The Fire Is Now: Love Letter to Educational Leaders

• In Event: Dare Everything: Love Letters to Educational Leaders During an Era of 47

Abstract

In “Letter from a Region in my Mind,” James Baldwin (1962) calls for action. He professes, “no more water, the fire next time” (p. 106). That next time is now. The fire is burning now and manifests as multiple infernos caused by this 47th presidential administration through war tactics, overwhelming opponents through a flurry of assaults. Rather than remain overwhelmed, revolutionary thinker Antonio Gramsci (1971) can help us to reframe such “attacks” by the state as both a “war of position” and a “war of maneuver.” Through a war of position–an ideological and cultural struggle–those throughout the highest and most influential levels of our government and media exacerbate relations of power by attacking perceived threats such as Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programming. Through a war of maneuver–repressive attacks–we see physical confrontation such as those against immigrants by Immigration & Customs Enforcement. From the flurry of these tactics, the masses have been experiencing disorientation, overwhelm, and fear.

“The people,” however, are not mere silent victims who passively accept such assaults. This paper, then, examines the “fire” from two perspectives–the fire of destruction that the presidency has been conflagrating and the fire of transformative resistance ignited to counter the widespread devastation led by the administration.

This presentation draws on coloniality (Maldonado-Torres, 2016; Mignolo, 2007; Quijano, 2007) and critical pedagogy (Freire, 2000) as analytical and generative approaches. Specifically, the colonial matrix of power offers an analytic to identify the logics enacted by inextricable relationship between power, knowledge, and being within federal and local contexts to enforce a class of subjugated peoples, dictate what is truth, and employ structural and cultural practices to achieve ideological goals of authoritarianism. The use of critical pedagogy is engaged to not only name systems of oppression at work, but also to invite reflection, dialogue, and collective action.

To complement, Transgressive Decolonial Hermeneutics (TDH) (Fúnez-Flores, 2021) is methodologically applied to interrogate the federal government’s (the “whole”) colonial logics within its sociopolitical, economic, and cultural arms (the “parts”). In doing so, this paper asks, whose dreams, struggles and ancestral lessons should we lean on during these (fascist) times? How might educators and educational leaders reimagine our own fires of collective, decolonial resistance? Through TDH, this paper’s analyses center on the nation-state in general and more specifically on the texts produced in the form of policies, practices, and discourses unleashed as a flurry of ideological and repressive violence.

This scholarship resulted in an applied coalitional consciousness (Sandoval, 2000) approach as an “intentional process and practice of futuring” through a PRAXISioner framework (Reyes, 2024) involving four phases: problematizing, visibilizing, reframing, and reimagining. To journey intentionally on the “long path,” then, our research must courageously operate coalitionally and aim to not only improve conditions of today, but for tomorrow as well. As such this scholarship contributes to the “long path” by not only adding to the discourse that works to challenge colonial logics in contemporary settings using praxis-directed frameworks, but also invoke histories of the social movements that still have many lessons to teach.

Author

• G.T. Reyes, California State University - East Bay