The Social Justice Sewing Academy Fosters Dialogue Through Quilting
Quilts with a message are just the beginning for this organization.
Dec 16, 2020
What do social justice and making quilts have in common? Well, they're both core tenets of Social Justice Sewing Academy. The nonprofit organization was founded in 2016 by Sara Trail when she was an undergraduate at UC Berkeley. Four years prior, Trail had been shaken by the murder of young Trayvon Martin, an event with even more gravity given that Martin was exactly two weeks older than Trail before he was killed. However, Trail found that when she tried to talk about the event in her sewing circles, she was largely ignored. Instead of showing empathy, her fellow sewers largely disregarded her own experiences facing intolerance and prejudice.