The Walkout! Lab for Youth Justice (2020-2022)

Subini Annamma
Ralph Richard Banks
People in Project

Subini Annamma (Graduate School of Education)
Ralph Richard Banks (Stanford Law School)

Project Description:

The Walkout! Lab for Youth Justice, a joint project between the Stanford Graduate School of Education and Stanford School of Law’s Center for Racial Justice, is a data driven lab that work across disciplines and institutions to produce action-oriented research and policy that seeks to dismantle criminalization of youth across education geographies and reimagine p-20 liberatory education by centering the voices of and partnering with multiply-marginalized Black, Indigenous, and Youth of Color. The name of the lab is in honor of moments of student activism; a walkout is a tool that students have engaged across generations to change education and society. Consequently, this lab will always partner with individual youth as well as youth justice organizations to have substantive youth leadership. Centering multiply-marginalized Black, Indigenous, and Youth of Color at the intersections of multiple oppressions, it not only targets an elimination in racialized criminalization in education, it dreams what robust education looks like, one that is committed to liberatory pedagogy, curriculum, and relationships. Thus, the lab targets the most entrenched inequities in education by centering those most impacted, multiply-marginalized Black, Indigenous, and Youth of Color, through innovative thinking and creative partnerships. Linking the social sciences in education with the law allows for a lab rooted in theory and practice to influence multiple entry-points across disciplines and boundaries to shift the policies, practices, and discourse around education and youth justice. The Walkout! Lab for Youth Justice will reimagine fundamental questions about and conceptualizations of justice and education.