As a collectively run organization, CIF has a unique structure that is based on the social justice and popular education principles that guide our work. In our presentation, we share the many lessons we have learned through our practice of envisioning new ways of building organization, that promote shared leadership, mutuality, respect, love, and dignity.

CIF was founded in the wake of the 1996 welfare and immigration reform laws, which had dire consequences on the lives of poor and working class people of color and immigrants, particularly women. Recognizing the interconnectedness of the social, political, legal, and psychological realities facing our communities, CIF addresses these multiple dimensions in our struggle for social justice and community self-determination. Building from an approach that recognizes the intersectionalities of oppressions, we locate our most powerful resistance as one that can emerge from the strength of who we are as women, caregivers, economic providers, and survivors that hold many of our communities together. Presentations share CIF’s analysis and holistic approach to organizing that are rooted in the lived experiences of poor and working class immigrant women of color.

CIF was founded in the wake of the 1996 welfare and immigration reform laws, which had dire consequences on the lives of poor and working class people of color and immigrants, particularly women. Recognizing the interconnectedness of the social, political, legal, and psychological realities facing our communities, CIF addresses these multiple dimensions in our struggle for social justice and community self-determination. Building from an approach that recognizes the intersectionalities of oppressions, we locate our most powerful resistance as one that can emerge from the strength of who we are as women, caregivers, economic providers, and survivors that hold many of our communities together. Presentations share CIF’s analysis and holistic approach to organizing that are rooted in the lived experiences of poor and working class immigrant women of color.

We are working to build meaningful partnerships among schools, families and community institutions to strengthen our schools and our children’s education. We want and deserve schools that reflect, respect, and serve our communities through, for example, support for Dual language and bilingual programs and an education that focuses on creativity and critical thinking, rather than excessive and high stakes tests. We want and deserve to have a real voice in our children’s education and the decisions that affect them. We seek an alternative to our current system of mayoral control of NYC public schools, where our voices have been silenced and marginalized. Presentations include a facilitated discussion about our work in public education, and specifically about the ways schools, families, and community institutions can support one another and work together for educational justice.

Members of the CIF family are available to do one or a series of presentations on a variety of issues that we’ve been addressing in our work over the years.

Fighting for Justice in Education: Challenging Segregation and “Taking Back” OUR Community Schools

Over the past five years, CIF has worked to break the normalization of segregation and inequality in public education and to “take back” our community’s public elementary schools. Engaging in a creative and wide range of practices including participatory action-research and street theater, we documented our parents’ stories in a self-published and widely distributed report, Segregated and Unequal: The Public Elementary Schools of District 3 in New York City. As a result of our organizing, the New York City Department of Education was forced to recognize the current system as inequitable. Together, we are building a community where families have feel more empowered to reclaim our human right to a quality and equitable education as we work to ensure our civil and human rights to the last remaining universal public good in the United States—public education. Presentations include a comprehensive and engaging narration of our story—the conditions that gave rise to our organizing, the sense of community power we built, the challenges we faced when engaging with the “powers that be”, the significant process that was critical to our organizing, and our next steps in building a movement for justice in education.