in support of the six aforementioned solutions to advance racial justice in our schools. Winning this campaign would ensure that education leaders would have the funds to rebuild, restore, and reimagine more racially just schools, starting with the return to school during the post-pandemic recovery. We will be able to invest strategically in both the near and long-term health and wellness of youth. As a result of this project too, CFJ will be able to deepen our relationships with decision makers at the district and school site levels, and establish moral authority in the larger narrative and media in order to successfully shift focus on student voice.
Since 2015, CFJ’s core model has been designed to disrupt systemic racism and transform the entrenched power dynamics within public education by centering the voices of marginalized youth in decision-making spaces. To achieve this transformation, we prioritize four levers of change: 1) Policies: state legislation & funding, district policy and budgets; 2) Practices: daily habits, interactions, and procedures; 3) Perceptions: implicit and explicit stories we hold about each other and the world; and 4) Power: ability to take collective action, to make bigger shifts, and to govern for the whole. It is this same model that will ensure the long-term impacts of this project within the CA education system. Ultimately, success will be measured by whether our work is improving the lived experiences of youth of color—particularly in creating a liberating educational experience where youth are able to be in their full humanity, be joyful, and are supported to reach their full potential.
Leadership
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Taryn Ishida
Executive Director
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Justine Santos
Oakland Organizing DIrector