Protestors march carrying a banner that says "Rise Against Predatory Landlords"

LEO T. MCCARTHY CENTER FOR PUBLIC SERVICE AND THE COMMON GOOD

Community Empowerment Activists

The Community Empowerment Activists program is on hiatus for 2025-26. We invite you to check back next fall for future plans for the 2026-27 school year.

The rEVOLution is Love

The Community Empowerment Activists (CEA) is a year-long community-engaged learning (CEL) program that prepares students as visionary organizers and movement workers by examining the historical and current contexts of systems of oppression and movements of resistance that raise consciousness and build People power using a transformative justice lens.

CEA is a reciprocal exchange of study, practice, and application of what is gained in the classroom and community. Students deepen skills in base-building, mobilizing, grassroots organizing, and advocacy building through their yearlong internships at local grassroots organizations that work to disrupt and transform systemic oppression for positive social change in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The foundation of CEA is “The rEVOLution is Love,” for it is radical love––of self, for the oppressed, and each other––as we build long-term kinship that sustains and grows our hope that a reimagined just world that lifts Black liberation, human dignity, equity, sovereignty, and Mama Earth is possible.

Community leaders, with direct lived experiences of the phenomenon we are exploring––share their wisdom, heart, and time with us as guest speakers/co-educators. Revolutionaries include: community leaders, activists, movement workers, artists, healers, youth advocates, educators, public health advocates, and pro-people policymakers.

CEA meets the CEL requirement and must be taken in the fall (2 units) and spring (2 units) semesters. Students are required to attend weekly classes, complete assignments, and meet the five hour per week commitment at their internship. CEA is open to undergraduate students at the University of San Francisco. All majors are welcome. Students will receive stipends upon successful completion of each semester.

Applications to the 2024-2025 Community Empowerment Activists (CEA) are open. The deadline to apply is Friday, March 1, 2024. Early submissions are encouraged.

For more information about the program, please contact the instructor, Jacqueline Ramos at: jsramos@usfca.edu

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Alaia Zaki ’23

Critical Diversity Studies, Cultural Anthropology, Community Empowerment Activist at Housing Rights Committee SF

While every CEA class is different than the last, there is the central theme of learning about systems of oppression and how we see the community mobilizing in the name of love and liberation.