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Early Learning Nation has reported again and again that early childhood education in America is at a breaking point. Inadequate wages, deepening mental health trauma (for families, children and educators alike) and a welter of other obstacles stretch out ahead of us into a troubling future. It鈥檚 no wonder that a new generation of child care activists has decided that playing nice doesn鈥檛 work any more.

As executive director of the Alabama Institute for Social Justice (AISJ), Lenice Emanuel sees her job as 鈥渟elling freedom.鈥� She鈥檚 more than willing to use protest, confrontation and the tools of a community organizer in the fight for freedom and justice. 鈥淣othing of importance was ever changed in this country without upsetting the status quo,鈥� she says.

AISJ originated in 1972 as the Federation of Child Care Centers of Alabama (FOCAL). With the name change, which occurred in 2017, Emanuel says, 鈥淲e have become an advocacy organization focused on empowering women and minorities, but children remain our first love and our foundation.鈥� It doesn鈥檛 make sense to focus on child care without addressing racial and gender equity or recognizing the interconnected historical, economic and political issues robbing children of their potential.

The State of Alabama presents more entrenched challenges than most other parts of the country. Emanuel points to the by Philip Alston, United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, which compared living conditions in rural Alabama to those in the developing world. Although the state鈥檚 early education initiatives have been covered by Early Learning Nation and in a , she maintains, 鈥淎labama is really not trying to make investments to dismantle poverty or to enfranchise marginalized people.鈥�

She continues, 鈥淭here is a culture here of, 鈥榃e鈥檇 much rather look good than actually be good.鈥� It’s a Southern thing, right?鈥�

Emanuel comes by activism naturally. Her parents attended Alabama State University during the Civil Rights movement and marched with Dr. King, and today her father pastors a church in the City of Prichard, in Mobile County, across from the former site of the Harlem Duke Social Club, where B.B. King, Ray Charles, Etta James and more performed. Growing up, Emanuel remembers, her parents took in homeless people and mothers running from domestic violence.

After graduating from Spring Hill College, Emanuel went to work for the Mobile YWCA, where she received her foundational training in racial and gender equity. Her work with AISJ, however, pushed her into next-level community engagement, where systems change centered her work and she began engaging in what she calls 鈥渉ardcore, grassroots organizing, in the trenches, working with some of the poorest and most marginalized people in the state of Alabama.鈥�

Along the way, she has learned to navigate rural poverty as someone from a marginalized community, but whose upbringing was more middle class, as her parents placed a premium on education, ensuring her competitive academic exposure. To that end, she acknowledges that, 鈥淭here have been times I’ve had to check my own class at the door, to really understand what the true values of parents were, when observing the confidence some had in leaving their children in centers that, at times, operated in less than ideal conditions.鈥�

鈥淭hey want their children to be safe,鈥� she says. 鈥淭hey care nothing about these rubrics that we want to invest so much money into.鈥� She contends, 鈥淨uality is subjective, and for many Black and often poor families, quality is quantified in the personal character of those caring for their children.鈥�

Given the opportunity to join AISJ in 2015, Emanuel jumped at the chance to follow in the footsteps of one of her idols, MacArthur fellow , who had integrated the previously all-white Wetumpka High School and gone on to found FOCAL with a group of activist women. 鈥淗ow do you stay in the game this long in a state like Alabama?鈥� Emanuel marvels. In her first hundred days as executive director, she set out to meet a hundred people, including 80 child care providers. The conversations she鈥檚 had before and during the pandemic inform her approach and fuel her commitment to speak her truth. 鈥淚’m just not the kind of person that’s going to tell you that something is that is not,鈥� she says.

In Emanuel鈥檚 view, the state鈥檚 leaders鈥攊ncluding some praised by Early Learning Nation鈥斺�渁re in deep need of cultural competency. They’re so myopically focused on pushing their agenda through that they don’t listen to the people in the field.鈥�

鈥淚t is morally wrong,鈥� she asserts, 鈥渢o just continue to exacerbate the conditions of people when you are in a position to make a difference. It is morally wrong to have American Rescue Plan money that was designed to help people in this pandemic used to build more jails.鈥�

Invited to take part in budget conversations with the leaders she鈥檚 criticized so relentlessly, Emanuel almost declined, but ultimately decided to use her voice. 鈥淚’m going to stay at the table,鈥� she says, 鈥渂ut at the same time, I’m going to continue to challenge them.鈥�

AISJ collaborated with and the Children鈥檚 Funding Project to demonstrate how federal funding could make a much bigger difference for Alabama families.

鈥淓veryone knows Lenice is a fighter,鈥� says Gaines, 鈥渂ut it鈥檚 the way she uses data to tell the story of Alabama child care that makes her so effective.鈥�

This story originally published on Early Learning Nation and is now archived on 麻豆精品. Learn more here.