in this workshop we will:
✦ discuss the surveillance students encounter on the way to school— at the border crossing, on buses/trolleys they take to get there, in the neighborhoods under ICE watch that we pass along the way, to their campuses saturated with cameras and spyware
✦ design a video game that makes these systems of control visible and sharable; a political education tool built with youth and organizers fighting alongside them
✦ share and strengthen counter-surveillance and community defense strategies we already use to protect each other (neighborhood and school patrols, walking school buses, and court support trainings). plug youth into organized struggles resisting the hyper-militarization and occupation of our cities, the targeting and kidnapping of students and families, and the broader imperialist forces shaping these systems
Saturday, October 11th
2-4pm
Enclave Caracol - C. Primera 8250, Zona Nte., 22000, Tijuana, MX
A two-part workshop for elementary and middle school students to “grade back” their school by creating their own report card.
Through roleplay and storytelling, students will explore the everyday realities of school and ask critical questions about power: Who decides the rules? Who doesn’t? What happens when students don’t follow the rules?
We’ll connect these experiences to the concept of adult supremacy and how this system is a part of colonial and imperial rule, training young people to obey, not to question.
Affirming their right to struggle, students will practice writing a collective letter of demands to name what they want to see change at their school and what they know they deserve.
Albert Einstein Academies
April 24th and July 8th, 2025
2-4pm PST
In collaboration with Project Yano, Secret City SoCal, Palestinian Youth Movement San Diego, and Veterans for Peace.
A political education workshop and film screening connecting the violence of militarism and young people’s resistance to militarization in the San Diego Tijuana borderlands, past and present.
We will be screening two powerful short films: “Connie Stay Home,” which explores the anti-Vietnam War campaign in San Diego that mobilized thousands of people to vote against sending the USS Constellation aircraft carrier back to Vietnam, and “Yo Soy El Army,” which takes a critical look at military recruitment targeting Latino communities, particularly young people. Alongside the screenings, we will be countermapping the military presence in our schools and neighborhoods through a series of activities. We will also hear from youth organizers and elders from past and ongoing anti-imperialist and anti-war movements.
Centro Cultural de la Raza
January 25th, 2025
6-8:30pm PST
An ongoing study/working group on a people’s history of education and people’s schooling.
Using readings and archival material, we will be exploring the relationship between education and settler colonialism, prisons, war/militarization, labor, and imperalism to develop a material analysis of historical and present day conditions of the US education system and colonial/neo-colonial education internationally. How have people used militancy and popular education to resist subjugation and organize themselves toward self-determination?
As a working group, will also explore how we can translate our study to political education programming within our communities, particularly in the context of the US-Mexico borderlands in which Homegrown’s work has been rooted.
November 2024-February 2025
Tuesdays, 6-7:30 pm PST
An intergenerational teach-in with Radical History Club and Homegrown youth educator, Sophie. They will guide us through the histories of violence of the US education system and how schools operate as a means of assimilation to the status quo and as a factory worker training ground. Political education workbooks will be available.
Libélula Books & Co
February 12th, 2022
4-6:30pm PST