How and Why we Started the Drew Freedom School Initiative

The 2016 Presidential Election proved a turning backwards of our political and civic discourse. Even with evidence pointing to the ongoing detrimental impacts of inequality in the country, and the persistence of racial, gendered, and sexual discriminations, the election of a presidential candidate who brazenly advocates such hateful rhetoric felt particularly shocking. It seems as if the country was willing to let go of the problematic neo-liberalism for a more fascist vision of our nation.

“[In] order to see where we are going, we must not only remember where we have been, but we must understand where we have been.”

To help ourselves move forward, we needed to understand how we have resisted state-sponsored oppression and community violence in the past. The Freedom School emerged as a metaphor and model to shape our collective efforts for justice.

Our vision is to continue this mission of the Freedom Schools to create active political actors. We seek to provide our community with the information and resources needed to act affirmatively on our behalf and the behalf of other marginalized groups in our nation. The Drew Freedom School Initiative is a coalition of students, faculty, staff, and community members working to expand our understanding of social justice and equip ourselves and others with practical training in nonviolent resistance and community organizing.

We mobilize our community through:

Mission of Drew Freedom School Initiative:

The goal of Drew Freedom School Initiative is to build an inclusive, justice seeking and loving community. We strive to draw our circles of community large enough to encompass ALL people, regardless of their citizenship status, race or ethnicity, gender or sexual identity, faith tradition, or socio-economic status. We stand together as equals committed to protecting the rights and human dignity of our most marginalized brothers and sisters because we understand that we are only as free as the most vulnerable members of our community.

Core Values of FS:

Methods of Drew University’s Freedom School Initiative:

In all that we do, we work to educate people about injustices, help people see and feel connected to others in our community, and invite all to translate our values into action by acting together in the service of peace and justice. We advance our core values and methods through a number of different activities, including:

We host a series of monthly workshops designed to educate people on pressing social issues and equip them to participate in creating a more inclusive and just community. The workshops combine community education with community organizing. Each workshop is led by an academic sponsor and a professional community organizer. Each workshop provides introduction to a social justice topic and training in nonviolent resistance. The topics of the workshop vary based on community interests. The workshop begins with a shared meal and opportunity for us to meet and connect with our community. The workshops end with a handout and discussion of “10 Things I Can Do”. These are concrete steps that each of us that take to make a positive impact of the justice issue covered in the workshop.

In addition to the monthly workshops, we host monthly actions designed to engage our community more fully in the democratic process. These actions provide participants with a means of translating their ideas and values into practice. Here we stand together to be a collective voice for justice and inclusion at every level of political life. The monthly social actions give community members valuable experience in citizen participation at the local, state, and national level.

The Freedom School also offers course in community organizing and citizen participation that is open to undergraduate students, graduate students, and members from the local community. The course explores the role power plays in social change. We discuss how power can be a tool of oppression when wielded in ways that create and maintain unequal social arrangements. We also highlight how power can also be a tool for liberation when communities coordinate their efforts to transform their lived realities demanding and creating pathways towards just social arrangements. In this course, we analyze, engage, and apply organizing strategies that promote justice-seeking communal change. Through sustain reflection on the strategies by which agents mobilize their power to transform their communities, independent reflection, planning and enacting social action events, we use best practices to mobilize, create, and sustain power for community change.

Through this journal, we hope to highlight and expand the conversation on creating peace and justice in our schools, communities, and nation. We invite reflections from participants in our Freedom School workshops, social actions, and courses. We encourage submissions that extend the discussion of the topic or methods of organizing in innovative ways.

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