Toward Digital, Critical, Participatory Action Research: Lessons From The #BarrioEdProj

The Education in our Barrios project, or #BarrioEdProj, is a digital critical participatory action research (D+CPAR) project that examines the interconnected remaking of public education and a New York City Latino core community in an era of racial capitalism. This article is a meditation on the ongoing development of #BarrioEdProj as an example of strategically coupling digital media with the theories and practices of critical participatory action research (CPAR). The author describes the project and the theoretical and political commitments that frame this project as a form of public and participatory science. The author then discusses some of the lessons that have been learned as the research group implemented the project and decided to move to a digital archiving model when our digital media design was initially ineffective. The author argues that rather than dropping digital media, engaged scholars must continue to explore the potentially transformative work that can come from carefully devised D+CPAR

Power to the Panza: The Politics of Panza Positive Cultural Production, a Performance

Abstract: The Panza Monologues is a solo performance piece both written by Virginia Grise and Irma Mayorga and also composed from contributions by Chicanas in San Antonio, TX gathered by Grise and Mayorga. In live production of the piece, Grise is the solo actor and Mayorga serves as director, dramaturge, and designer. As a whole, the play focuses on stories that hinge on the metaphor of “la panza” to articulate and describe the multiple conditions of Chicanas’ lives in terms of their physical, social, racial, and class dimensions. The piece has been performed in various locations from its inception in 2004 to the present. For their NACCS 2008 Annual Conference presentation, Grise and Mayorga composed a “performative conversation” for a session that offered (1) the genealogy of the piece’s development, (2) the differences between Grise and Mayorga’s theatrical training and work as activists, which in turn yields their aesthetic and Chicana feminist strategies employed in the performance, (3) an articulation of the play’s driving ideas and tenets in relation to Chicana/o cultural production, the socio-political conditions in San Antonio, TX, and feminist art practices, and (4) select monologues from The Panza Monologues script presented between Grise and Mayorga’s discussion of Chicana cultural expressions. This format sought to compose a presentation that experimented with the possibilities of discussing cultural production in the academic conference setting. Therefore this essay utilizes a “script” format that attempts to capture the dialogical style of Grise and Mayorga’s presentation. The essay culminates with a manifesto for “Panza Positive Cultural Production” that enumerates Grise and Mayorga’s observations and recommendations for producing Chicana/o teatro that is socially responsible and attentive to Chicana artists, Chicana/o peoples, and practice within Chicana/o cultural organizations

Active Solidarity: Centering The Demands And Vision Of The Black Lives Matter Movement In Teacher Education

In the era of Black Lives Matter (#BLM), urban teacher education does not exist in isolation. The White supremacist, neoliberal context that impacts all aspects of Black lives also serves to support antiblackness within the structures of teacher education. In this article, the authors, who are grounded in a race radical analytical and political framework, share a vision of what it means to be an urban teacher who actively understands and teaches in solidarity with #BLM. The authors unpack their theoretical framework and the vision of #BLM while examining the state of teacher education in this era of neoliberal multiculturalism. The authors contemplate what a race radical, #BLM-aligned, approach to urban teacher education might look like. The article concludes by addressing ways that teacher educators must be in active solidarity with the #BLM movement to better prepare teachers who understand that the lives of their students matter within and outside of their classrooms

Nutrients Export by Rivers to the Coastal Waters of Africa: Past and Future trends

We analyze past and future trends in nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and carbon (C) export by rivers to the coastal waters of Africa as calculated by the Global Nutrient Export to WaterShed (NEWS) models for the period 1970–2050. Between 1970 and 2000 the total nutrient export by African rivers increased by 10–80%. For future years (2000–2050) we calculate an increase in the total loads of dissolved forms of N and P, but decreasing trends for dissolved organic C and particulate forms of N and P. There are large regions that deviate from these pan-African trends. We explore the regional patterns and the underlying processes, in particular for the Nile, Zaire, Niger, and Zambezi. In the future, anthropogenic sources may, in large parts of Africa, become larger contributors to riverine nutrient loads than natural source