PCM started with a children’s march.
Since then, our work in and with our community has both deepened and expanded, yet it remains grounded in our activist roots. PCM organizes within our community to identify and disrupt systemic racism, starting at the child and family level. We know that in order to create systemic change, we must change the way that people raise and educate children. Raising children who hold a positive racial identity, are racially literate, able to see and address systemic issues, and equipped to speak up and out, creates a powerful shift in how our society operates.
Children are keen organizers who have a natural radar for unfairness and injustice, so PCM works with youth as thought-partners and co-conspirators in unlearning, disrupting, and creating new systems- both within their own thinking and in the wider society. As a core group of parents, educators and community members, we believe our role is to build experiences for and with youth, families and organizations to more deeply understand and practice the disruptive and intersectional work of antiracism. We hope that through our work, people feel free and informed to speak out against injustice, utilize creativity as a form of activism, and feel empowered in their thoughts, feelings and actions in support of Black Liberation.
Community Events and Actions:
Community lies at the core of who PCM is. In all of our community-based work, we center the power and ideas of young people, developing deep partnerships with local community organizations, and supporting actions that both proactively and responsively fight against systemic racism. Our events include:
- Children’s marches and actions that offer young people an opportunity to identify and speak truth to power about the issues that are most important to them
- Potlucks and gatherings that bring families together to write and lead chants, build community, and engage in joy- and justice-building activities
- Rapid bias-response meetings when communities are directly affected by instances of racism or white supremacist hate- to invite children and families to process their experiences and take action
- Online organizing spaces for parents and teachers to find support as we grow in antiracist practice, including large community actions during the racial uprising in 2020, and continued virtual events for accessibility
- Partnership with other community-based organizations for actions, festivals, community education days, and other events.
Trauma to Triumph
PCM is proud to be one of five organizations invited by the City of Philadelphia’s Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual Disability Services (DBHIDS) to be a partner in the Trauma to Triumph (“TTT”) initiative. This initiative is specifically designed to support and empower Philadelphia youth impacted by race-based trauma. Each year from 2024-2028, 100 youth ages 13-24 will experience 8-12 weeks of Black Joy programming through PCM. Each session connects PCM’s seven pillars to various manifestations of Black Joy: joy in cooking, joy in music, joy in art, joy in design, and joy in action. PCM created a brand new curriculum around Black Joy for TTT, and facilitates weekly sessions for the program in West Philadelphia. We are honored to work alongside our partner organizations: Mothers in Charge, Black Men Heal, the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), and Every Murder Is Real (EMIR) Healing Center.
Radical Little Library
In 2022, PCM launched our first ‘Radical Little Library,’ a community response to the book bans and anti-CRT and LGBTQ book-bans happening both across the country and right here in Pennsylvania. Created in the spirit of a free little library, we stock the Radical Little Library with free, new/gently used kids and young adult books with BIPOC and/or LGBTQ+/other underrepresented characters/groups/stories/authors, as well as books about racial and social justice. We see this project as a way to provide children with mirrors (ways to see themselves in books) and windows (ways to see beyond themselves), as well as directly combatting the book bans and critical race theory hysteria. A little library is also a beautiful way for children and families to practice mutual aid, with people in the community sharing resources with each other to meet unmet needs. The Radical Little Library is currently housed outside CW Henry Elementary School. We invite you to stop by and take a book or leave a book! Add stuff about pop-up RLL
Talking with Kids about Identity
To meet the needs of adults working to support our youngest children, PCM created a 6- part series about identity. This workshop series, geared towards parents and other caregivers of children 0-10, provides an introduction to the why and how of talking with children about various aspects of identity. Workshops focus on shared language, concrete strategies, resources, and learning from lived experience. Participants should expect a high level of engagement and to come away from workshops feeling more confident and supported in talking with children about identity.
- Talking with Kids About Race
- Talking with Kids about Socioeconomic Status/Class
- Talking with Kids About Religion
- Talking with Kids About Disability
- Talking with Kids About Gender
- Talking with Kids About Sexual Orientation/Family Structure
The Talking with Kids about Identity series is offered periodically at local community centers, such as libraries, and in partnership with schools who would like to support their families in addressing identity and social justice.
To stay up to date on our current events and actions, please follow us on Instagram or Facebook. For a full list of our past events, please check out this page. Or if you would like to volunteer or partner with PCM, please email us at [email protected]