Angela Berkfield, a White woman living in Brattleboro, Vermont, was deeply committed to social justice. In 2013, she was a co-founder of The Root Social Justice Center, a hub for social justice organizing in Vermont. From food insecurity, to youth empowerment, they have been focused on racial justice organizing, community advocacy, and relationship building for nearly a decade.

In 2014, a friend of Angela’s, Annique, asked her if she would be willing to do trainings for parents about how to talk with their kids about topics like racial microaggressions, gender-neutral pronouns, and Black Lives Matter — topics she was discussing on the regular in adult contexts.

Her boys, River and Birch, were 3 and 6 at the time. Although the concept of translating social justice concepts into language that would work for kids their age was daunting, she saw the value, and her friend helped her to see how her years of community work naturally fed this new focus.

Thus began Angela’s journey of parenting for social justice — starting in her own home.

She had some good support from truth-telling authors like Jacqueline Woodson and Kate Schatz, whose books opened up powerful conversations with her kids, and she recognized and took more opportunities for social justice chats with her family in the day to day.

Angela felt eager to connect and share ideas with other parents. In 2016, she and dear friend and parenting book co-author Abi Healey started a blog about how they were bringing social justice into their parenting, and that same year started hosting Parenting 4 Social Justice (P4SJ) Chats for parents and caregivers looking to share and receive this support. The response was positive and the idea for a book was born. In June of 2021, Parenting 4 Social Justice was released to the world.

Tragically, in September of 2021, Angela died from breast cancer. While the community in Vermont, and across the country reeled from her loss, the Parenting 4 Social Justice team wanted to continue to share her message. Chrissy Colón Bradt is the co-author of the chapter on parenting for racial justice, and agreed to come on the podcast to share a bit of Angela’s spirit with us. As an Afro-Latina and mother of two, she has thought long and hard about how to instill a positive racial identity in her own kids, and shared much of that ongoing journey in book.

LINKS:

• Parenting 4 Social Justice from Bookshop.org
• The Parenting for Social Justice website
• The Root Social Justice Center
• Angela Berkfield Tributes
• JPB Gerald – Checklists and Merit Badges
• I’m Your Peanut Butter Big Brother – by Selina Alko

Use these links or start at our Bookshop.org storefront to support local bookstores, and send a portion of the proceeds back to us.

Join our Patreon to support this work, and connect with us and other listeners to discuss these issues even further.

Let us know what you think of this episode, suggest future topics, or share your story with us – @integratedschls on twitter, IntegratedSchools on Facebook, or email us [email protected].

We are a proud member of The Connectd Podcast Network.

The Integrated Schools Podcast was created by Courtney Mykytyn and Andrew Lefkowits.

This episode was produced by Andrew Lefkowits and Val Brown. It was edited, and mixed by Andrew Lefkowits.

Music by Kevin Casey.

NOTE: In the original version of this episode, we got the origin story of the Parenting 4 Social Justice workshops mixed up. We have updated the episode. Our apologies to all at Parenting 4 Social Justice.

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