Mark’s Professional Networks
Mark is a member of the steering committee of the The People’s Think Tank, which builds upon the work started in the convenings held for the Lift Us Up! book by creating a space to develop intersectional analysis, strategy and action designed to strengthen and expand the educational justice movement and connect it more closely to other social justice movements. The Think Tank will share the lessons we identify from our work out to the larger social justice world. These ideas, strategies and models can help communities organize where they are and in ways that connect them to others.
Mark is a member of the Dignity in Schools(DSC) which challenges the systemic problem of pushout in our nation’s schools and works to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline. As a national coalition, the Dignity in Schools Campaign builds power amongst parents, youth, organizers, advocates and educators to transform their own communities, support alternatives to a culture of zero-tolerance, punishment, criminalization and the dismantling of public schools, and fight racism and all forms of oppression. They bring together our members through direct action organizing, public policy advocacy and leadership development to fight for the human right of every young person to a quality education and to be treated with dignity.
URBAN – Urban Research Based Action Network
Mark is one of the founders of a new interdisciplinary network dedicated to promoting community-based, collaborative forms of research. As one of the national co-chairs, he is active in building the network within sociology and the field of education research as well as establishing a local chapter in Boston. You can find more information here.
Grassroots Community and Youth Organizing SIG
Mark Warren was one of the co-founders of the Grassroots Community and Youth Organizing SIG, a Special Interest Group at the American Educational Research Association (AERA). The SIG aims to advance research on community and youth organizing, particularly in low income communities and communities of color. It works to build a research community that engages with practitioners in organizing groups, educational institutions and policy-making circles. It seeks to foster research that examines the ways in which organizing efforts affect school improvement and educational equity, youth development, community/democratic revitalization and social justice. In May of 2011, at the AERA annual convention in Denver, the SIG sponsored a series of successful events, including an off-site Presidential Session hosted by Denver-based community organizing group Padres y Jovenes Unidos for which over 200 people gathered at a local school. Click Here to visit the SIG website.
Mark Warren was a Board Member for the Philips Brooks House Association (PBHA) for many years. PBHA is a student-run, staff-supported nonprofit organization based on the Harvard campus and operating in the community. For more than a century, PBHA has offered vital experience to generations of leaders in service while strengthening partnerships between students and local communities. Today, 1,400 volunteers participate in more than 80 programs serving 10,000 low-income people throughout Greater Boston. PBHA brings the creativity and enthusiasm of students together with the guidance of professional staff and the knowledge of community members to offer inspired and effective year-round and year-to-year programming.
Among its accomplishments, PBHA volunteers were pioneers in working with the mentally ill in the 1950s – PBHAers testified before Congress on those issues, and later, the Mental Health Committee, which partnered college students with patients in mental health facilities, was a model for President Kennedy’s VISTA. Around the same time, PBHA developed a volunteer teacher’s project in Africa that was studied in the creation of the Peace Corps (Project Tanganyika). PBHA’s Undergraduate Teachers Program (UTEP) was one of the first attempts to utilize student volunteers to support understaffed schools, and PBHA continues to innovate in the relationship between students and public housing communities, particularly through the Summer Urban Program, or SUP. Click Here to visit the PBHA Website