Service and Justice
The Four Cohorts:
Students in this cohort focus on the dynamics of dispossession and displacement across Los Angeles, driven by the historical process of capital accumulation.
Students in this cohort engage with issues pertaining to food cultivation, land use, and water in relation to communities affected by the climate crisis.
Students in this cohort grapple with the juvenile justice system, mass incarceration, and policies that target the poor and communities of color.
Students in this cohort consider the history and rights of those who are deemed “racial others” in society, e.g. border-crossers, asylum-seekers, and refugees.
“If you walk through life and don’t help anybody, you haven’t had much of a life.”
-Fred Hampton
What We Do
SLA’s Service and Justice Program focuses on the social transformation of our students as they develop a political consciousness together. Giving of ourselves and unto others is both a pedagogical practice and a means of creating more sustainable and just living conditions for everyone. For this pedagogical practice to be genuine, we must be in solidarity with our neighbors, engage the real material circumstances of our community, and thereby revolutionize the intellectual frameworks through which we interpret the world and its systems of oppression.
How We Do It
A commitment to place-based education grounds our Service and Justice Program in the city of Los Angeles and gives students the opportunity to have transformative experiences on and off campus. Students survey and then enroll in one of four cohorts: Housing Justice, Environmental and Climate Justice, the Carceral State and Abolition, and Immigration and Sanctuary Spaces. In collaboration with faculty leaders, students craft the focus, means, and mission of the cohort each academic year. Cohorts follow a “research, act, and reflect” model, bringing guests to campus who are organizing and making an impact in Los Angeles, then venturing off campus and into the city together to engage directly with movement work, and finally reconvening to synthesize their experiences. The program culminates in a deep, sustained commitment to a single organizing project or space during senior year.
