Dear Educational Leaders, In our two previous love letters, we sowed the seeds of our shared vulnerability during these times of facism. Our hopes centered on cultivating a collective effort of resistance. In this letter, our intention is to nurture that resistance as part of our shared humanity. Whether we draw from In Lak’ech (Mayan), Kapwa (Filipino), Ubuntu (Bantu), or Lōkahi (Kanaka Maoli), our shared being cannot be denied. Our interconnectedness and relational accountability with each other, the ancestors, the land, and all other living things are what will ensure the vibrancy of the next seven generations — an Indigenous principle. The seventh generation principle recognizes that decisions made today impact our descendants that follow. How do we, then, prepare that path? Our earlier love letters called for the fire to collectively resist and rise up. Now, we draw from Indigenous communities to invoke the “good fire” as a method to prepare creation. Indigenous communities have long used fire to prepare the land for the next season’s crops. Fire has been used to facilitate regeneration, biodiversity and sustainability by clearing out leftover or harmful matter, warming the soil, and harvesting materials for other uses, such as basket-making. In this sense, the good fire we ignite now can create fertile growth for the next seven generations. Let us begin that good fire with a story that Orlando shared during one of our homie gatherings. “In graduate school, I remember taking a road trip with three other friends. It was a last-minute trip, the kind you do when you are young and time feels abundant. During the car ride, we exchanged stories and discussed our experiences as budding Latinx scholars and professionals. One of them regurgitated an adage he heard during his Ivy League grad school experience regarding how those with the most power in our western context solve problems: 'When there is a problem you can’t solve, throw money at it, if that doesn’t work, throw lawyers at it, if that doesn’t work, throw guns at it.' I remember hearing this and thinking, 'This is how the dominant wields their imperial power.’” While the dominant continue to use short-term power tactics to overwhelm their opponents, we must never forget that their tactics of destruction are short-sighted, lack creativity and are a sign of desperation. The dominant, however, are not the only ones with power. We, the people, have power. Our power comes from the creative and nurturing capacity to plant seeds and cultivate abundance over many seasons with our students. Let us be clear with our call to invoke people's power. We mobilize for love, not war, and certainly not to dominate. For what is the end game for severing, silencing, fearmongering, and eliminating, but a citizenry that is controllable, conformist, non-critical, and non-questioning? Such an end game is to maintain a status of subordination of the masses while maintaining the perceived superiority, privilege and entitlement of the dominant. Instead, we offer these four components to operationalize a praxis of the people especially during, but not limited to these fascist times. Let us be clear with our call to invoke people's power. We mobilize for love, not war, and certainly not to dominate. For what is the end game for severing, silencing, fearmongering, and eliminating, but a citizenry that is controllable, conformist, non-critical, and non-questioning? Such an end game is to maintain a status of subordination of the masses. It is to enculturate the masses’ complicity in their oppression while maintaining the perceived superiority, privilege and entitlement of the dominant. Cultivating coalitional critical consciousness As educational leaders, we do not do this work alone. We simultaneously act as community organizers who build coalitions. Our collective journey towards liberation must work in relational, reciprocal, respectful, responsive, and responsible ways. Post-colonial and Chicana Studies scholar Chela Sandoval offers a way to do this through coalitional consciousness–a praxis grounded in lived experience that seeks to build solidarity and coalition across multiple lines of difference, discourse, and dialogue.

As educational leaders, we must think of our schools, colleges, and universities as centers of community that can be spaces for coalitional critical consciousness. We must understand that we are no one’s saviors, so we must be a part of, not a part above, not apart from. The antidote to the powerlessness of isolation and hopelessness is to be with. This means we collectivize, cultivate transformative solidarity, and learn together. We do not need to have all the answers, but we should be connected to different communities and professional groups to collectively tend to both the urgency of the moment and the sustainability of the long haul. Our coalitional work must be transformative by design–aiming to dismantle those conditions that work to reproduce inequity and injustice, as well as radically imagining and redesigning a world absent of systems of supremacy. Intergenerational, interconnected, insurgent communities As coalitional critical consciousness speaks to producing culture and shared knowledge, intergenerational, interconnected, insurgent communities operate through structure. Though insurgency is often thought of in terms of armed struggle, we believe it could be a helpful framing to draw from decolonial studies. Insurgency must be clear about what it insurges against, what it aims toward, and what its methods of change are. We focused our previous letters naming what we must insurge against. This current letter offers what our insurgency aims toward. Being an active part of intergenerational, interconnected, insurgent communities creates the conditions for hope and healing. Healing cannot be divorced from the social oppression that creates harm in the first place. Fighting the oppression that creates harm in the first place cannot be divorced from healing. They go hand in hand. Finding hope together is healing. Being creative together is healing. Being in dialogue with each other creates the conditions for collective courage and relatedly, healing. These emphases create humanizing conditions, which resist the sociohistorical projects of dehumanization. Through these multiple components of insurgent communities, we create and instill a hope that is courageous, healing, creative, and subsequently, agentive. Challenge systems of supremacy Critical Legal Scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw recently highlighted on social media, “We know now that what they are coming after is not one form of thinking, it’s not black history, it’s not intersectionality, it’s not CRT, they are coming after the entire infrastructure that has been created since from the Civil Rights Movement.” The nature of fascism is that it has to tear down any perceived threat. Programs designed to help people survive and thrive in a multiracial, multilingual, pluralistic democracy (e.g., Affirmative Action, Women’s rights, Gay Rights, Anti-racism, and DEI) are being targeted. Attacks on DEI are an example of targeting infrastructure on structural, cultural, and repressive/policing fronts. Structural attacks involved executive orders, policy mandates, and elimination of funding such as the threats to Title I funding. Cultural attacks involved manipulative and demonizing rhetoric and discourse, such as the “dear colleague” letter, the list of over 200 words used to flag “woke initiatives,” and how conservative right pundits and government officials publicly speak lies and use demonizing language. Repressive attacks involved the judicial courts, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement raids, and the Department of Education’s creation of the surveillance tool, “DEI portal.” These comprise a comprehensive attack. Nonetheless, while it may sound overly simplistic, our suggested antidote is this: Do DEI anyway. But let us do it better, with more clarity, and where necessary, with fugitivity. DEI was never the goal. It was a way to operationalize how to get to our goal —social justice. At its roots, DEI challenges those structures, beliefs, and practices that sought to homogenize, make inaccessible, and exclude in the first place. DEI was intended to redress marginalization. It is naive to believe that institutions would change simply by including more diverse people and inclusive language. DEI programs were originally intended, sometimes subversively, to develop enough coalitional consciousness to change the institutional structure. And so, without the explicit analysis and intentionality to counter homogenizing, inequitable, and exclusive designs, DEI on a national scale was left vulnerable to being dismantled. Before there was funding, before there were departments, before there were centers, DEI as a way to operationalize social justice still happened. If we really believe in the importance of DEI as a way to work toward social justice, let us find a way to do it anyway. This is what it means to challenge systems of supremacy. Develop your analysis. Gather the people. Be organized and strategic. Sometimes be discreet. Sometimes be subversive. Whatever you do based on your context and lived reality, do the work anyway, because, as Dr. Patrick Camangian proclaimed, lives depend on it. Collective creative action As educational leaders, we must heed the ancestral reminder that young people are sacred. Thus, we cannot wait to see what happens. As leaders, we cannot delay the harvesting of our servingness. We cannot wait to protect our children. We cannot wait to help our children thrive. We cannot refrain from instilling hope. We cannot withdraw our commitment to the values passed down to us that have laid the foundation of liberation. During this time of repression, we must remain open to unanticipated opportunities. These opportunities will arrive not when we are alone in our thoughts seeded by intentional fear mongering, but when we engage in collective, creative, and courageous action with others. We must continue to be on the side of the ancestors that came before and fought for us. The time is now.

So this collection of love letters we write is for us now. They are not meant to sit on a shelf, to take up space in research publications, or to be the fodder by which academics pontificate. No, this collection of love letters is for you, for us. They are the seeds meant to grow, to reach up, to reach out. They are meant to blossom, to flower, to fruit, to spread. They are meant to create, to transform the landscape. These seeds are talking. If you listen closely, like singer Tracy Chapman, you will hear, “they talkin’ bout a revolution.” Like the birds, the wind, the soil, the sun, the water, and the four-legged animals, everyone has a role to play in this revolution. So let us prepare the soil. ALL HANDS need to be in the soil NOW. Let us ignite the good fire NOW. Let us clear out and then tend to the next season’s landscape. Let us collectively rise up. What we do right now and who we do it with matters. What we do right now and who we do it with is not only for today. It is for tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. And it is for the next seven generations after that. With love, Dr. G, Dr. Carreón, & Dr. Nava