Queremos vivir sin miedo [We want to live without fear]

The story of the Instituto de Educación Popular del Sur de California (IDEPSCA) is a story of hope. It is the story of hundreds of organizations rooted in courage, anger and eagerness to seek light in dark times. IDEPSCA’s evolution has not been a fast-track, boilerplate organization’s development. It has been a story of joy and sorrow, of overcoming incredible obstacles. It is a story of immigrants who, as we try to open doors, have learned that they lead to other doors that are hard to open or worse, revolving doors that force us to return to our beginnings; but in the process, we have grown wiser. Our story is the story of people learning to read as they learn their reality. It is a story of words representing poverty, political revolution, injustice and abandonment of a country, of a family, of a young love back home. IDEPSCA’s growth is based on democratic principles. Its values of humility, solidarity and love for those who seek freedom of expression have been the driving force of our organization as we learn to share our values of coexistence. What makes a grassroots, community-based organization grow is not only

economic resources; it is people in struggle. It is the willingness to make change happen in spite of the odds. The following story is a descriptive one. It tries to recount the ebb and evolution of a collective work. It avoids the analysis of comparison with other experiences or even less, an analysis of how popular education is practised in different social contexts. It is a historical description of an organization that has faced many challenges inside a country where respect for human dignity, particularly of people of colour and the impoverished, is professed but not practised.