English
Welcome to the 49th issue of The Funambulist. For the fourth time in the history of the magazine, the curation of this issue is shared between two people: Sónia Vaz Borges and Léopold Lambert. This issue takes us through radical education initiatives in several geographies in the world, but also in several spaces as different as the mangrove, the prison, the street, the kitchen table, or reading groups. By these varied locations, we mean to question both the material conditions of education, as well as its contents, placing it as a key instrument of revolutionary movements both historically and in the present.
Ruth Wilson Gilmore describes the experience of a reading group in 1980s California, engaging particularly with the work of Stuart Hall. Leigh- Ann Naidoo talks about South African student groups in the anti-apartheid Black liberation movement in the 1960–70s. Célia Regina Vendramini analyzes the role of education within the Movement of Landless Rural Workers (MST) in Brazil, while Raúl Romero and Xavie Galvez do a similar exercise about the Zapatistas in Chiapas. Sónia speaks with Flávio Zenun Almada about the ongoing educational work of the Plataforma Gueto in Lisbon. Ujju Aggarwal transports us to New York in the 1960s and the creation of community-organized academies for Black and Latinx people. The issue also features a poem by the students of a school opened shortly after the independence of Mozambique. We end the issue with a beautiful text by former political prisoner from the IRA, Deaglán Ó Mocháin, who tells us that even in carceral duress, revolutionary groups organize and self-educate. As for the beautiful cover, it was created by Shellyne Rodriguez for this issue!