Who We Are:
We are a national, youth-led, movement-building alliance uniting grassroots organizations fighting for liberation in schools and beyond.
Across the country, youth of color face the same conditions: pushed out of their schools, criminalized and surveilled, denied mental health care, and stripped of access to art, music, and joy.
Yet in the face of these injustices, youth continue to resist — building power through relationships, culture, and organizing.
AEJ exists to bridge these local fights — to connect what happens in one school, one city, to a national struggle for liberation. Our member organizations are deeply rooted in their communities, recruiting door by door, school by school, and cultivating youth leadership from the ground up.
As a small but strategic national alliance, we provide the infrastructure, political education, and collective strategy space needed to build a coordinated movement. AEJ brings together youth leaders, organizers, and executive directors to find patterns, deepen analysis, and align strategies that strengthen the fight for education justice everywhere.
We also meet a critical need in our movements — developing leadership pipelines for both youth and organizers, through our Youth Movement Anchors and learning circles. AEJ is where leaders grow, strategies sharpen, and local struggles unite into a national force.
Spaces like AEJ are necessary to turn local fights into a national movement — because across every region, youth of color are facing the same fight for dignity, resources, and freedom.
