From Connections to Power to Liberation: Imperatives for Education Justice

June 17, 2:00 pm ET

In 2023, Communities for Just Schools Fund– a national funder and organizer collaborative– launched a listening journey with their 78+ partner network composed of local, state and national organizations of youth, parents, caregivers and educators advancing education justice in public schools. Their goal was to listen to frontline organizations about what they need to ensure that public education realizes its mandate to meet Black, Brown and Indigenous youth at their brilliance. Their guiding question was: “What kind of power, connections and collaboration do you need to build the power necessary to transform public education, and how can philanthropy support you?”

What resulted from their journey was a foundational report: From Connections, to Power, to Liberation, which spotlights the strategic investment and capacity strengthening imperatives of the education justice movement. Featuring the voices of movement partners, this webinar will highlight promising victories, as well as opportunities for philanthropy to meet the education justice frontline where it aspires to build power to catalyze people, governance, narrative and sustainability.

While others are welcome to attend, this event is intended for members and education grantmakers.

Program runs for 90 minutes. There is no cost to attend this Grantmakers for Education program. Registration closes 15 minutes prior to the program time. By registering for this program, you agree to our Learning Environment Commitment. Thank you for your patience; we review each registration in advance.

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About the Speakers

Manuela Arciniegas
Executive Director
Communities for Just Schools Fund

Manuela Arciniegas brings more than 20 years of experience in the racial justice nonprofit sector, ensuring young people and women from low-income communities grow as leaders and have the opportunity to hold their governments to account and step into their most powerful social, cultural, political and spiritual lives.

Manuela was previously the Program Officer for Ford Foundation’s Next Generation Leadership on the Civic Engagement and Government Team, where she stewarded over $60M+ in grants supporting organizations growing the civic participation and power of emerging leaders, including youth of color, LGBTQI+, Disability Justice, Immigration, Education Justice, Youth Justice, and other intersectional issues. Prior to her tenure at Ford, Manuela was director of the Andrus Family Fund, overseeing a grantmaking portfolio advancing policy, community organizing, direct service and capacity building for organizations serving youth advocating for change nationwide including Puerto Rico. She has additionally served as a grantmaker and community organizer across issues, including environmental justice, narrative change, arts and culture and education access.

Manuela is a funder organizer and the founder of the Visionary Freedom Fund, and has served as co-chair of Funders for Justice and on the advisory board of the Youth First State Advocacy Fund, the Youth Engagement Fund, the Funder’s Collaborative on Youth Organizing, the Youth Organizing and Cultural Change Fund, Filantropia PR, and Funders for Justice. She is a cultural arts organizer and is the founder and director of an all-women’s Afro-Puerto Rican and Dominican folk drumming troupe, Legacy Women and a performer and manager of Afro-Puerto Rican bomba ensemble Alma Moyo. A proud mother of 4, Manuela is pursuing a PhD at the CUNY Graduate Center in Ethnomusicology focused on the role of Afro-Cuban religious music and power.

She is a selected participant of the Soros Social Justice Fellowship and New York Humanities Fellowship and a recipient of prizes from the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture, the New York State Council of the Arts, along with being recognized with the Kennedy Center’s Next 50 cultural leadership award.

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Kesi Foster
Co-Executive Director
Partners for Dignity and Rights

Kesi is the Co-Executive Director at Partners for Dignity and Rights (P4DR) where he works in partnership with community organizations across the country building power towards a more just and equitable future for all. He was previously the Co-Director of the Youth Power Project at Make the Road New York, where he advanced campaigns for educational justice, immigration justice, and community safety. Before Make The Road, Kesi coordinated the Urban Youth Collaborative, the largest youth-led educational justice coalition in New York City, and worked at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform. Before joining the movements for educational justice, he held positions at the Right to Vote Campaign, and worked to open up career opportunities for formerly incarcerated individuals and public housing residents in New York City.

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Bethiel Girma Holton
Program Officer, Learning Differences Program
Oak Foundation

Bethiel Girma Holton is a Program Officer for the Learning Differences Program at Oak Foundation. In this role, she manages an international portfolio of grants supporting social emotional learning, youth leadership development, parent engagement and research and innovation with the goal of promoting the academic, social and emotional success of students with learning differences. Prior to joining Oak, Bethiel was the National Director of Student Engagement at City Year, an US education non-profit that partners with teachers and schools to help prepare students with the skills and mindsets to thrive. In this role she led the design, implementation and evaluation of research-based school culture, social emotional learning and after-school programs in over 250 schools in 26 cities. Bethiel started her career in direct service; supporting instruction in an elementary school, coordinating a student leadership development program and providing counseling for young adults with substance abuse challenges. Bethiel has a Master of Social Work from Boston College.

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Dmitri Holtzman
Founder
Earthseed Youth International

Dmitri Holtzman is a senior fellow at Race Forward, where he is incubating Earthseed International, a new organization building transnational solidarity between youth movements. He draws from over 16 years of experience in youth organizing in South Africa and the United States. Dmitri is a former leader of Equal Education (EE) and was the former founding Executive Director of the Equal Education Law Center (EELC) in South Africa (2008 – 2015). He was also the Director of Education Justice Campaigns, and Campaigns Co-Director at the Center for Popular Democracy (2017 – 2021).

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Alexandra Mane-Nuñez
Deputy Director of Development
Communities for Just Schools Fund

Alexandra Mane is a senior fundraising professional with nearly 20 years of fund development experience. Her career is a testament to her unwavering dedication to nonprofit organizations. Her passion for social justice, the arts, education, and nature has driven her work. She strongly advocates for the transformative power of education, particularly for first-generation students and marginalized communities, a belief that inspires her every day.

Alexandra’s leadership skills were honed in her most recent role as the Vice President of Development for the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. Here, she not only cultivated and stewarded fundraising relationships but also played a pivotal role in advocating for diversity, equity, and inclusion as a member of the senior leadership team and the task force. Her ability to lead and manage is a testament to her professional expertise.

As the National Director of Development for The Posse Foundation, Alexandra managed and co-led the organization’s national development team to reach its eight-figure revenue goals. Her strategic initiatives successfully expanded the program into new cities, launched new donor initiatives, and produced successful large-scale events, all of which significantly contributed to the organization’s growth and impact.

Alexandra was selected for a Coro Leadership New York Fellowship, where she gained valuable skills and knowledge in adaptive leadership. This fellowship has significantly contributed to her professional expertise. She holds a bachelor of arts from SUNY College at Old Westbury, and is pursuing certification as a Certified Fund Raising Executive (CFRE). She is a member of the New York Advisory Council of the Hispanic Scholarship Fund and a member of Education Leaders of Color (EdLOC).

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Vonne Martin
Deputy Chief of Campaigns
Center for Popular Democracy

Vonne Martin works alongside powerful organizers in the fights for immigrant rights, climate justice, education equity and the transformation of our criminal-legal system. Their journey as a movement leader began at the age of 14 in Long Beach, California, where they dedicated themselves to youth-led grassroots organizing. With over two decades of experience, Vonne has led transformative, power-building organizations to drive meaningful change in our communities. Vonne’s organizing is rooted in the principles of Black liberation – through a radical Black Queer feminist lens.

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Mercedes Martínez
President
Federación de Maestros de Puerto Rico

Mercedes Martínez, mother of 3, has been the President of the Teachers’ Federation from Puerto Rico since 2015. She is an ESL teacher, graduated from the University of Puerto Rico, who has been in the union as an active member since 2005. In 2008 she participated with thousands of teachers in a 10 day strike, requesting a fair contract for teachers, no charter school implementation, a salary increase, amongst others. As a direct result, wages were raised 14% for all Puerto Rican teachers and a NO charter stipulation was signed by the secretary of education. In 2014 a great opt out movement against standardized testing came to life in Puerto Rico, led by the Teachers’ Federation, where 20% of the students in a nationwide movement opted out. She also took part in the fight against school closures in her country from 2014 to 2018 alongside with community members and union activists. After Hurricane María occurred in 2017, a category 5 hurricane, disaster capitalism was the response of the Department of Education in Puerto Rico, where they intended to shut down about 300 schools. The Teachers’ Federation organized with parents and prevented that from happening. Currently, they are leading the fight of their lives against a privatization law that allows 10% of its public schools to be converted to charters.

Mercedes participated in 2016 in the Decolonization Deposition Hearings held in the United Nations. She appears in Naomi Klein’s book and documentary “A Battle for Paradise”. She has represented the union nationwide and internationally in events such as the Network for Public Education 2018, the Trinational Coalition Conference in Orizaba, Mexico, in forums held by the CUNY Professors Union, the Journey for Justice Alliance in Chicago and the Teacher’s Curriculum Fair in Chicago as well. She represented the union in the Communities for Just Schools Conference in New Orleans. She was a keynote speaker in the UTLA Delegate’s Assembly in 2018, prior to their strike. In February 2019 the union participated in the Pedagogical Encounter 2019 held in Cuba.

Mercedes is a social justice and education justice fighter who fights for a public, accessible, free and quality education.

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Scot Nakagawa
Director
22nd Century Initiative

Scot Nakagawa is Senior Partner of ChangeLab, an Asian American-led racial justice laboratory. Scot started his career in social justice at age 18, and has kept at it ever since. Along the way, Scot served as an organizer of the Coalition for Human Dignity, an Oregon-based organization conducting research and counter-organizing campaigns against vigilante white supremacist and religious right wing groups; Fight the Right Organizer of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force; Associate Director of the Western Prison Project (now the Partnership for Safety and Justice); Education Co-Coordinator of the Highlander Center; and Executive Director of Social Justice Fund Northwest, and of the McKenzie River Gathering Foundation.

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Leidy Robledo
Co-Director
Alliance for Educational Justice

Leidy Robledo has been organizing and supporting young people and youth organizers in the movement for educational justice for over 15 years. As the daughter of Mexican immigrants, she carries forward the legacy of the struggle for communal land, known as Ejidos in Mexico. Leidy recognizes that the right to land and dignity is fundamental to the freedom of a people. In middle school Leidy was already organizing walkouts to protest injustices within her school. In her journey from a youth leader to a youth organizer at Padres & Jóvenes Unidos (now Movimiento Poder), Leidy was rooted in the belief that Black and Brown communities deserve the right to self-determination and control over the systems and institutions within our communities, particularly our schools. Leidy has led numerous campaigns, from advocating for immigrant student rights to ending the school-to-prison pipeline and fighting for school budgets. She was also involved in launching Cops Outta Campus, one of the earliest efforts to remove police from schools and helped establish the National Campaign for Police Free Schools. Leidy continues to share her knowledge and experiences as a youth organizer by serving as the Co-Director of the Alliance for Educational Justice.

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Zakiyah Shaakir-Ansari
Co-Executive Director
Alliance for Quality Education

Zakiyah Shaakir-Ansari is the Co-Executive Director of the New York State Alliance for Quality Education (AQE), the leading statewide organization that has been fighting for educational justice in New York State. Zakiyah is the mother of 8 children and grandparent of 4. Zakiyah has dedicated 20+ years of her life to the fight for educational justice and ending the oppression of Black and brown people. Zakiyah sits on the board of the Institute for Educational Leadership and the Schott Foundation for Public Education. Zakiyah was named one of City and State magazine’s “25 Most Influential in Brooklyn”. Zakiyah volunteers her time with Justice League NYC and Resistance Revival Chorus. Zakiyah is a Senior Fellow for Racial Equity at the Atlantic Institute.

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Joseph Williams
Director
Students Deserve

Joseph Williams is the Director of Students Deserve, a youth-led organization working to end the criminalization of young people in Los Angeles schools. He is also a Core Team member with Black Lives Matter Los Angeles. Joseph overcame childhood homelessness and incarceration, and has been organizing for social, racial, economic and education justice for over a decade. He has led campaigns that have unionized hundreds of workers, ended abusive school “discipline” policies, divested over $100 million dollars from policing, invested hundreds of millions in Black youth, and more.