Our Story
Roots to Revolution is an educator-driven team founded and led by women. Our work is not about us, but we do believe in looking inward to unpack and unlearn at the personal level as a crucial step in decentering ourselves as we move forward. The important work of shepherding our students and clients through the complex, transformative landscapes of American history and activism cannot be performed, it must be lived every day and persued with both enthusiasm and compassion.
Our story adds context and transparency to our vision and goals as an organization. Read on for a conversation with Roots co-founder Kim Jerome to learn who we are and how Roots to Revolution began.
Questions by Rae Drizen
Responses by Kimberly Jerome, co-founder, Roots to Revolution
Why did you start Roots to Revolution? Tell us about your story and inspiration.
I’m not sure if I’ve ever really believed in destiny. But when I think about our journey to Roots to Revolution, I know there’s something divine about our story.
Prior to founding Roots to Revolution, Cat, Jillian and I had each been activists in our own right. My own journey with activism began with the murder of Mike Brown, who would be the same age as I am, if he were still alive today. Seeing myself in all of the Black people, known and unknown to the public, who died at the hands of police brutality is what encouraged me to study and teach high school history. I knew then as I know now that our kids deserve to learn the truth of American history. Yet to this day, because traditional K-12 history classrooms are white-washed and don’t teach Black history as part of American history, it can be really difficult for white Americans to understand and grapple with systemic oppression.
Similarly, Cat began facilitating programming for the predominantly white teachers in her school after seeing them struggle to adequately support their Black and Brown students. Her identity as an Asian American woman and history teacher inspired her to leverage the lessons of history to support cross-racial community building in her school.
For Jillian, watching how the death of Eric Garner in Staten Island affected her Brooklyn students compelled her to get involved with community organizing. She realized that giving her students a high-quality education wasn’t going to be enough to keep them safe. She worked alongside Cat, teaching APUSH at a sister school, while Jillian and I also worked at the same school. The three of us connected over our mutual passion, and in the weeks leading up to June 19, 2020 (our birthday as an organization!) we poured hours into creating a clear vision for what we hoped Roots would become. Over this last year, we’ve brought on Jen Quinn and Johnathan Perkins, who lend their respective talents to our mission and make our team feel complete.
How do you see history as a transformative tool in dismantling oppression?
Dismantling oppression is a HUGE collective task, and in order to break anything apart, you need tools. Ask any contractor: You can't dismantle something if you don’t know how it was built. If we as a people want to end white supremacist patriarchy in America, we need to first grapple with what brought us here.
In her book Caste, Isabel Wilkerson draws an analogy between health and history. When you go to the doctor, you share your prior medical history. That history helps you make decisions about which steps to take in bringing your body to a healthier place. It is the same with our collective history as a nation. We need to understand where we came from in order to move forward to a healthier place as a country. We believe that history education and analyzing power structures is the first step to moving forward in your personal activism as well as your community activism. Many activists who came before us have shared a great deal of wisdom that we can learn from in order to create a healthier world.
How is Roots to Revolution helping to disrupt the status quo? (In what ways are your offerings disrupting oppressive structures, fighting for equity, breaking norms, or leveling the playing field?)
The United States has never healed from the institutions of slavery and racism, because we have never reconciled with the institutions of slavery and racism. Instead, we have had iterations of slavery by multiple names throughout our tenure as a nation, built on and designed to maintain a foundation of white supremacy. In order to build a nation based on compassion and love, America needs to face its past. The first step in that process is to learn exactly what happened in our country to lead us to where we are today. There are groups of people in America who have a vested interest in false narratives. Those lies maintain a power structure that hurts us all. By telling truths about history that are often overlooked, Roots is working to disrupt the status quo.
What do you think leads to sustainable activism?
Disrupting the status quo isn't something that happens overnight. At the beginning of each of our courses, we ask our students to explore a social change ecosystem map to help determine an activist pathway conducive to their lifestyle. Jillian makes a great comparison between exercise and activism – if you want to get healthier, you exercise daily. You don’t engage once and say that your work is done. The same mentality should be applied to activism – if you want to see change, little changes need to be made each day. What leads to true sustainable activism is when you are able to find joy in the activist work you’re doing.
