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Taking action to build agency and belonging among high school students in southern California who want to make an impact in their communities
Inside and Outside: Challenges of being a Changemaker at Independent Schools
In this workshop, we will talk together about strategies for addressing the contradictions we often have to navigate as avid changemakers in a complex world, and particularly as students at an independent school.
Personally: How can I leverage the privilege I hold as someone who attends a private school while also recognizing the places where I need support as a person with overlapping, and sometimes marginalized identities?
Systemically: How can I work to make change as an insider in a place of power and resources like my school while also being an outsider who questions the unjust system that makes that unequal access to resources possible?
Emotionally: How do I reconcile those things within myself and move through the many feelings that come up so that I can care for myself and our community?
Blair Overstreet
Blair Overstreet (she/they) is a committed advocate for racial equity and has been the San Diego chapter lead of Showing Up for Racial Justice, an organization that focuses on educating and mobilizing white people to fight inequality. Additionally, Blair is a co-founder of the Dede McClure Community Bail Fund, an organization supporting those held in jail simply because they can’t afford to pay bail with an organizing eye towards ending cash bail and an organization that played a critical role in supporting protestors during the uprisings of 2020. Additionally, since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, she served as a Harmonizer (core leadership) for We All We Got San Diego mutual aid providing food, rent relief, and political empowerment to those most impacted–our BIPOC, immigrant, and disabled neighbors.
In Blair’s 13-year teaching career, including 7 years at LJCDS, she helped her students understand the systems of inequality in our world, educated them on mass movements, and empowered them to work in their school and out in the world to make change. Now she’s doing that work herself full time as a community organizer at the Center on Policy Initiatives with the Invest In San Diego Families Coalition. Blair has worked locally in multiracial, cross-class coalitions on issues like police accountability, humane immigration practices, and affordable housing. She’s a City Heights resident and believes strongly in grassroots, community-based organizing, and neighborhoods where people look out for each other and build community power.