Letter to Our Community - January 2021

Dear Enroot Family,

I write once again with a heavy heart, all at once infuriated, ashamed, and deeply concerned. I never imagined I’d witness what took place in Washington D.C. yesterday.

Watching law enforcement permit and even encourage the actions of a violent mostly white mob as they stormed the US Capitol Building without arrest, while hundreds of lawmakers inside tried to vote to certify the presidential election, was not only concerning, it was deeply painful. It was painful to all who appreciate the sacred nature of a peaceful transfer of power, and understand the alternative. It was painful to all of us who have marched in Black Lives Matter protests and experienced enormous police and national guard response. It was perhaps most painful for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color who for generations have endured brutal violence at the hands of police simply for walking down a street to peacefully protest blatant inequality. Although the double standards implicit in white privilege are omnipresent in this country, they have never been on greater display than they were yesterday.

Yesterday’s events were both an act of, and a manifestation of, white supremacy. They were only possible in a country which formally and informally treats its white residents as if they are superior, and therefore worthy of superior power, superior voice, superior protections. President Trump and the mob who stormed the Capitol are responsible for the specific events of yesterday, but we must all reflect on our own participation in a society that made this possible. We must ask ourselves, what is MY role in addressing the white supremacy so deeply embedded in our society that was laid bare at the Capitol? This moment should deepen our resolve to identify white supremacy in our daily lives and take daily action to dismantle it.

I’ve written before about how important it is that those of us committed to fighting for racial equity not be intimidated or even discouraged by those who seek to stop our progress. The Enroot community remains resolved in our fight for racial and educational equity, and steadfast in our support for the amazing immigrant students we work alongside. With truth firmly on our side, I know our peaceful pursuit of justice will prevail.

Thank you for your ongoing support of Enroot students and for intensifying your courageous participation in the fight for racial equity in the United States.

Ben Clark
Executive Director

Fall 2020 Newsletter

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Dear Enroot Family, As the seasons change and we embrace an incredible opportunity for change as a country, Enroot is also celebrating a number of changes and firsts in our own community. We were sad to say goodbye to our amazing Director of Development and Strategic Initiatives, Dananai Morgan, and so grateful for all her contributions to our organization and our students. Over the summer we welcomed 5 fantastic new team members, including our new Program Manager, Vania Loredo, our Tisch Fellow, Shariqa Rahman, and our new AmeriCorps fellows, Ayla Wallace, Cassidy Alford and Regina Carey. We also welcomed 5 outstanding new members to our Board of Directors, all of whom are people of color and first or second generation immigrants, and who will strengthen our Board’s capacity in countless ways. We are thrilled this includes a second Program Alumnus joining our Board. We held our first “Enroot Celebrates Immigrant Leaders” event, featuring a deeply inspiring panel, moving performances by U-Meleni Mhlaba-Adebo, and the awarding of the first Enroot Annual Award for Immigrant Leadership to Alazar Ayele, Manager of Biogen’s Community Lab. Most importantly, our students have been thrilled to connect (or reconnect!) with their mentors, tutors, internship supervisors, Enroot staff, and each other as we kick off our first school year of virtual programming! Thank you for your steadfast support of the Enroot family! Ben Clark Executive Director Kicking Off a Virtual Year! In this past week, all cohorts of our high school programming kicked off the year with their virtual mentoring nights. At each of these kick off nights, new students met their mentors for the very first time and returning student-mentor pairs we're reconnected after the summer. Here's what one student shared in excitement for being part of Enroot this year: The College Success program hosted Enroot’s first ever virtual match night on the evening of September 23rd, for the 58 students participating this year. We connected 50 new mentor-students pairs and created a space for continuing matches to meet again! Students and mentors had a fantastic time playing Enroot’s version of the newlywed game, called “mentor-mentee trivia”. Students championed questions like: “what is your mentor’s weird food combination?” and “Does your mentee have siblings, and how many?”.  New this year! College Success is starting Monthly Mentoring Nights to bring our community of students and volunteers together. We hosted our first Monthly Mentoring Night on October 7th, complete with a time-management activity in pairs and a competitive game of pictionary in groups! The best part of the night was an impromptu jam session between two students who treated us all to live music on their drums and guitar. We are looking forward to the rest of our mentoring sessions! Dag and Luben's jam session during our first College Success Mentoring Night! Returning Volunteers Night!  We had an amazing time reconnecting with our volunteers who are ready to start this academic year. Volunteers had the opportunity to brainstorm ideas on how to support their students virtually and things that can make their online experience much smoother. We are excited to see how these amazing ideas come to fruition in the next few months. This year, our volunteer program has gone virtual and nationwide! We have accepted volunteers outside of Massachusetts, who will be supporting our students during this academic year. Because of the timeline and the changes, we are still in the process of matching new volunteers with students. While this has taken longer than expected, we believed that supporting students’ transitions to virtual learning was the main priority.  This year we redesigned our volunteer trainings to put a much greater emphasis on equity and cultural consciousness. We expanded our cultural consciousness training from one stand-alone session to a series of 4 workshops. The purpose of these trainings is to guide our volunteers to lean in to challenging conversations about identity, privilege, and power. We believe that having an equity training series for this year is crucial for the development of more inclusive spaces for our students, and more successful relationships between students and volunteers.  Enroot Celebrates Immigrant Leaders! On October 22, 2020, Enroot celebrated first and second-generation immigrant leaders and their essential contributions to advancing the movement for racial equity and the response to the COVID-19 crisis. 'Enroot Celebrates Immigrant Leaders' included performances by the amazing U-Meleni Mhlaba-Adebo, followed by a panel featuring Betty Francisco, Michel Bamani, Yvette Modestin, and Chirfi Guindo. 120 community members joined us for this virtual event and were able able to engage in the incredibly rich dialogue our panelists fostered by bringing their vulnerable and authentic lens to each question. We also had the distinct pleasure of honoring Alazar Ayele with the inaugural Enroot Annual Award for Immigrant Leadership in recognition of his incredible and tireless work advancing STEM learning for young people, particularly students like ours, for whom he is a great role model. Listen to U-Meleni’s beautiful performances and our panelists unique advice for immigrant students here: Thank you to our ALL STAR team of Enroot staff, Dananai Morgan, Lima James, Natasha Karunaratne, and Ben Clark for all the hard work putting this event together. And thanks to our sponsors - Biogen, Google, William Blair, Hunton Andrews Kurth, Microsoft New England, and East Boston Savings Bank for making this amazing night possible.  Welcome to the Team! We are so excited to welcome our new Program Manager, Vania Loredo, our Tisch Fellow, Shariqa Rahman, and our amazing Massachusetts Promise Fellows, Ayla Wallace, Cassidy Alford, and Regina Carey to the team! To read more about them, check out our website. Welcome to our Board! Enroot is thrilled to welcome five amazing new leaders to our Board of Directors! Nora Gay, Mahlet Aklu, Bulbul Kaul, Khushbu Webber, and Sameer Ahmed are each incredibly inspired, and inspiring, leaders, who will have an enormous impact on the strength of our Board, the direction of our organization, and ultimately the lives of our students, past, present and future.  In addition to their many talents and accomplishments, we are excited to be welcoming more Board members who can relate to the immigrant experience through their own, and their families’, experiences, and who share core aspects of their identity with our students. Their commitments to advancing Diversity, Belonging, Inclusion and Equity in their own workplaces and communities will help accelerate our own efforts to become an anti-racist and inclusive organization. We are especially excited that Nora Gay will become the second Enroot program alumus to join our Board, bringing essential first-person alumni perspective to each and every Board conversation. We’re grateful to welcome Nora back to Enroot and look forward to welcoming more alumni to the Board in future years. Below are brief bios introducing each new member. To read more about them, check out our website. Thank you Nora, Mahlet, Bulbul, Khushbu and Sameer for your dedication to Enroot’s mission advancing educational equity for immigrant students and welcome to the Enroot Board of Directors! Stay Tuned for Our Video Campaign! In the coming weeks we’ll be launching our first ever video campaign, with students, volunteers, our team, and our board sharing why they choose to be part of the Enroot community! We would love for you to be one of the people to help us achieve our goal of raising funds to support our work with Enroot students. Stay tuned and be sure to tell us why YOU are inspired to be a part of the Enroot community and support immigrant youth! Make a donation today Enroot is a nonprofit dedicated to empowering immigrant youth to achieve academic, career, and personal success through inspiring out-of-school experiences.  Mahlet Aklu November 9, 2020 Enroot in the News Enroot's Massachusetts Promise Fellows Featured! Mahlet Aklu November 9, 2020 Enroot in the News The AmeriCorps program that our incredible fellows are apart of, the Massachusetts Promise Fellowship, featured Enroot’s AmeriCorps members, Ayla, Cassidy, Regina, and Roxie in this month’s newsletter! We are so blessed to have Ayla, Cassidy, Regina, and Roxie on our team, supporting immigrant students, and we are so thrilled to recognize the amazing work they do! Check out what's happenin' Massachusetts Promise Fellowship | Fall Newsletter 2020 MPF Fall Newsletter Hello From Your New Newsletter Coordinator! ‌ Hello everyone and welcome to the 2020 Fall Edition of MPF's Newsletter! Ivy, who serves at Freedom House, is honored to be serving as a Senior Fellow in the role of Fellow Alumni Liaison and Newsletter Coordinator. The purpose of the newsletter will be to highlight the great work current Fellows, Alumni, and overall MPF network are engaging in, provide updates on things happening within the program, and share opportunities for you to be a part of! We look forward to sharing the impact of the Massachusetts Promise Fellowship with you in each newsletter issue. First Year Fellow Team Supporting Youth at Enroot Class 22 first-year Fellows Ayla Wallace, Cassidy Alford, and Regina Carey are serving together at Enroot in Cambridge, providing immigrant youth with post-secondary support, mentoring, and leadership development workshops that facilitate English language acquisition and bolster overall success. Each Fellow’s role varies but the mission of the organization is at the core of their service. Ayla’s revolves around student recruitment and curriculum development for the Explore student cohort as she serves as a mentor for immigrant youth at Somerville High School. Cassidy leads the after-school student Leadership cohort for the Somerville Leadership program. Regina’s role involves planning curriculum for both the Explore and Emerge cohort of students at the Cambridge site. They each attribute Enroot’s values as their reason for choosing to serve at this host site. Ayla mentions while in high school, she did a lot of volunteer work in the immigration sector and enjoyed working in the ESL classrooms, however that was predominantly working with adults. She loves how Enroot combines her two passions of education and immigration. Similarly, Regina notes during her interview process, the team’s commitment to the mission was clear, this combined with her strong beliefs in the core values of Enroot, were the reasons she chose to serve at Enroot. “I serve with three other really amazing Fellows, including one Senior Fellow who has been a really great source of support. I really love my site. The energy, the dedication, and the mission” -Ayla Wallace Enroot’s approach of putting students at the center of every decision and move they make is one of Cassidy’s reasons for applying. During her first month, she’s seen the dedication the team puts towards constant improvement. The organization’s mission and work also fit perfectly into her Venn diagram of education, youth development, policy, and their impact on human lives - causes she’s very passionate about. Despite the many challenges of serving virtually, these three Fellows remain committed to their service and students. They strive to ensure their students feel supported throughout the school year both academically and personally. Their first two months have been an adjustment period, with a goal to contribute meaningfully to Enroot’s work in post-secondary planning. “I hope to provide students with a sense of stability and comfort” -Regina Carey MPF is intentional about building and sustaining community and this is evident in the collaborative work Ayla, Cassidy, and Regina are doing during their service year at Enroot. Best wishes to the three of them and we look forward to seeing what they will accomplish during their service year! “When I came across MPF and saw that Enroot was a host site, I knew I had to apply!” -Cassidy Alford ‌ MPF Alumni Racial Justice Action Group When MPF Fellows graduate from the program, they carry with them the lessons and experiences from their service year into their next chapter. In this edition, we’d like to highlight three inspiring alumnae who have collaboratively created a space for Fellow alumni to be socially conscious and intentional in their actions towards racial justice. The MPF Alumni Racial Justice Action Group launched by Abbie Weaber, Aminata Kaba, and Jenny Woodford is committed to collective action and mobilization by addressing the simultaneous and interconnected racist systems in our communities through education on various racial justice initiatives and amplifying them within the space. Aminata Kaba (Class 15 & 16) currently acts as an Impact Manager with City Year Boston. Her experiences as a Fellow serving at Girls Inc. of Lynn and Brooke Charter School encouraged her to speak truth to power by allowing her the space to facilitate and lead a variety of conversations with youth and Fellows. When Abbie made the call to action to other alumni to be a part of the Alumni Racial Justice Action Group, Aminata answered intending to support the convening of like-minded, well-intentioned MPF alumni interested in taking collective action in achieving racial justice. The existence of such groups is not only important to alumni but to current Fellows and the youth they’re serving. As Aminta explains, “live the lives you want to encourage your youth to lead: do the readings, watch the interviews, have the tough conversations, challenge and question everything. Make space for people under the heel of oppression, really commit to active listening, and then, lend them your time. Do something every single day to contradict implicit and explicit racist and discriminatory practices, policies, ways of thinking, and the rest will come.” Aminata hopes that the group and its members continue to grapple with the hard truths of this country’s founding, legacy, and present-day in order to make shifts in everyday life that dismantle the oppressive systems that be. “The hope is they’ll inspire and embolden co-conspirators in their networks to grow collective consciousness and awareness around racial injustice in our communities.” “We believe there is power in numbers and that was the basis for the action group” -Aminata Kaba Jenny Woodford (Class of 15 & 16) is a proud alum who served at the Stoughton Youth Commission and Prospect Hill Academy. Jenny currently lives in Lynn, MA, and has been getting involved in local orgs in her community. She’s currently the Marketing and Communications Manager for The Global Experience Office at Northeastern University - a proud dog mom to a rescue pup named Dewey. Jenny works alongside Aminata to help the group in setting ground rules, hold each other accountable, and set up a culture of shared facilitation. She mentions that the goal of the group has always been to use their numbers as power to enforce effective change while upholding the mission of the group which is to end systems of oppression, dismantle white supremacy and work in solidarity with the black liberation movement. Jenny remarks that “it’s through building an intentional restorative community that we will work to model what we wish to see in a liberated world and center the most impacted voices.” "I’d encourage current Fellows to think about the following: what can we learn from young people leading these movements and conversations? How can we listen more to the youth we work with about their lived experiences?" -Jenny Woodford Jenny hopes that within the MPF community, this group can bring people together with shared values to strengthen the bonds of the whole unit and use that in the fight for racial justice. By enacting this strategy, MPF alumni can continue the learning they started during their time in AmeriCorps, with the intent of being more connected locally to effect change across all aspects of racial justice within their neighborhoods and communities. Abbie Weaber (Class of 16 & 17) is currently employed at the Educational Opportunity Center at North Shore Community College where she works with adults to access and afford college. Serving as a Fellow at Girls Inc. of Lynn she ran a college access program for high school girls. This experience directly led to her current career in college access within the higher education setting. From the social justice trainings, to the meaningful conversations with her youth, Abbie accredits her two years of service as having a great impact on the formation of this group. “The idea for an alumni action group came about over the summer after I noticed a lot of MPF alums were engaging in anti-racist action individually”. Witnessing the other alumni participating in these conversations motivated Abbie to identify ways to make meaningful change within local communities and beyond, while collectively joining together as the MPF community. Knowing that many MPF alumni had been through a similar set of training and community experience greatly influenced the decision to start the action group. “It was possible to build something that would allow us to take collective action around racial justice” -Abbie Weaber The Alumni Racial Justice Action Group demonstrates how MPF Fellows are intentional about working towards change within their communities and the broader society. We’d love to keep the momentum going and if you’d like to be involved, join the Facebook group and send your email to MPFJusticeAlums@gmail.com to receive updates from the bi-weekly meetings. Thank you to Aminata, Abbie, and Jenny for their dedication and fight for social justice. To get involved, you can join our Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/222468615389354/?ref=share Join our slack channel: email Lauren Currie (l.currie@northeastern.edu) for the invite! Please join us and keep the momentum going! Don't Miss Out on Our Upcoming Events MPF Alumni [Virtual] Fall Retreat Monday, November 23rd 5:30pm-7pm MPF 21-22 Request for Proposal Release November 20th Annual Appeal Week December 7th-11th MPF Racial Justice Book Club Launch January, **SIGN UP HERE** Click on the photo to register-we hope to see you there! The Massachusetts Promise Fellowship at City and Community Engagement | 360 Huntington Ave, 232 YMC, Boston, MA 02115 Unsubscribe rox.sierra93@hotmail.com Update Profile | About our service provider Sent by masspromisefellows@northeastern.edu powered by Mahlet Aklu November 7, 2020 Letters To Our Community Cause for Celebration for our Enroot Community! Mahlet Aklu November 7, 2020 Letters To Our Community Dear Enroot Community, I write to you again, deeply grateful that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have secured enough electoral college votes to become our next President and Vice President. I am encouraged that over 4 million more voters chose to support a candidate who recognizes the important contributions of immigrants to this country and seeks to advance, rather than hinder, their opportunities here understands the harm caused by systemic racism on a daily basis to millions of Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPoC), and that our approach to addressing it must also be systematic and is committed to the hard work of re-building the foundation for a more empathetic and unified country. More people voted for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris than voted for any presidential ticket in US history. While this news certainly gives many of us in the Enroot community cause for celebration, and we should take time to do so, I know I am not the only one feeling heartbroken to see how many millions of people still seem to accept the status quo of hateful rhetoric and exclusionary policy from the current administration. To me this underscores how important it is that each of us play an active role in our daily lives to confront racism and hatred in all of its forms, and to help expand our collective appreciation for humanity. Sadly, our country has taken some big steps backward over the last few years. We have a long journey ahead as we strive to fully live into our founding values. True progress will require each and every one of us who share a vision for a more welcoming, inclusive, equitable, and just country to recommit ourselves to its relentless pursuit. I’m grateful to belong to a community, the Enroot community, where I can confidently declare such a vision with the knowledge that you not only share it, but are also committed to bringing it into reality. With love and hope for our future, together, Ben Mahlet Aklu November 4, 2020 Letters To Our Community Enroot Remains Committed in Our Pursuit of Educational and Racial Equity Mahlet Aklu November 4, 2020 Letters To Our Community Dear Enroot Community, I write to you today as we all anxiously await the conclusion of the 2020 presidential election to express my love and appreciation for the role that each of you play in making the Enroot family so special. Regardless of the ultimate outcome of this election, I want to reaffirm that Enroot remains more committed than ever to working shoulder to shoulder with our students, to celebrating the essential contributions immigrants make across our country every single day, and to advocating for equity and justice for immigrant families. Whoever our next president is, we all have a more important responsibility than ever before to speak our truth at every opportunity about the vital role immigrants play in our communities and about how grateful we are for all that immigrants add to this country. Enroot continues to celebrate the historic candidacy of Senator Kamala Harris, who is the daughter of immigrants and the first woman who identifies as Black and South Asian to run as a Vice Presidential candidate for a major party. Her candidacy is itself a major milestone for this country and an inspiration for many millions of individuals, especially those who identify as Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPoC) and/or belong to immigrant households. For many in the Enroot community and across the country, this election is about so much more than policy and politics. It is about who is welcome here, who truly belongs, who is included, and who is ‘othered’. It is about whose humanity is fully validated and valued. It is about whose lives matter, who feels safe, and who can access the resources required to lead a healthy, productive life. Ultimately, it is about our very identity as a country, and whether we remain committed to marching, step by step, closer to the day when we can say we truly live up to our founding ideals, that all people are created equal, and are therefore equally deserving of love, respect, liberty, and opportunity. It is important to remain aware that each of us will be processing the election in a different way, based on our identities and those of our loved ones. As you care for yourself and other members of our Enroot community, please keep the following in mind: Many immigrant students and families may be experiencing especially high levels of anxiety and fear related to the election, based on how dramatically the outcome could impact the next few months and years of their lives. This anxiety is layered upon 4 years of increasingly common incidents of racism, xenophobia, and anti-immigrant rhetoric, in addition to stress caused by the covid-19 crisis, which has disproportionately impacted BIPoC, including millions of immigrant families. The prolonged uncertainty of the election outcome and possibility of election related violence may be triggering and re-traumatizing for some immigrant students and families who experienced similar situations prior to moving to the United States. Given these and other considerations, it is especially important that we all, regardless of our own identity, make extra efforts to extend care and love to immigrant families in our community. This afternoon we will be holding sessions for our students, and then volunteers, to process the election as a community. I hope each of you will find a way to reach out to someone who might need your compassion in the days, weeks and months ahead. Although I find my faith in our country’s collective sense of humanity shaken over the last 4 years, I’d like to share a quote that I hold tight in times like these. Following the conclusion of the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1965, Martin Luther King Jr., paraphrasing the words of 19th century abolitionist minister Theodore Parker, said “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Enroot will continue vigorously fighting for educational and racial equity alongside our amazing students and we remain deeply grateful for your partnership in this work. With love and great appreciation, Ben Clark Newer Posts Older Posts Back to Top 99 Bishop Allen Drive, Unit 129, Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States6178765214info@enrooteducation.org contact us info@enrooteducation.org (617) 876-5214 99 Bishop Allen Drive, Unit 129 | Cambridge, MA 02139 newsletter © enroot education 2018

Enroot's Massachusetts Promise Fellows Featured!

The AmeriCorps program that our incredible fellows are apart of, the Massachusetts Promise Fellowship, featured Enroot’s AmeriCorps members, Ayla, Cassidy, Regina, and Roxie in this month’s newsletter! We are so blessed to have Ayla, Cassidy, Regina, and Roxie on our team, supporting immigrant students, and we are so thrilled to recognize the amazing work they do!

Cause for Celebration for our Enroot Community!

Dear Enroot Community,

I write to you again, deeply grateful that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have secured enough electoral college votes to become our next President and Vice President.

I am encouraged that over 4 million more voters chose to support a candidate who

• recognizes the important contributions of immigrants to this country and seeks to advance, rather than hinder, their opportunities here

• understands the harm caused by systemic racism on a daily basis to millions of Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPoC), and that our approach to addressing it must also be systematic

• and is committed to the hard work of re-building the foundation for a more empathetic and unified country.

More people voted for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris than voted for any presidential ticket in US history.

While this news certainly gives many of us in the Enroot community cause for celebration, and we should take time to do so, I know I am not the only one feeling heartbroken to see how many millions of people still seem to accept the status quo of hateful rhetoric and exclusionary policy from the current administration. To me this underscores how important it is that each of us play an active role in our daily lives to confront racism and hatred in all of its forms, and to help expand our collective appreciation for humanity. Sadly, our country has taken some big steps backward over the last few years. We have a long journey ahead as we strive to fully live into our founding values. True progress will require each and every one of us who share a vision for a more welcoming, inclusive, equitable, and just country to recommit ourselves to its relentless pursuit.

I’m grateful to belong to a community, the Enroot community, where I can confidently declare such a vision with the knowledge that you not only share it, but are also committed to bringing it into reality.

With love and hope for our future, together,

Ben

Enroot Remains Committed in Our Pursuit of Educational and Racial Equity

Dear Enroot Community,

I write to you today as we all anxiously await the conclusion of the 2020 presidential election to express my love and appreciation for the role that each of you play in making the Enroot family so special.

Regardless of the ultimate outcome of this election, I want to reaffirm that Enroot remains more committed than ever to working shoulder to shoulder with our students, to celebrating the essential contributions immigrants make across our country every single day, and to advocating for equity and justice for immigrant families. Whoever our next president is, we all have a more important responsibility than ever before to speak our truth at every opportunity about the vital role immigrants play in our communities and about how grateful we are for all that immigrants add to this country.

Enroot continues to celebrate the historic candidacy of Senator Kamala Harris, who is the daughter of immigrants and the first woman who identifies as Black and South Asian to run as a Vice Presidential candidate for a major party. Her candidacy is itself a major milestone for this country and an inspiration for many millions of individuals, especially those who identify as Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPoC) and/or belong to immigrant households.

For many in the Enroot community and across the country, this election is about so much more than policy and politics. It is about who is welcome here, who truly belongs, who is included, and who is ‘othered’. It is about whose humanity is fully validated and valued. It is about whose lives matter, who feels safe, and who can access the resources required to lead a healthy, productive life. Ultimately, it is about our very identity as a country, and whether we remain committed to marching, step by step, closer to the day when we can say we truly live up to our founding ideals, that all people are created equal, and are therefore equally deserving of love, respect, liberty, and opportunity.

It is important to remain aware that each of us will be processing the election in a different way, based on our identities and those of our loved ones. As you care for yourself and other members of our Enroot community, please keep the following in mind:

• Many immigrant students and families may be experiencing especially high levels of anxiety and fear related to the election, based on how dramatically the outcome could impact the next few months and years of their lives.

• This anxiety is layered upon 4 years of increasingly common incidents of racism, xenophobia, and anti-immigrant rhetoric, in addition to stress caused by the covid-19 crisis, which has disproportionately impacted BIPoC, including millions of immigrant families.

• The prolonged uncertainty of the election outcome and possibility of election related violence may be triggering and re-traumatizing for some immigrant students and families who experienced similar situations prior to moving to the United States.

Given these and other considerations, it is especially important that we all, regardless of our own identity, make extra efforts to extend care and love to immigrant families in our community. This afternoon we will be holding sessions for our students, and then volunteers, to process the election as a community. I hope each of you will find a way to reach out to someone who might need your compassion in the days, weeks and months ahead.

Although I find my faith in our country’s collective sense of humanity shaken over the last 4 years, I’d like to share a quote that I hold tight in times like these. Following the conclusion of the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1965, Martin Luther King Jr., paraphrasing the words of 19th century abolitionist minister Theodore Parker, said “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

Enroot will continue vigorously fighting for educational and racial equity alongside our amazing students and we remain deeply grateful for your partnership in this work.

With love and great appreciation,

Ben Clark