by Ali Collins
The backstory…
I’m an educator, writer, and activist who was removed from the San Francisco school board for desegregating schools, calling out racist funding mechanisms, and establishing avenues for Black, Brown, and low-income immigrant students and families to have a voice in their schools.
I was recalled from office in a multi-million dollar campaign funded by tech oligarchs and right-wing venture capitalists at a time when Black women across the country were being targeted as part of a backlash to the gains made by the George Floyd and Breonna Taylor protests. (See here, here, and here.) These same groups targeted other visible Black women educators and leaders, such as Nikole Hannah-Jones (1619 Project) and Kimberlé Crenshaw (CRT). They also discredited and removed Dr. Claudine Gay from her presidency at Harvard and dismantled Affirmative Action at SCOTUS. ( I summarized this write-up on events surrounding the SF School Board takeover for a CNN mini-documentary with Sara Sidner which never aired.)
Even though I was removed three years into a four-year term, I have been one of the most prolific members of the board. I actively shared power by authoring resolutions in partnership with communities that had previously been denied a seat at the table.
Why this website
One year after I was recalled, it became clear that my removal from office was orchestrated by individuals invested in dismantling progress and privatizing public education. It has been extremely frustrating to see similar narratives and politically motivated harassment campaigns purge Black leaders—especially Black women and femmes—from all aspects of civic life. At the same time, me and other activists and educators are being systematically muted on social media platforms and denied opportunities to balance harmful and false narratives being pushed by the mainstream media.
Last year, with over 300,000 Black women being purged from all areas of corporate work and civil service, and educators being vilified for teaching true history, we must speak up! If we want to reverse the horrible trends we see taking place in our country we need to take stock of how we got here and repair the harm that has been done to so many communities.
Social media is no longer safe
It is becoming more and more apparent that we can no longer rely on the social media as a space for organizing or networking. As Audre Lorde said, “You cannot take down the master’s house with the master’s tools.”
Social media that was at one time an uplifting and useful space to share strategies and get informed is now a dumpster fire of hate speech and disinformation. Many of us have had to move our accounts to private or go offline altogether.
I decided to create this platform so we could share ideas, insight and inspiration with one another in a safe space “for us, by us.” This is a space to celebrate “good trouble” without fear of intimidation of trolling.
Working with community, we have created guidelines for engagement and monitor comments and membership activity to ensure safe flow of ideas and information. This is also a space to network and share your work on other platforms. Tell us who we should be following and supporting!
Become a part of the WeWereSeeds community
Please support this work by signing up for the free newsletter. In the future, I will be adding other educators and parents to the list of contributors who will be sharing strategies about how to protect vulnerable communities and fight to protect progress. I also look forward to creating spaces for us to share experiences and getting to know one another online and in person!