For four decades, Philadelphia’s Bread & Roses Community Fund has supported community-based groups in building movements for racial equity and economic opportunity. This support takes the form of fundraising, grantmaking, capacity building, and convening for real change—change created by people with the courage to stand up, the determination to join together, and the resources they need to create solutions for justice.
One of Bread & Roses’ major support mechanisms is the Racial & Economic Justice Fund (REJ), created to assist groups engaged in direct-action community organizing in the Philadelphia region to promote racial and economic justice at the local, state, national, or international policy levels. The Caucus of Working Educators (WE) is honored to be a 2017 REJ grantee, a distinction that will take our organizing work for systemic change in Philadelphia’s education system to the next level.
WE formed in March 2014 as a rank-and-file caucus of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers focused on racial, economic, and social justice. WE seek to support and energize our union through ever more member-driven union activity; advocating for transparency, accountability, and shared decision-making; and, strong contracts for and rights of our union members.
WE wage campaigns to hold School District leadership, PFT leadership, elected officials, and city, state, and federal administrators accountable to democratic values represented by public schools and public education. WE work to defend publicly-funded public education for all, with transformed curriculum and autonomy to teach, not test. WE work alongside the students, families, and neighborhoods of Philadelphia. WE seek a broad membership base of educators, parents, community partners, and other allies, and develop the leadership ability of those members.
This REJ grant from Bread & Roses will enable us to deepen our work of intensive in-person outreach and leadership development on the ground, creating spaces for capacity building and campaign organizing, and connecting with racial, immigrant, and economic justice movements in Philadelphia. Bread & Roses will officially recognize and celebrate the Caucus and all of the 2017 Racial & Economic Justice Fund grantees (among them the 215 People's Alliance, Asian Americans United, New Sanctuary Movement, the Media Mobilizing Project, Philadelphia Coalition for Affordable Communities, Youth Art & Self-Empowerment Project, and Youth United for Change) at the “On the Rise for Real Change” event on Wednesday, June 28, from 6:00 to 7:30 P.M. at Cultureworks Greater Philadelphia, 1315 Walnut Street, Suite 320. Pre-registration is required!