Chapter 14: Community Activism and Advocacy

Grassroots activism or advocacy in education can be a powerful way to both shape public opinion and put pressure on educational institutions to ensure that their enactment of policy is aligned with public values. This type of organizing is typically defined as members of a community within a particular field—be it residential, institutional, or virtual—taking sustained action around collectively-defined issues of concern (Christens & Speer, 2015). The focus of these collective efforts is frequently on change, and its strategies may take a variety of forms, including protest or civil disobedience, lobbying, or mobilized engagement in public forums such as school board meetings, traditional or social media, or community hearings (Alinsky, 1970; Ishimaru et al., 2018; Mapp & Warren, 2011; Welton & Freelon, 2018).