Philando Castile, an African American, was shot to death by a police officer at a traffic stop in Falcon Heights, Minnesota. Castile had worked as a nutritional supervisor at an elementary school.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Bryan Stevenson. 2019. 288 pages.
This young adult adaptation provides readers a glimpse into the lives of the wrongfully imprisoned.
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Film. By Lynne Cherry and Young Voices for the Planet. 2019. 6 minutes.
This short documentary features the activism of Jaysa Mellers, a young adolescent girl who rallied her community to challenge local air polluters.
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Article. By the Rethinking Schools Editorial Board. Rethinking Schools, Summer 2019.
The Green New Deal will only be brought to life by people who grasp the enormity of the crisis that humanity faces and the radical changes necessary to address it. This requires that we teach a climate justice curriculum.
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Teaching Activity. By Flannery Denny. Rethinking Schools, Summer 2019.
A math educator brings data from a friend’s solar panels — and the story to win them in their community — into her 7th-grade classroom to build a bridge between math and climate justice education.
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Article. By Moé Yonamine. Rethinking Schools, Summer, 2019.
A high school ethnic studies teacher describes how students in the Pacific Island Club used poetry to refocus the narrative surrounding climate justice onto frontline communities.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Howard Zinn and Ray Suarez. Reprinted in paperback in 2022. 240 pages.
A collection of conversations between Howard Zinn and journalist Ray Suarez, conducted in 2007, about people's history.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Eve Ewing. 2018. 240 pages.
This book flips the script about how we talk about "failing schools," using historical research and current data to show that Chicago's public schools are storehouses of memory, an integral part of their neighborhoods, and at the heart of their communities.
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Picture book. By Kelly Starling Lyons. Illustrated by Keith Mallett. 2019. 32 pages.
The 120-year history of the song through generations of her family who have passed it on — starting with a young girl who learned it in 1900 in Jacksonville, Florida, from her principal (James Weldon Johnson) and his brother.
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Article. By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca. Rethinking Schools Blog, September 2019.
A call to action for teachers to join students, whether in the streets or in classrooms, by using their voices for climate justice.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Naomi Klein. 2019. 320 pages.
This collection of essays makes a case for a Green New Deal — explaining how bold climate action can be a blueprint for a just and thriving society.
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Teach students about U.S. imperialism and war in the Middle East, and offer a historical context, with people's history resources.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Carol Anderson. 2018. 368 pages.
This history of voter suppression highlights the aftermath and challenges to the 2013 Supreme Court ruling that gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
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Films. Directed by Jan Haaken and Samantha Praus. 58 minutes & 57 minutes.
Oil, Water, and Climate Resistance explores the work of attorneys, valve turners, and other water protectors in Minnesota. Climate Justice and the Thin Green Line examines climate resistance in the Pacific Northwest.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Carol Anderson with Tonya Bolden. 2019. 288 pages.
A young readers edition of Anderson's voter suppression analysis and history, One Person, No Vote.
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It’s times like these where we need to remember and learn from the last great world crisis of this magnitude — the Great Depression. Here are classroom lessons by high school teacher Adam Sanchez on the Great Depression and the New Deal.
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Book — Non-fiction. By Paul Butler. 2018. 320 pages.
A former federal prosecutor explains how the criminal justice system works against the people and how we can disrupt its abuse.
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Through the Make Reconstruction History Visible project, young people can identify and document history for new statues and monuments, ones that tell stories of liberation not enslavement.
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Teaching Activity. By Caneisha Mills.
This people’s tribunal begins with the premise that a heinous crime is being committed as tens of millions of people’s lives are in danger due to COVID-19. But who was responsible for this crime? Students weigh the evidence.
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Teaching Activity. By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca.
In this activity, students take on the role of activist-experts to improve upon a Congressional bill for reparations for Black people. They talk back to Congress’ flimsy legislation and design a more robust alternative.
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Teaching Activity. By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca.
A lesson about multiple cohorts of climate activists: Indigenous leaders in the Climate Justice Movement, valve turners using civil disobedience to stop the flow of oil, and the legal team that uses the “necessity defense” in the courts.
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Teaching Activity. By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca.
Students explore three documents produced in the wake of three major episodes of racial violence (1919, 1967, 2014) to understand the long trajectory of police violence in Black communities.
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Book — Fiction. By Brandy Colbert. 2020. 304 pages.
A novel for high school students that centers on voting rights — weaving in a myriad of voter suppression tactics and the importance of everyone playing a role in fighting for the right to vote.
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Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves' state budget proposal include three million dollars for a “Patriotic Education Fund,” which argues that "the United States is the greatest country in the history of the world."
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