Hannah Jukovsky
Hannah Jukovsky made headlines when she organized a boycott of standardized testing to draw attention to class and race inequities in Massachusetts public schools. Jukovsky was influenced by her parents, who discussed politics and class issues at the dinner table, as well as by her involvement with Project HIP-HOP (Highways into the Past, History, Organizing and Power). The program brought high school students on a civil rights tour of the South, teaching Jukovsky about American history, the political system, and the struggle against racism and oppression. When she was fifteen, she drew a cartoon as a statement against racial violence and the use of the Confederate Battle Flag; the cartoon appeared in the September-October 2000 issue of the journal “Freedomways,” published by the Prison & Jail Project. Officials of Calhoun State Prison in Georgia did not allow inmates to access the newsletter, which was challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia as censorship. In 2000, Jukovsky became a leader of anti-MCAS (Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System) activism at her public school, where she organized an MCAS boycott and teach-in. The boycott and teach-in provided opportunities for dialogue between students who do not usually associate with one another and helped students find ways to get involved in local and state political issues. That year she also participated in Campaign for a Democratic Future’s effort to allow sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds to vote in school committee and city council elections; she argued that the lack of agency before age eighteen discourages young people from voting. She went on to work as a legal assistant and became a certified paralegal. She then switched paths and earned an associates degree in accounting. As of 2023 she works as a Senior IT Auditor of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
Jukovsky was honored at the 2001 Women Who Dared event in Boston.