Tess Raser

Tess Raser has taught kindergarten, 5th, 6th and 7th grade. She currently is the Senior Manager of Academic Interventions and Programs at New Alternatives for Children. Tess has also written curriculum for the Zinn Education Project, Everyday Democracy, the Empire City podcast, and the Huey Newton Foundation. In Chicago, Tess was a member and leader in the abolitionist organization, Assata’s Daughters, where she participated in direct action organizing, in leading weekly radical youth programming for Black girls on the South Side of Chicago and in creating meaningful programs like a free Black Women’s Library and a Radical Kids Collective, in partnership with youth from Organized Communities Against Deportation (OCAD). She was a leader in the ByeAnita campaign, which was a successful initiative led by a coalition of Leftist organizations to oust the then states attorney. She was awarded The Institute for Common Power’s Truth and Purpose Learning Fellowship, which brought her to Alabama to experience the Civil Rights Movement history directly from Civil Rights heroes, like Bernard Lafayette, Charles Mauldin and Joanne Bland. This year, Tess facilitated a SNCC study group for other organizers, teachers and social workers, which included one of her favorite books, Charles M. Payne’s I’ve Got the Light of Freedom, which she has read at least four times. She writes about Marxism on her Substack and volunteers at the Endangered Language Alliance.