A Win for DEI in the Courts as Texas Doubles Down on Censorship

Friends:

A Trump-appointed federal judge has just handed down a major defeat to the Trump administration’s ongoing war on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in education. Judge Stephanie Gallagher ruled that the U.S. Department of Education’s attempt to force states to certify that no schools used DEI “leapfrogged procedure and ran headfirst into serious constitutional problems” (Schultz, 2025).

As Brooke Schultz reports in Education Week, the administration had demanded that states sign a letter pledging schools would eliminate DEI or risk losing federal funds. Gallagher struck this down as unlawful, pointing out that the Department not only bypassed proper rulemaking procedures but also overstepped its authority by trying to dictate curriculum—something federal law prohibits (Schultz, 2025). For educators and unions that have resisted what they describe as a “war on education,” the ruling is a clear victory.

But in Texas, the fight is far from over. Senate Bill 12 (SB 12), passed earlier this year and set to take effect on September 1, 2025, bans DEI outright in K-12 schools. The law prohibits schools from considering race, ethnicity, gender identity, or sexual orientation in hiring, instruction, or programming. It even requires parental permission for student clubs, sets up grievance systems for parents to file complaints, and authorizes disciplinary action against teachers who engage in DEI work (Texas Legislature Online, 2025; Texas Tribune, 2025).

Civil rights groups such as the ACLU of Texas and Students Engaged in Advancing Texas (SEAT) warn that SB 12 represents an assault on student rights and inclusive education. They have already announced plans to challenge the law in court, arguing that it strips away support systems for LGBTQIA+, Black, and Brown students while creating a climate of fear for educators (ACLU of Texas, 2025).

The contradiction is stark: at the federal level, a Trump-appointed judge ruled that anti-DEI mandates violated the Constitution. Yet in Texas, state leaders are charging ahead with some of the harshest restrictions on DEI in the country. These dueling developments remind us that the battle for inclusive, equitable public schools will be fought both in the courts and in our communities.

As educators, parents, and advocates, we must remain vigilant. The federal ruling is a sign that justice and constitutional protections can prevail, but Texas’s SB 12 shows just how quickly rights can be rolled back when fear and ideology drive policy. The fight for schools that affirm all students—regardless of race, gender, or identity—has never been more urgent.

Now is the time to act. Support organizations like the ACLU of Texas and SEAT that are preparing legal challenges, attend local school board meetings to resist the chilling effects of SB 12, and amplify the stories of students and teachers most impacted. Our collective voice is the strongest defense against censorship, erasure, and the dismantling of inclusive education.

With our students and Gen Z Texans in mind, we desperately need you to get out and vote, too, so that we can build a better and brighter Texas. 

Check out my "power-of-3.5 percent" blog I posted yesterday. 

We can totally do this. Sí se puede! Yes we can!

-Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

References

ACLU of Texas. (2025, May 24). ACLU of Texas comments on passage of SB 12, a bill that bans diversity, equity, and inclusion in K–12. https://www.aclutx.org/en/press-releases/aclu-texas-comments-passage-sb-12-bill-bans-diversity-equity-and-inclusion-k-12

American Civil Liberties Union of Texas. (2025, June 23). ACLU of Texas, SEAT will sue over S.B. 12 — Texas law that prohibits programs and discussions involving race, gender identity, and sexual orientation in K‑12 schools [Press release]. ACLU of Texas. https://www.aclutx.org/en/press-releases/aclu-texas-seat-will-sue-over-sb-12-texas-law-prohibits-programs-and-discussions

Schultz, B. (2025, August 15). Ed. Dept.’s anti-DEI efforts leapfrog procedure and run headfirst into serious constitutional problems, judge rules. Education Week. https://www.edweek.org

Texas Legislature Online. (2025). Senate Bill 12 analysis, 89th Legislature. https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/89R/analysis/pdf/SB00012F.pdf

Texas Tribune. (2025, May 24). Texas law bans DEI in K–12 schools, limits discussion of gender and sexuality. https://www.texastribune.org/2025/05/24/texas-dei-ban-schools-senate-bill-12 

Trump Can’t Require Schools to Certify They Won’t Use DEI, Judge Says

The Ed. Dept.'s anti-DEI efforts leapfrog procedure and ‘run headfirst into serious constitutional problems,’ the judge, a Trump appointee, ruled

Brooke Schultz, EdWeek | August 15, 2025

The Trump administration ran “into serious constitutional problems” by asking states to certify their school districts don’t use diversity, equity, and inclusion practices, a federal judge ruled this week.

Maryland District Judge Stephanie Gallagher on Thursday sided with a coalition of plaintiffs—including the American Federation of Teachers, the nation’s second-largest teachers’ union, and the Eugene, Ore., school district—that sued in an effort to strike down several efforts made by the U.S. Department of Education to curb educators’ use of what it called “illegal DEI practices” without defining the term.

The plaintiffs were challenging a Feb. 14 department memo, sent to K-12 schools and universities, telling them to cease using “race as a factor in admissions, financial aid, hiring, training, and other institutional programming,” and a certification requirement, through which the Education Department threatened to withhold federal funding unless states signed a letter saying no schools used DEI.

Gallagher, along with other federal judges considering similar cases, had already agreed with plaintiffs that the Feb. 14 “Dear Colleague” letter ran afoul of the law, but her 76-page order Thursday fully considered the certification requirement. A Trump-appointed judge, Gallagher found it unlawful.

“This court takes no view as to whether the policies at issue in this case are good or bad, prudent or foolish, fair or unfair. But, at this stage too, it must closely scrutinize whether the government went about creating and implementing them in the manner the law requires. Here, it did not,” she wrote in her opinion. “And by leapfrogging important procedural requirements, the government has unwittingly run headfirst into serious constitutional problems.”

The ruling is a victory for the educators who have repeatedly challenged President Donald Trump’s administration for its swift and aggressive action to carry out the president’s policy agenda. Since taking office, the Trump administration has zeroed in on what it calls “illegal DEI”—issuing executive orders and launching other policy efforts to curb its use.

Plaintiffs called Gallagher’s opinion an “invaluable decision that will have a sweeping and positive impact on public schools, teachers, and students.”

“Threatening teachers and sowing chaos in schools throughout America is part of the Trump-Vance administration’s war on education, and today the people won,” the coalition, represented by the group Democracy Forward, said in a statement. “While the fight to protect public education is far from over, today’s ruling is an important victory.”

An Education Department spokesperson said, despite the ruling, the agency “remains committed to its responsibility to uphold students’ anti-discrimination protections under the law.”

“While the department is disappointed in the judge’s ruling, judicial action enjoining or setting aside this guidance has not stopped our ability to enforce Title VI protections for students at an unprecedented level,” the spokesperson continued.

Judge says administration can’t express viewpoints at ‘expense of constitutional rights’

Early into his second term, Trump signed an executive order threatening federal funds if schools used DEI, which he termed “discriminatory equity ideology.” The Education Department began working in tandem by issuing anti-DEI memos, opening an “End DEI” portal for the public to report the use of DEI, and directing states and school districts to certify they wouldn’t use DEI in order to receive federal funds. The department has also opened at least 65 civil rights investigations into school districts and colleges over alleged use of DEI, alleging violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act for initiatives such as a Black Student Success Plan in Chicago.

Twenty-one states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico had said they would sign the certification, according to an Education Week tally. Twenty-five states declined to sign it. The Education Department set an April 24 deadline.

The actions sparked several lawsuits, and three judges in April agreed with plaintiffs that they didn’t pass legal muster, putting them on hold for slightly different reasons.

Gallagher, appointed to the federal bench in Trump’s first term, found in April that the administration hadn’t followed proper procedure in directing schools to eliminate DEI programs, which she said represented a significant policy change. She also found that the directive overstepped the federal government’s authority with respect to curriculum, which it’s prohibited by law from influencing or prescribing.

Her April ruling temporarily blocked the Feb. 14 “Dear Colleague” letter on DEI. Her Thursday ruling was the final finding in the case.

In the Thursday decision, Gallagher said the letter and certification requirement “both make credible and specific threats of enforcement relating to classroom speech.” She also found that the administration did not properly follow rulemaking procedures.

“The administration is entitled to express its viewpoints and to promulgate policies aligned with those viewpoints,” she wrote. “But it must do so within the procedural bounds Congress has outlined. And it may not do so at the expense of constitutional rights.”

American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten called Gallagher’s decision a “huge win” and “sweeping indictment” of the Trump administration’s actions.

“This decision rightly strikes down the government’s attempt to dictate curriculum, and, in so doing, upholds the purpose and promise inherent in our public schools,” she said in a statement.

The Power of 3.5%: Why Small Numbers of People Can Change Everything in Texas and the World by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

The Power of 3.5%: Why Small Numbers of People Can Change Everything in Texas and the World

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

Rally demonstrators, Austin, Texas Aug. 16, 2025

I was at yesterday's protest on redistricting at the capitol and saw this sign that read: "This is what stealing an election actually looks like?" with 3.5 % in the lower, right-hand corner. I’ve been thinking a lot about this figure that keeps resurfacing in movement circles and decided to look this up.

In their analysis of hundreds of resistance campaigns worldwide from 1900 to 2006, Chenoweth and Stephan (2011) found that nonviolent movements were consistently more successful than violent ones. A key takeaway from their research is that movements with the active participation of at least 3.5% of a country’s population almost always prevailed. While not a rigid formula, this finding highlights the potential for ordinary people, when organized and persistent, to destabilize authoritarian regimes and force major change.

Chenoweth (2013) points to numerous historical examples that illustrate this pattern, including the People Power movement in the Philippines, the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon, and the Rose Revolution in Georgia. It is a reminder that even in the face of overwhelming power, ordinary people, when organized and committed, can alter the course of history. Do check out Chenoweth's excellent viral Ted Talk delivered in Boulder, Colorado on November 4, 2013.

Their research continues to shape how activists and analysts interpret protest movements around the world. The 3.5% benchmark has become a symbolic way to assess when a movement has reached the kind of critical mass that can reshape political realities.

But here’s where we need nuance. As Chenoweth herself warns, this is not a magic formula. It’s not simply about reaching a numerical threshold; it’s about the quality of the organizing. Are people disciplined in non-violence? Are demands clear and resonant? Are movements well organized, diverse, and premised on coalitions of conscience?

Congressman Greg Casar in Austin Tx Capitol
Aug. 17, 2025

Do movements draw from all corners of society—including defectors from the very systems they seek to challenge? And are we, in this moment, even defining our struggle as one against authoritarianism? The answer to all of these questions is a resounding "yes" here in Texas. Moreover, this is certainly the language we heard yesterday from various speakers, including Congressman Greg Casar and Dolores Huerta.

Still, the number is instructive. In U.S. terms, 3.5% translates into approximately 12 million people. Imagine that many marching, boycotting, striking, voting, and creating alternative institutions of care and solidarity. That’s the scale of participation needed to shake the foundations of any unjust system. Importantly, many successful movements succeeded with far fewer numbers—but never without the critical mass to make repression untenable and the status quo unsustainable.

Dolores "Pinky" Carrillo

So, what does this mean for us? It means we cannot dismiss the power of people in the streets or belittle the power of protest. I adore my dear friend, Dolores "Pinky" Carrillo, who I always see at rallies and mobilizations in Austin—and often members of her family, as well—advocating for the civil and human rights. Pinky regularly travels to Washington, D. C. to advocate for disability rights.

I love the pride and passion for organizing that I see in many of our youth like Cameron Samuels who founded a massively successful youth movement in Texas named Students Engaged in Advancing Texas and Edwin Escamilla, young people who are on fire for a more just and caring world.

Cameron Samuels & Martha P. Cotera

I adore our elders like Martha P. Cotera who literally motivated me yesterday to get out of the house and to get Dezaree Walker and me to the march that I somehow hadn't heard about until Friday evening. 

I love knowing that if I make my way to the capitol, chances are that I will run into many students, friends and colleagues without whom life would feel less enriched. I feel truly blessed and fulfilled by the intergenerational and intersectional alliances and authenticity that is always so beautifully expressed in our social movements. 

ACC Student, Edwin Escamilla & me

Cynthia Perez & Dezaree Walker

This is what we must never underestimate, namely what happens when everyday folks—small business owners, nonprofit sector friends, teachers, students, workers, and families—decide they’ve had enough. Numbers matter, but so do strategy, vision, and persistence. We are, as Chenoweth notes, in uncharted territory, with authoritarian regimes learning how to neutralize even mass protest. However, this only makes our work more urgent.

Who knows—maybe we in Texas already have the 3.5%. What we need is sharper focus on our organizing, our messaging, and our collective voice. What is the resonant message, the positive vision, the powerful rhetoric that can move people from passivity to action? Whatever it is, if you can see the smiles on these faces, it's happening!

I really encourage you to treat yourself to Erica Chenoweth's inspiring, data-driven TEDx Talk in Boulder, Colorado. 

I hold onto this: democracy has never been gifted from the top down. It has always been claimed and reclaimed from the bottom up. And if it takes 3.5%—or fewer—to bend history’s arc toward justice, then surely, we can—and indeed must—rise to that challenge.

Sí se puede! Yes we can!

-Angela Valenzuela

References

Chenoweth, E. (2013, February 18). The success of nonviolent civil resistance | Erica Chenoweth | TEDxBoulder [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJSehRlU34w

Chenoweth, E., & Stephan, M. J. (2011). Why civil resistance works: The strategic logic of nonviolent conflict. Columbia University Press.

Leingang, R. (2025, July 17). What is the 3.5% protest rule and what does it mean for the US? The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/17/what-is-the-3-5-percent-protest-rule?utm_source=chatgpt.com

Stephan, M. J., & Chenoweth, E. (2008). Why civil resistance works: The strategic logic of nonviolent conflict. International security, 33(1), 7-44.

"The Man Who Was Caged in a Zoo" by Pamela Newkirk, The Guardian, June 3, 2015

Friends and Colleagues:

When we as scholars mention the “colonial gaze,” this harrowing account helps capture what we mean. Author Pamela Newkirk in The Guardian, revisits the life and death of Ota Benga, a young man kidnapped from the Congo in 1904, displayed at the St. Louis World’s Fair, and later caged alongside an orangutan at the Bronx Zoo. He was a Mbuti (Congo pygmy). 

His “exhibition”—billed as an ethnological and scientific display—drew more than 220,000 visitors in a single month. White spectators gawked, newspapers mocked, and scientific authorities defended the spectacle as an educational opportunity, invoking what are now long-discredited racial theories that framed African peoples as inferior or subhuman.

Benga’s story is not merely one of personal tragedy, though it is that in the most wrenching sense. It exposes the machinery of U.S. imperialism, white supremacy, and so-called “progressive” science in the early 20th century—a machinery in which leading scientists, museum officials, media outlets, and political elites collaborated to legitimize racial hierarchy. 

Even in America’s most cosmopolitan city, decades after the abolition of slavery, Benga’s humanity was denied, his dignity trampled for entertainment, and his story distorted to fit colonial fantasies. He would eventually be freed from the zoo but never from the profound alienation of captivity, ending his life in 1916. Beyond heartbreaking.

We might like to think this history is safely behind us, but Benga’s story resonates in our present. The same gaze that reduced him to a spectacle persists today, operating in subtler yet insidious ways—in the policing of Black bodies, in the devaluation of African and Indigenous knowledges, racial profiling, anti-Critical Race Theory agendas, book bans, and in the separation of immigrant families and the caging of their children.

Let me be clear: the colonial gaze is not only about how the powerful look at the marginalized, but also about how that look shapes policy, culture, and the very boundaries of belonging. 

I lament—and call out—how these colonial ways of knowing still lurk in the smug confidence of those who think “our American heritage," or right-wing policies can excuse cruelty, and in the complacent shrug of institutions that protect power over people. 

In remembering Ota Benga—and other similarly dehumanized people like Ishi, a Native American who was the last of his Yahi tribe, or Sarah Baartman (referred to as "Hottentot Venus")—we confront the long arc of racial injustice in the United States. And with this, the urgent need to both give voice to the voiceless and dismantle the ideologies that made his captivity possible and that very much continue to haunt us today whenever we witness the callous treatment toward those deemed as "other."

-Angela Valenzuela

The man who was caged in a zoo

by Pamela Newkirk | The Guardian | June 3, 2015



Ota Benga (second from left) and fellow countrymen at the St Louis World’s Fair, 1904 Photograph: University of 

South Carolina

In 1904, Ota Benga was kidnapped from Congo and taken to the US, where he was exhibited with monkeys. His appalling story reveals the roots of a racial prejudice that still haunts us.

In anticipation of larger crowds after the publicity in the New York Times, Benga was moved from a smaller chimpanzee cage to one far larger, to make him more visible to spectators. He was also joined by an orangutan called Dohang. While crowds massed to leer at him, the boyish Benga, who was said to be 23 but appeared far younger, sat silently on a stool, staring – sometimes glaring – through the bars.

The exhibition of a visibly shaken African with apes in the New York Zoological Gardens, four decades after the end of slavery in America, would highlight the precarious status of black people in the nation’s imperial city. It pitted the “coloured” ministers, and a few elite allies, against a wall of white indifference, as New York’s newspapers, scientists, public officials, and ordinary citizens revelled in the spectacle. By the end of September, more than 220,000 people had visited the zoo – twice as many as the same month one year earlier. Nearly all of them headed directly to the primate house to see Ota Benga.

His captivity garnered national and global headlines – most of them inured to his plight. For the clergymen, the sight of one of their own housed with monkeys was startling evidence that in the eyes of their fellow Americans, their lives didn’t matter.

View image in fullscreenThe New York Times report about Ota Benga on 9 September, 1906. 

Photograph: The New York Times

Did Trump’s Hiring Freeze Raise the Death Toll in Texas Floods? by Diane Ravitch

Friends:

Great question that many of us have asked. Diane Ravitch explores this on her blog in a recent post, highlighting a Texas Monthly report about the Trump administration’s hiring freeze—and its possible role in Texas’s deadly July floods. The National Weather Service had planned to embed an emergency response specialist in the Texas Division of Emergency Management to ensure that extreme-weather warnings were not just issued, but understood and acted upon. That hire was weeks away from starting when Trump froze all federal hiring on his first day in office. The position was never filled.

In Kerr County and across Central Texas, at least 135 people died. While meteorologists insist their forecasts were accurate, some experts question whether the missing liaison might have pushed messaging hard enough to save lives. As Victor Murphy, a veteran climate-service manager, put it: “Lives may have been saved or could have been saved, but we’ll never know.”

This is what happens when political posturing overrides public safety. Cutting or freezing critical positions might sound like “draining the swamp,” but it can drain away the very capacity we need to respond to crisis. Texas lost up to 30 weather service employees during the freeze and related attrition—crippling its ability to translate forecasts into life-saving action.

Disaster preparedness is not just about predicting the storm; it’s about ensuring the right people, in the right places, have the authority and capacity to sound the alarm and guide the response. The “arbitrariness and capriciousness” Murphy describes is not some abstract flaw in governance—it is measured in human lives. 

After 45 years with the National Weather Service, Murphy took early retirement, a loss of deep institutional knowledge driven in part by the very staffing cuts and hiring freezes he condemned. 

History, and lived experience, teach us that when decisions are made on impulse, without expertise, planning, or accountability, the outcome is almost always the same: things go wrong, people suffer, and preventable tragedies become inevitable. It's hard to argue with this, my friends.

In emergency management, you don’t get do-overs. When leadership treats expert staffing as expendable, the cost is paid in grief. And when ideology floods the forecast, the casualties will not be confined to the storm’s path.

Thanks, Diane, for putting this out there. So many Texans are searching for answers and accountability to the terrible tragedy that befell us recently. Remembering this tragedy should mean more than memorials—it should mean changing the systems that failed to protect us.

-Angela Valenzuela

Did Trump’s Hiring Freeze Raise the Death Toll in Texas Floods?


By dianeravitch on August 12, 2025

Read on blog or Reader
 Diane Ravitch's blog

The Texas Monthly points out that the state was supposed to get an emergency coordinator for its weather service. But that person was never hired because Trump ordered a freeze on all federal hiring the day he took office.

Texas Monthly reported:

The prospective hire was meant to help solve a persistent problem in dealing with Texas’s many natural disasters: translating warnings about extreme weather into appropriate action. By late January, the National Weather Service’s Fort Worth office had selected a meteorologist to serve as an “emergency response specialist” within the Texas Division of Emergency Management, which coordinates the state’s emergency-management program. The new hire, part of a nationwide reorganization of the National Weather Service, would have “embedded” at the TDEM to help decision-makers prepare for and respond to extreme weather. If all had gone according to plan, the federal meteorologist would have been working elbow to elbow with state emergency responders during the July flooding in Central Texas that killed at least 135.

But when Donald Trump took office on January 20 and announced a federal hiring freeze that day, the new hire hadn’t yet started. The role was left unfilled. “We just couldn’t quite dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s before the federal hiring freeze hit,” said Victor Murphy, the climate-service program manager in the Fort Worth office who took early retirement in April after 45 years with the NWS. “Lives may have been saved or could have been saved, but we’ll never know.”

In the aftermath of the floods in Kerr County and others parts of Central Texas, officials questioned whether staffing shortages in the National Weather Service—the result of the hiring freeze as well as DOGE-led early retirements and firings—had damaged the federal agency’s ability to accurately forecast the extreme rainfall and warn about the extraordinary flooding that would quickly follow. Many meteorologists pushed backhard on this narrative. They said the Austin/San Antonio office, which covers much of the Hill Country, performed adequately despite the cuts, with reasonably accurate forecasting and timely flood watches and warnings. Still, others have asked whether the NWS’s messaging to the public and to emergency responders could have been more aggressive.

The axed TDEM role would have worked to make sure the NWS’s forecasts and warnings were understood and heeded, serving as a liaison between the local, state, and federal governments, according to a job description and interviews with those involved in the hiring process. The emergency specialist would’ve “provided TDEM with eye-to-eye, one-on-one expert analysis,” including during weather emergencies, Murphy said. Texas gets a lot of wild weather. Residents and even decision-makers may need help distinguishing between a typical gully washer and extremely dangerous flooding, between a hard freeze and a life-threatening winter storm.

The TDEM job was part of a sweeping reorganization of the National Weather Service that began under the Biden administration. As part of the modernization effort, NWS officials were in the process of placing meteorologists in each state emergency-management office to help decision-makers. But the Trump administration effectively scuttled the project and decimated the agency’s existing workforce. NWS staffing levels were reduced by roughly 600 employees, to fewer than 4,000, in just a few months, according to Tom Fahy, the legislative director for the National Weather Service Employees Organization, a labor union. Texas weather offices lost between 25 and 30 employees—a count that doesn’t include positions left unfilled because of the hiring freeze. “The arbitrariness and capriciousness of it is just really, really sad,” said Murphy. “This TDEM job getting axed is an example of that.”

This week, media outlets reported that the Trump administration is planning to fill up to 450 jobs at the federal agency. It’s unclear whether the TDEM position is included.

Hindsight is 20/20. We will never know. 

Shining the Light on Academia Cuauhtli: Where Community, Culture, and Young Voices Thrive in Austin, Texas🌟🌟🌟

Shining the Light on Academia Cuauhtli: Where Community, Culture, and Young Voices Thrive in Austin, Texas🌟🌟🌟

A huge gracias to Becky Morales for sharing this super-cool 9-minute video posted below about my career journey, my passions, and—most importantly—the community-rooted work we’ve built together through Academia Cuauhtli. It’s always humbling (and a little surreal!) to see your story told back to you, but what matters most here is the spotlight on our collective vision for the program and the young people it serves.

I appreciate Morales’ focus on Academia Cuauhtli because the work of nurturing young minds, sustaining cultural heritage, and building just communities is, at its core, collective work. It draws on the wisdom of our elders, the creativity of our youth, and the steadfast commitment of friends, colleagues, and partners who share the same vision. To act alone would not only diminish the richness of what we create together, it would also erode the very values—community, reciprocity, and shared purpose—that give this work its soul. 🧘‍♀️✨🕊️

I must interject quickly here, as well, that Academia Cuauhtli is an important site for research and here is a link to our publications.

But here’s the really exciting news: The City of Austin has officially approved funding for Academia Cuauhtli! 🎉 This support comes at a perfect moment, as we prepare to settle back into our home at the Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center (ESB-MACC) once our brand new classroom section is completed with our official move-in date happening in early January.

Entering our 12th year of existence, this space will be more than a location—it’s a cultural anchor where our children can learn, create, and connect with their heritage in deeply affirming ways. It's also a culture and language revitalization professional space for bilingual/dual language Central Texas educators, the majority of whom are certified teachers in the Austin Independent school district with whom we are also partnered. We have big dreams and plan to share them at the ESB-MACC's Día de los Muertos opening on Nov. 1, 2025 so stay tuned. 

Special thanks to our other partner, the City of Austin and all our city champions at City Hall, especially Council Member and Mayor ProTem Vanessa Fuentes and council members Chito Vela, José Velásquez, Marc Duchen, and Zo Qadri who represents the ESB-MACC.

While this journey has truly taken a village, I joyfully honor all who have recently poured their energy and heart into our program development and fundraising, including Martha Cotera, Dr. Emilio Zamora, Dr. Christopher Milk, Rosa Tupina Yaotonalcuauhtli, Patricia Nuñez, Ana Carrasco, Aldo Frausto, and Dr. Maria Unda, whose brilliant legwork kept our vision moving forward while many of us were out of pocket this summer.

Special thanks, as well, to Michelle Rojas, Katya Guzman, and Marie Ortiz at the ESB-MACC for their awesome support, creativity, and hospitality as we prepare to make our brand new space a vibrant home. Their dedication ensures that our cultural and educational mission will flourish within the walls of the ESB-MACC, enriching the lives of our students, families, and the broader Austin community.

So here’s to the next chapter: more storytelling, more community, and more young voices discovering the power of their own stories and histories. And here’s to the people—like Becky—who help share our story far and wide. 💛

-Angela Valenzuela

Angela Valenzuela is a professor in the Department of Curriculum & Instruction and the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy. She is a researcher and prolific published scholar, focusing on subtractive schooling and authentic caring. Valenzuela is a community advocate and policy activist, fighting against the misuse of standardized tests and their effects on students of color. She also is the founder of the Academic Cuauhtli, a school that celebrates the linguistic and cultural capital of the Latino students it serves. and curriculum expert.

"Time for Progressives to Become Active In the Democratic Party," by Thom Hartmann

Friends,

I couldn’t agree more with Diane Ravitch’s post amplifying Thom Hartmann’s urgent message: progressives must learn from the radical Right’s playbook. The pre-MAGA Tea Party didn’t just protest—they took over the GOP by starting at the grassroots, winning local Precinct Committee seats, and reshaping the party from within.

History shows the Democratic Party can deliver transformative change—FDR’s New Deal, LBJ’s Great Society—but only if we organize strategically, from the bottom up. It’s our turn to take on this slow and patient work at the grassroots level. 

In the meantime, we need to support our dems who are out of state so that mid-decade redistricting doesn't come to pass. Here is a link where all can contribute their support: https://poweredxpeople.org/ 

Sí se puede! Yes we can!

-Angela Valenzuela

Time for Progressives to Become Active In the Democratic Party

Read on blog or Reader
 Diane Ravitch's blog

By dianeravitch on August 4, 2025

Thom Hartmann, accomplished author, blogger, and podcaster, urges progressives to learn from the success of the radical Right. The ultra-Right as for many years a fringe group, far from the power center of the Republican Party. Now the extremists control the Republican Party. Hartmann explains how they accomplished this feat and why progressives should do the same.

He writes:

What if, lacking an organized resistance to fascism like we have had in previous eras (the civil rights movement, SDS, BLM, the Wobbly’s) the Democratic Party itself could play the role of producing radical, positive transformation across America?

Sound crazy? It’s actually happened twice.

The first time was in the 1930s, when Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal literally flipped our politics and the American economy upside down, turning us from a raw, harsh capitalist system to a democratic socialist system with Social Security, legalized unions, unemployment insurance, a minimum wage, workplace safety rules, massive infrastructure construction, and millions of Americans being employed directly by the government to end poverty.

It happened again in the 1960s, with Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, producing Medicare, Medicaid, the civil rights act, the voting rights act, food stamps, low income housing, National Public Radio, a transformation of our educational system for the better, USAID, Job Corps, VISTA, Head Start, a major Social Security expansion, The National Endowment for the Arts, and what was essentially free college.

Sunday, I was on Ali Velshi’s show on MSNBC a conversation about protest movements. I pointed out that back in the 60s, when I was in SDS, there were a number of groups that were quite active, particularly on college campuses, but today most of them have been gutted or banned.

Black Lives Matter has disintegrated, the movement against Israel’s slaughter in Gaza has led to universities rolling over and capitulating, and the #MeToo and abortion rights movements are essentially leaderless.

Which leaves the Democratic Party, as I mentioned on Ali’s show. Billionaires and racists turned the Republican Party into a neofascist protest party over the past decade; progressives and those of us who want to preserve democracy in America need to similarly says control of and radicalize the Democratic Party in the tradition of FDR and LBJ.

There is a vital lesson progressives must learn, which is how the far right took control of the Republican Party over a decade ago and forced the entire Conservative establishment to lurch so far to the Right that they’ve even dumped people like Liz Cheney and George W. Bush.

If progressives hope to have any shot at influencing today’s Democratic Party and kicking out the corporate sellout Democrats and replacing them with real-deal progressives, then we need to get to work right now to do exactly what the Tea Party did a decade and a half ago to take power.

And it starts in our own backyards.

Let me introduce you to the now-defunct Concord Project, a right-wing organization that, a decade ago, was in charge of helping the Tea Party’s Successful effort to take over and radicalize the GOP.

The Concord Project expanded their get-out-the-vote strategy beyond just traditional phone banking, canvassing, and putting up “vote Republican” signs. Instead, they decided to infiltrate local politics by encouraging Tea Partiers and conservatives more generally to become “Precinct Committee Members.”

Here’s their pitch in their own words from one of their Obama-era YouTube training videos:


“What’s the most powerful political office in the world? It is not the President of the United States. It’s Precinct Committeeman.”

So why is a Precinct Committeeman (or person) so important?


“First, because precinct committeemen and only precinct committeemen get to elect the leaders of the political parties; if you want to elect the leadership of one of the two major political parties in this country, then you have to become a precinct committeeman.”

As in the oldest and most basic governing reality in a republic: true and effective political power flows up from the bottom.

It starts with Precinct Committeemen and women — people who are either appointed or win local elections with very few votes at stake, in some cases only 10 or 20 votes — to gain positions that pretty much anyone can hold but which wield enormous power.

It’s Precinct Committee Persons who elect district, county, and state party officials and delegates, who choose primary nominees that then go on to hold elected office, and who help draft a party’s platform.

They’re also generally the first people who elected officials meet with when they come back into the district. And those officials listen carefully to what Precinct Committee persons have to say.

So, the Concord folks told their people, if far right Tea Partiers moved in and took over Precinct Committee seats then they’d also be able to nominate a slew of Tea Partiers to hold higher offices within the Republican Party and for primaries.

And those Tea Party Republican Party primary candidates would then be winnowed down in the primary to one Tea Party Republican to run against the Democrat in the general election. This way, Tea Partiers would end up dominating the GOP.

That was their pitch: take over the party from the inside, from the bottom up. And it worked....

Diane Ravitch's blog © 2025.

The 1968 Walkout That Shook Texas: A Story of Youth, Justice, and Change

Link to Film

Friends,

This film, The Walkout, is phenomenal. It provides a quick, consumable history on inequality and school finance in Texas, while centering the courage of young Mexican American students who refused to accept an unjust status quo. It's just under 32 minutes such that it's great from community conversations and the school and college classroom.

It's awesome to see a good number of friends and familiar faces in the film.

The Walkout shines a light on a pivotal but often overlooked chapter in Texas history: the 1968 student walkout at Edgewood High School in San Antonio’s Westside. Faced with underfunded classrooms, uncertified teachers, and crumbling facilities, these students—many still in their teens—organized alongside their families and community leaders to demand better. 

What they sparked was more than a one-day protest; it became a catalyst for a statewide conversation on school funding and equity that still echoes today. 

Told through the voices of the original students, community elders, and historians, the film blends personal testimony, archival footage, and present-day reflections into a deeply moving narrative. We hear directly from those who lived it—about the indignities they endured, the risks they took, and the pride they felt in standing up for their education. It’s not just a history lesson—it’s a reminder of the transformative power of youth-led resistance and community solidarity.

What makes The Walkout so timely is its unflinching connection between past and present. The funding inequities the Edgewood students fought against remain a pressing issue in Texas today. Watching their story unfold, you can’t help but draw the line between 1968 and our current struggles over fair funding, equitable access, and the right to a quality education for every child. 

This, despite Greg Abbott's recent passage of school vouchers (Senate Bill 2) that will siphon off dollars from public schools that will get directed toward wealthy families to cover their children's private school education. 

It's shocking to learn, for example, that while Texas is the 8th largest economy in the world, it ranks 46th in the nation in per pupil funding. This is our future workforce, my friends. We need to invest in them—especially in this economy and this moment where so many of our institutions and safety nets are getting dismantled. 

If you care about education, justice, or the untold stories of Mexican American activism, The Walkout is essential viewing. It is a testament to how local action can reverberate far beyond its place and time. I do like how it ends on a hopeful note that doubles as a rallying cry to keep on keepin' on in the struggle for equity in our schools—and by extension, the broader society.

Sí se puede! Yes we can! 

In fact, we must!

-Angela Valenzuela

A visual on property redlining that gets to the heart of school funding
inequities.

Dr. Lilliana Saldaña

Dr. David Montejano

Al Kaufmann, Esq.