JB explores the wilds of Delaware USA

About Juliana, aka Activist Explorer

Activist Explorer in tunnel
activists

Juliana Barnet is a social justice activist, writer, anti-colonial anthropologist, musician, and educator. For decades she was also also an organizer and translator for labor unions and worker organizations in Mexico and the US, as well as providing bilingual support for Latin American immigrants in educational, political and healthcare settings. She has long been a participant-observer of activist culture, focusing in on the experience of being an activist—the risks, tensions and dangers, as well as the joys, of daily life in the belly of the Beast activists are struggling to transform.

Juliana has been part of movements for a just society all her life, from the Civil Rights and anti-Vietnam war movements as a child and teen, to social movements in Mexico, where she lived for nearly two decades, and working for justice, peace and inclusion at many levels and with many groups and movements in the DC metropolitan area where she now lives, and elsewhere in the U.S and Latin America. 

Her work includes making movement music with other social justice oriented musicians in Mexico and the US; also artistic, literary and activist explorations with young people–including her own daughter, Rainwood House Sings co-author and illustrator Sophie Barnet-Higgins, and a number of collective creative writing programs with neighborhood children and youth.

More about Juliana

Projects Under Construction don’t have a live link. Subscribe for info on progress…and how you can participate in building them.

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Books

Rainwood Series, Collective Novels written with Children, Novel/Memoir in Progress, Fiction Featuring Activists Anthology, Edited Books, Books In Spanish

Talks/Workshops

Activist Culture, Fiction Featuring Activists, Life in the Liberated Zone, Neighborhood Novelists (collective writing with children), Book Talks, and more

Articles, guest posts, interviews

Press Kit

Bios, photos, CV and related info

Art

Art and design work for this website and our books

Mexico and Movements

Participant-observer writing from my many years living in Mexico and participating in Mexican popular education and other social movements

My Life in Liberated Zones

Participant-observer experiences of life in spaces carved out to experiment with creating the new world now.

Activism and Organizing

Movement Music

Latin American folk music, Mexico and music, Nueva Canción, DC Labor Chorus, social movement singing

Interpreting and translating

Working as a translator and interpreter/advocate with immigrants in unions, schools, political events, films, TV and elsewhere

In Development...

Drawn Juliana Barnet sitting at table with laptop

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The Beast

A well-known metaphor for the system of inequality, exploitation, destruction, greed and oppression that is ruthlessly focused on taking over the entire Earth,  and our own colonized minds and bodies.

Activists work together across history and around the globe to overcome the Beast and create a system that will need a different metaphor.

Beast on top of Earth

What are Activists?

Activists with posters marching in a line

We’re all potentially activists, as soon as we step beyond our private spheres into any part of the historic, worldwide struggle for a society where everyone is equally valued and no one is oppressed or exploited. 

Which is what we all want, right? Yet instead of being recognized as an indispensable aspect of planetary citizenship, the active pursuit of collective justice is often viewed as weird or worse. It is almost never formally taught, and generally not encouraged in young people (or anyone, for that matter).

But then, activism’s purpose is to overturn the existing oppressive power structure, aka the Beast. That’s what the Beast and its beneficiaries rabidly and ruthlessly oppose. 

That’s why activists face such a range of risks. And why Protect Our Activists explores what they are and how activists everywhere face them.

Stories of our People (SOOP): workshops on collecting stories and creating truthful fiction featuring activists, for adults, youth and children

Your Message

Preorder Rainwood House Sings

RAINWOOD HOUSE SINGS, a social justice mystery, paints an authentic picture (with a hint of magic) of eveyday activists fighting for justice in their lives and communities, tackling mysteries large and small with creativity, humor, and collective action.

  • Print version — 20.00 + S/H
  • ebook — 7.99

Submit form below to preorder and receive publication details

Stories of Our People (SOOP)

Sample filled-out FFA Test:
JB tests the movie Billie Elliot

Sample filled-out SOOP Questionnaire:
A few stories and burning questions from JB