Want to Help End the School-to-Prison Pipeline? Apply to Attend Advancement Project’s 2013 Action Camp in New Orleans or Denver!
Advancement Project, a progressive civil rights organization dedicated to using innovative tools and strategies to strengthen social movements and achieve high impact policy change, has been working on ending the school-to-prison pipeline. This pipeline is used by many school systems to shut off academic opportunities and funnel troubled youth into the juvenile and criminal justice systems. Suspensions, expulsions and school-based arrests are being used more and more to deal with disciplinary and behavioral problems, pushing students out of school and into jail.
Advancement Project invites those who are currently engaged in community-based efforts to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline to apply to their 2013 Action Camp 2.o. Groups including youth, people of color, LGBTQ-identifying persons, and people with disabilities are strongly encouraged to apply. As stated on their website:
ActionCamp 2.0 Goals
There are three goals for ActionCamp 2.0:
- Achieve a shared understanding of the School-to-Prison Pipeline.
- Arm participants with strategies and tools for dismantling the School-to-Prison Pipeline at the local, state, and national levels.
- Broaden and strengthen the community-led grassroots movement against the unfair discipline and criminalization of students.
What Will be Covered at ActionCamp 2.0?
ActionCamp 2.0 is designed as a deeper dive into the skills and strategies necessary to dismantle the School-to-Prison Pipeline with a new focus on action planning. The curriculum is designed to both share the best practices as defined by the ActionCamp Training Team and take advantage of the collective experience and knowledge of participants. We will offer a range of workshops including:
- Base building, Mobilization, & Direct Action – Bringing supporters to your campaign and organizing them to create change
- Strategic Communications –Using media and communications tools to advance your campaign
- Alternatives and Solutions to the School-to-Prison Pipeline – Examining the alternative models for school discipline
- Alliance and Coalition Building – Best Practices for building local, state, and national coalitions
- Data & Policy Analysis – How to interpret and use data on school discipline for your campaign and understand current and potential policies
- Talking to Policy Makers & Power Analysis – How to identify those with the power to help your cause and strategies for talking with policy makers about school discipline issues
- Popular Education: The School-to-Prison Pipeline in Historical Perspective –Tools for educating communities on the School-to-Prison Pipeline with a focus on connecting it with the various historic systems of oppression.
- Grassroots Fundraising –Strategies for securing the resources to keep your work viable
Make sure you check out the Action Camp Tumblr page for a little more information about the program. The New Orleans Action Camp will take place during the spring, from April 19 – 21, 2013. The Denver Action Camp will take place during the summer, from June 28 -30, 2013. Click here to apply!