This essay reflects on the promise and challenges of community-engaged, critical participatory action research (CPAR) hinged to social policy in times of racialized state violence and massive community resistance. With cautious optimism, we argue for the potential of CPAR to facilitate more just social policy, by enhancing research validity,…

The lead author documents the promises and pitfalls of doing critical participatory action research (PAR) as a graduate student within traditional institutions. This autoethnographic essay captures the vulnerabilities of the first author as she reflects on the human work that draws her to PAR, details the tensions that surfaced in the daily…

This paper examines a youth oral history project conducted by/with/for immigrant youth of color and educators. Designed as a longitudinal five year project of critical participatory action research and youth oral histories, we sought initially to document generational experiences of schooling inequity, aggressive policing, housing precarity and…

In this intensely powerful and personal new text, Michelle Fine widens the methodological imagination for students, educators, scholars, and researchers interested in crafting research with communities. Fine shares her struggles over the course of 30 years to translate research into policy and practice that can enhance the human condition and…

In this article the authors describe pedagogy which rests on commitments to solidarity, activism, and intersectional understandings of personhood and social (in)justices. The authors seek to create accessible classrooms where our many selves and critical consciousness can be in (dis)comforting conversation with one another. Then, they hope to…

Information about the MIT Media Lab PLATFORM, a Summit of Innovators, is presented. This Summit was comprised of engineers, computer scientists, coders, activists, designers, and technology wizards, a gathering of people of color who have been remarkably successful, provocative, and creative against the odds. The event enabled the author and other…

Research addressing the lives and friendships of older Black lesbians is virtually nonexistent. Using narrative analysis, we chronicle the lives of two older Black lesbians (73 and 85 years of age) through the lens of positive marginality. The concept of positive marginality asserts that living both inside and outside of the mainstream produces…

Each morning, 10 yellow school buses end their circuit through Montclair, New Jersey, to drop off 149 of Renaissance Middle School's 225 students. Community activists, almost forty years ago, had fought long and hard for school integration in this northern town. After court battles, parent meetings, community resistance, and ultimate victory, the…

When students in a New Jersey public middle school decided to learn about their community's history of desegregation through a unique language arts and social studies project, no one imagined how powerful the experience would be for everyone involved. In addition to researching newspaper articles and historical documents, the students conducted…