What kind of future...Stand with Semillas

"Ella Baker tells us 'We who believe in freedom cannot rest', Sitting Bull says, Let us put our minds together to see what kind of future we can make for our children.' "

Opal Tometi's video on .mic presents a simple plan of action for people who are just learning to organize or care enough about social issues to act. Opal frames the causes in the societal sectors to be defended as, "Black, Brown, Muslim, Native, immigrant, LGBT, folks with records, folks with disabilities and poor communities." Notably, the native depicted is an Aztec Dancer. The image of an Aztec dancer is becoming a very common iconic reference in the U.S. linked with social struggle and Indigenous Peoples. This has been a very hard fought terrain in the American popular psyche tied to the rise of the Peace and Dignity runs, the defense of Chicana/o Studies and the struggle at Big Mountain. Later, international organizing to defend the advances made by the Indigenous Peoples resistance movements in Mexico and organizing against NAFTA in the US continued to solidify the role of Danza Azteca as a form of social cultural resurgence and regeneration. I am honored to have been a part of this struggle for the past three decades, and that Semillas has reflected the values of an organized community in spite of all odds, for the past 15 years. 

Teachers and staff have been recruited to our school, our organization because we believed in a movement and commitment to radically transforming the lives and education of our children, our xinaxtin.

We survive by resisting. Resisting is not a 9-5 job, but it does require the attention of a professional - a full-time commitment to a way of life and a way of being.

All public government schools serve to colonize all children - but especially Indigenous children.

We founded Semillas to practice the decolonization of our own community and to inspire our own community's children to become Semillas - to become good ancestors. 

Those of us still on this mission recognize that the agony of defeat is often worn all too visibly by those who have given up before the struggle has even peaked. Frankly, before they have even been truly tested by the impending social and environmental crisis we all now face. We live in a country now where the president does not even pretend when speaking falsely and even white female senators are silenced on the senate floor and the media are selectively targeted - not unlike other countries on this continent. Today, the executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network, an organization used to dealing with government repression of indigenous peoples in Latin America and elsewhere wrote, "Police violence seems inevitable and mass casualties are very likely. The only way to keep people safe is to do the Environmental Impact Study.  If not, any blood spilled is on Trump’s hands and the hands of the Corps."

With the farse and theatrics of democracy in this country clearly unveiled, many have been shocked to learn that America is far from ideal from sea to shining sea.

Semillas again stands at a crossroads and no matter in which direction you look the end is not near. At this crossroads we must recommit or resign. We are not educators because we could not achieve the ideal change in our lives we thought we would in our youth. We are educators because we know that through indigenous wisdom gained since time immemorial our Peoples can be freed from this tyranny, and our children can become who they are truly meant to be instead of shadows of the oppressor's slaves. We are educators because we accept the call to put our minds together to see what kind of future we can make for our children.

Stand aside or stand with us. We have no time for self-pity or self-aggrandizement anymore. Fascism may scare you now, but the future...the future belongs to those who dare to confront it and to contradict it. Prepare yourself, your families and prepare your children. We commit to educate critically, organize passionately and 

No surrender. No retreat. 

You are one of us. Will you stand with SEMILLAS?

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