Mattering cannot happen if identities are isolated and students cannot be their full selves.

“Intersectionality” is more than counting representation in a room or within a group; it is understanding community power, or its lack, and ensuring inclusivity in social justice movements. It is a way to build alliances in organizing for social change.

“multiple oppressions reinforce each other to create new categories of suffering.”

Intersectionality is not just about listing and naming your identities—it is a necessary analytic tool to explain the complexities and the realities of discrimination and of power or the lack thereof, and how they intersect with identities.

Our complicated identities cannot be discussed or examined in isolation

How do you matter to a country that would rather arm teachers with rocks than have courageous conversations with itself about gun control, eliminating guns, and White male rage?

How do you matter to a country that measures your knowledge against a “gap” it created?

Abolitionist teaching is the practice of working in solidarity with communities of color while drawing on the imagination, creativity, refusal, (re)membering, visionary thinking, healing, rebellious spirit, boldness, determination, and subversiveness of abolitionists to eradicate injustice in and outside of schools.