8 A Conversation with Sabreina Dahab hosted by McMaster University Students

Video: https://www.macvideo.ca/media/ABLD%20OER%20Episode%201%20-%20Sabreina%20Dahab/1_dym0gltg

Kojo: Welcome. Today, we have Sabreina Dahab, AKA Ward 2 Trustee. And I’m joined with some students here at McMaster. So we just want to have a conversation with you about where do Black community members know from? How do they apply that in their work? Whether you’re doing community work. Right now, you have an elected position–does that carry into some of the stuff that you do? Before we get into the questions, we have some students with us here. Do we want to do some introductions? Ahona?

Ahona: My name is Ahona, and I’m in my final year of political science, my undergrad.

Rebecca: My name is Rebecca. In my second year in the Bachelor Health Sciences Program. I’m specifically pursuing a specialization in child health.

Cassandra: I’m Cassandra. I’m in my final year of Linguistics and Health and Society.

Kojo: Welcome. We have about eight students, but they come and go and we are flexible in how they participate. We’re glad to have everybody join in today. My name is Kojo Damptey, sessional instructor here at McMaster, with the Africa and Black Diaspora Studies Program. Let’s get right into it now. Our first question right off the top is where do you know from? What are the things that inform how you do your work? In academia, they use the term Black epistemologies, right? How do we gather the knowledge that we know and how does that impact how we do our work?

Sabreina: Thank you for having me. My name is Sabreina, like Kojo mentioned. I’m a school board trustee and if it’s okay before I talk about where I know from, I think it’s important for people to know what trustees do, what the role entails. Trustees are the only publicly elected position at school boards across Ontario. Trustees are elected during the municipal elections. So when folks go out and vote for their mayor and their city council, there’s also a third ballot there to vote for your school board trustees. And people don’t often pay attention to the school board election. The school board trustees play a huge role in the education system and ensuring that students have access to an equitable and a safe education system. So we’re responsible for setting the policy direction for the board. As a board of trustees, we develop the multi-year strategic plan, which guides what the school board will be focusing on, the school boards goals, who we’re accountable to. We also pass a yearly balance budget. We also sit on committee. I sit on the program committee, the policy committee, as well as the human resources committee. I also sit on one advisory board, which is an advisory board comprised of parents, students, and community members, and this is the Human Rights and Equity Advisory Committee. I think the last thing I’ll say about the trustee role, which I find is probably the most important part of the role, is system navigation and supporting families and students and knowing where to go to access supports, if they have a concern that’s not being addressed or if they need any type of support with navigating the school board, which is often a very, very bureaucratic space. That’s a little bit about the trustee role, and I’m in my first term and I’m about halfway into my first term.

When I think about where I know from, I don’t know from one place. I know from a lot of different places and a lot of different people. When you think about being rooted in community, I think that also means that we’re always learning from community. Some of my first teachers were my parents. My dad always says this thing that I think about a lot. He always says “you aren’t alone.” And when he says that, he’s reminding me of how my actions impact others and how all of our actions impact each other and the responsibilities we have to each other when thinking about our actions.

I learn from my friends who keep me accountable; who keep me grounded and who remind me of why I ran for this role, what it means to be in this position, and how to recognize and effectively wield the power that I have to support, uplift, and empower and bring along some of those who most disenfranchised by an education system that is mired in colonial and racist ideology. I’ll get into that a little bit more later on.

I also know from students in schools. I think a lot about the fact that students are so unwavering, unresolved, and unapologetic in who they are and in what they believe in. I think sometimes when we choose to enter these systems, it’s easy to feel super isolated and small and alone and forget who you are. So when I look at students and when I get to engage with students who are unapologetic in their Islam, who are unapologetic in all of their identities, and all of their beliefs, it’s a good reminder for me of why I chose to run and why I’m here and who I’m accountable and responsible to. Also, I know from Islam, Islam is the faith that I practice, and in Islam, we’re taught to be stewards of the Earth. I take all of my guidance and all of my knowledge on our responsibility to each other from Islam.

I think those are some of the places that first come to me. I think sometimes it’s very easy as people in academia–I finished my master’s here in January–to get caught up in some of the theory and forget how that translates into the real world. I think the theory is valuable to know and understand, but not without being rooted and grounded and being taught from those with lived experiences, those who are elders, those who know more than us.

Kojo: Let me do a follow up before we go on to the next question. So I find it interesting that you talk about your friends, students, your dad, and the last one was school. And you talked about how there has to be a link between theory and how we practice it in society and in community. I would posit that what your dad just taught you, and I wrote it down, “you’re not alone.” That is what I would call a Black philosophy. That is not just isolated to one demographic within the Black community or the Black diaspora. So then when we talk about where we know from, that is an actual theory and a philosophy, that also grounds some of the work that we do. Can you expand a little bit on that philosophy of “you’re not alone?”

Sabreina: I think that philosophers, academics who spent decades researching, studying, and being in communities, also know because of what communities experienced and what communities have been through. I think about the fact that so many people in our communities will never have access to higher education because of class, because of race, because of their immigration status. How this often seen as makes them less valuable in our society. When I think about what my dad is saying, how “you aren’t alone,” I think about how if we don’t have each other, then we really don’t have anything. If we aren’t here to take care of each other to learn from each other, to show up for each other, then what are we doing to build a better, a different type of world where everybody is truly valued, where we are not judged by our ability to produce in a capitalist world, every person is seen as having inherent worth and inherent value? I think this is something that I first heard from my dad growing up, but it’s something I often hear from elders who remind us of our responsibility to each other because in a capitalist context, we’re also told to just think about the self. To remove ourselves from community, to act like we’re not accountable to people, which is the antithesis to my own belief. And I think that what we were taught by so many Black theorists and Black scholars who talk about how our cultures historically have been collectivists and continue to be collectivists and how we’re forced out of that when we enter capitalist spaces.

Ahona: Going off of that, you’ve been doing this work for a really long time, and I think that obviously, sometimes it might be easy to get jaded or discouraged or whatnot. I guess what we want to know is what inspires you and what moves you to do this work and continue to do this work.

Sabreina: I go back to this idea that we aren’t alone, when I think about what inspires me. I think about something that’s bigger than me and that’s bigger than all of us in this room when I think about what I’m inspired by. I think about again, our responsibility to take care of each other. The other thing I think about a lot too, is when I think about some of these challenges in institutions, when we talk about anti-racism, anti-oppression, or racist colonial structures, they often seem like they’re so much bigger than they are and that everything that makes up these systems, all of the procedures and the policies that are rooted in colonialism and anti-Blackness are all about choices. It’s really that simple. And that people make choices that are made to create the current lived and material realities of people. When we think about choices, people actively make choices that are impacting the learning of Black, racialized disabled students in schools. I think that we’re all placed here in this particular moment for a particular reason, and I think that if we’re not also engaging at the decision making tables. If we’re also not taking away taking back power and empowering communities with that. I don’t know how else we think about changing and working within as well as working outside of these institutions to make them more livable while we build a different and a better world. Because again, I don’t think that these systems are here forever. I think these systems and these institutions are temporary. In the interim, we have to figure out how to protect our communities, how to protect ourselves within that. Again, I think it’s about taking back that power and making the right choices and calling out other people when they make choices and not actually being fooled by this idea that these systems are so much bigger and complicated than they are, because for me it is just about choices. We all make choices around the trustee board table. Finally, I believe that we deserve better. Our communities deserve better. Students and schools deserve better, and I think that’s why I’m inspired or engage in the work I do because I want better for all of us.

Ahona: When you have moments where you might feel like potentially jaded or you feel like sometimes it’s hard to keep going. What do you think it is that pushes you to keep doing that or to do that?

Sabreina: There’s been quite a few moments in this role where I think things have felt particularly challenging because again, we can make different choices that result in different outcomes for students, but people don’t want to make those choices because they seem scary. Scarier than they are. I was doing school visits a couple of weeks ago. I was visiting one of the schools and a little girl who I’d never seen before, who was maybe in grade one or two, right up to me, gave me the biggest hug I’ve ever gotten from a child. Then in Arabic, she said to me, she goes, ‏بتكلمي عربي which translates to ‘do you speak Arabic?’ And then I went down to her level and we just sat there and chatted for 5 minutes in Arabic, and I think about how important it is for little kids, and Muslim girls specifically, to see someone else who was visible at the decision making table. This isn’t to say that representation is always liberation. I think this is very clear. But I think about those little girls who get excited when they see me in their hallways. I think about the students who I’ve worked with over the last year, who’ve pushed a lot for recognition around anti-Palestinian racism. And the challenges, the additional challenges that they would have faced if they did not have somebody at the decision making table who supported them, who believed in the same thing they believed in and wanted to have real conversations about the occupation in Palestine. So first and foremost, I think about the students. I think about that little girl. Then my friends who regularly remind me of why I’m there, why I decided to run, and honestly, what’s at stake if we don’t have someone at that table making those decisions.

Cassandra: For our third question, we want to ask: what does working towards abolition mean to you and how has harm reduction fit into this approach?

Sabreina: Yeah, abolition and harm reduction. This is something I think about a lot. I think that being in these institutions feels like harm reduction. Often, I don’t think that I’ve necessarily been able to fix and solve everybody’s problems and all of the complex issues that go on in the education system. I think that when we think about education, I think that education is like a microcosm, and that I think the issues that exist inside of communities will exist inside of communities and inside of schools. I also think about how every single level of government has a stake in a well funded, a sustainable and equitable education system: municipal governments, federal governments, provincial governments, community groups, everybody. I think about all of the families who don’t know how to navigate the school board and have had their rights violated, have not had access to due process in expulsion hearings in suspension processes. In other processes as well at the school board, where we have procedures in place that are meant to exist to stop gaps, to prevent oppression from taking place. But because families don’t know how to navigate those systems, what those rights are or what those procedures are, when they are trampled on by educators in the system or by the school board, parents often don’t have anything to fall back on because of language barriers because again, the school board is like a bureaucratic nightmare to operate.

So in the interim of building something that is better, I think it’s important to have people in these systems as harm reduction, as supporting, as doing some of this “know your rights” stuff. I spent a lot of time, more time than I think at the board table, talking to parents about what their rights are, how to navigate particular procedures and structures, specifically around suspension and expulsion. And I think we’ll talk more about this later on.

I think that education is often positioned as a neutral site of knowledge dissemination. It’s a neutral place of critical thinking of learning and of growth. This is actually not true. When we think about the history of education on this land, the education system has existed to force the assimilation of Indigenous children. The first superintendent in Ontario was Egerton Ryerson, who was also one of the architects of the residential school system. In his mind, the public school system, the purpose of it was to assimilate Indigenous children. The history of the education sector in no way is neutral or devoid of logics of colonialism, of anti-Blackness, of anti-Indigenous racism. We have to understand how I think the education system has been used as a tool to facilitate settler colonialism. It’s not about imparting knowledge, but it’s a deliberate tool to assimilate youth into a society whose goals are rooted in producing a compliant workforce, not a generation of youth who can critically think about the world we live in and how to make it better. This is a clear in education methodologies. This is clear in the curriculum. I’m not sure if you folks have all been through it, but I’ve been through the public education system. I remember what histories we were taught and what histories we weren’t taught. That’s all intentional. It is by design that these institutions are this way.

As a trustee, I don’t necessarily believe in the current model of education in and of itself. But I think in the interim of building something that is actually about learning and growth and critically thinking about the world we live in and how to make it better. I think there’s a way to make it more manageable and less traumatic and harmful for all the young students who are bearing the brunt of this, truly.

Cassandra: I think it’s really interesting you mentioned how the university and education systems are built on a foundation that is inherently colonialist. I guess I was wondering, considering our audience of university students, is there anything that we can do as individuals to help deconstruct this?

Sabreina: That’s a really good question. I think that university students in some ways are in a different position than elementary kids or kids who are going through the public system, who are still in high school, because of power dynamics. I think a lot of power dynamics that exist in public education system. But in terms of what to do is to ask questions is to know that there are stop gaps in place within institutions to prevent the violation of rights or the violation of human rights in schools, and to make sure communities know what those rights are. Before I was a trustee, I know Ahona has done this quite a bit too, oftentimes we would get calls from families who their kid was suspended, the family doesn’t think the suspension was just and discipline policies are being weaponized against their children, and we would attend meetings with families as an advocate to make sure they understood the rights, to provide translation, to make sure that they were being heard in that meeting and that they weren’t being ignored. I think there’s so many places for us to tap in to support young Black students in the in the education system, when they’re being pushed out, when they’re being pushed out by their educators, either for through disciplinary processes or just because Black students are not safe in schools. Creating alternative spaces where young students don’t have to feel like their survival mode or don’t have to feel like or aren’t made to feel like they’re bad kids, but they have the space to learn and to grow in a community that loves them for who they are and can support them and can help them advocate and also teach them how to advocate for themselves. Because students often wait for adults to come in and save them. I remind students often that they have the power to advocate for themselves, and think about safety while doing it, obviously. But they have the capacity and the skill sets to advocate for themselves. I think we just need to make sure that youth feel empowered to do that.

Rebecca: Building on that advocacy and then how it connects to schools, as first a grassroots organizer and now an elected official, what are some of the values and setbacks of organizing both internally and externally to colonial institutions that you were discussing like the school board?

Sabreina: That’s a good question. I think we need both. I think we need people on the ground who are mobilizing, who are responding, who are adding public pressure on colonial institutions, and I think at the same time, it’s important to have people who are in these systems, who are helping facilitate those conversations. I’ll give one example of one of the things I worked on in commit after I was elected.

One of the first issues I became intimately alive to when I became a trustee was the amount of students who had disciplinary policies being weaponized against them. I was receiving calls frequently from Arab, from immigrants, from Black families who often were also navigating language barriers. English wasn’t their first language or didn’t speak English at all, whose kids were being suspended or expelled at higher rates than other students. We know historically the OHRC has talked about this, other school boards have released their data that says that particular students are suspended at higher rates. And so I was having regular meetings with community members, over 15 families at a time, talking, hearing their stories and figuring out what our next step was as a community and Ahona was actually super supportive and helpful in mobilizing community as well. And we were having meetings with the School Board. Then eventually one of the responses from the school board was the denial that this was happening. And so institutions love their data. They want everything. They don’t really listen to anecdotes in the same way as they’ll believe data.

Sometimes a tension I think that communities have because their lived experiences are real, whether or not whatever the data says, right? Or like with or without the data, their experiences are real, and I believed in all of their experiences. I let them know that I believed in what was happening to them, that it was real because there are other people who would tell them that their experiences weren’t real or weren’t rooted in something that was actually there. And so we had three parents come to one of our trustee board meetings, and they all delegated to the board of trustees talking about why we needed desegregated suspension and expulsion data. We were one of the larger urban school boards that wasn’t releasing and collecting and releasing desegregated data on suspension and expulsions, whereas TDSB was, Ottawa Carlton School Board was, Waterloo District School Board was, multiple other larger school boards were. And so I motion I put forward a motion after their delegations to request that we begin collecting and releasing publicly our data so we could begin to address what was going on in our schools.

I say I give this as an example because I think that I could have just brought forward a motion at the board table and asked for this, and who’s to know whether or not it would have passed. But I think the important part of thinking about how to work with community members and to bring folks along is to also empower communities to know how to advocate to know what a board of trustee is, to know how to delegate to a board of trustees. In the event that there isn’t a trustee there that is supportive of whatever concern they have, they still know how to navigate that system and structure and are then able to advocate for a better and more just education system. I think it’s been, I think we need both, and I think we have to think for folks who are inside who have power, I think we also have to deconstruct that power and think about how we’re going to bring people along. It’s not just about me and the particular issue I wake up to and want to address, it’s also about the community who elected me and the students most impacted as I’m no longer a student.

I think institutions often see what they call “stakeholders.” I don’t like the word “stakeholders.” But “stakeholders” are people on the outside who are protesting as annoying or as rowdy, and they see it as a minority, as a small group of people. I hear this often in the school board: “oh, it was just a small group of people who have a concern.” This is how institutions talk about colonial institutions, and including the education sector, talk about our communities.

I think it’s important for us to be able to empower and bring people along when we think about who’s in these systems. I think that there’s obviously pros and cons to both. But I think as long as there’s some collaboration that is meaningful, that also recognizes one of the things I think about often, this power. I think a lot about the power that I have sometimes in some spaces, I may have less power, especially around the board table, but I still have power over decision making in that space. So I think a lot about the responsibility I have when I’m in that space. I think it’s something I don’t take lightly. I think about often as wanting to use that power in ways that is meaningful to the folks most impacted. I don’t know if that fully answered the question, but I think that there’s definitely pros and cons, and I think what I will say about the on the ground organizing is that it is necessary, it is valuable, and I think every single movement that we have won has been because of on the ground organizing and protesting and being rowdy. That is how we’ve gotten things done. And I think that I will never be able to say that that work has not been useful.

Cassandra: I appreciate how you brought up the link between institutions and communities and how they aren’t necessarily completely separate entities. Building off of that, how would you say that anti-Blackness or Islamophobia are reflected from education spaces into our communities?

Sabreina: That’s a good question. I think, again, I think a lot about how education systems are microcosm. How the education system is a microcosm. We’ve talked a little bit about the history of education, how it’s not a neutral site of knowledge dissemination, how it is rooted in colonialism and anti-Blackness and is a tool for institutions to impart capitalist and colonialist and neoliberal ideals because students often— there are power dynamics, which make it harder for students to resist some of that. But I think a lot about particularly the school-to-prison pipeline and how that facilitates, how that is rooted in anti-Black racism.

Initially, legislation around suspension expulsions actually came from the US and it was then adopted across education in Canada, or what we now call “Canada.” But initially, any minor violation of the code of conduct would result immediately in a suspension or expulsion. They had what we call a “zero tolerance policy” for anything that violated the code of conduct. You can imagine what was in the code of conduct. It was things about what your hair could look like, what you could wear, how short your skirt could be. Anything that was outside of that code of conduct, would mean that kids would be expelled or were suspended. We know that the history of how those codes of conduct were created were ways to alienate and push out Black and racialized students. When we think about how that manifests today, students who are suspended or expelled are pushed out of school, so they’re removed from access to their communities, their social systems, sometimes access to food because there are nutritional programs in some schools. And they’re removed from access to all of those things, and they’re pushed out into spaces that are also surveilled and increasingly policed. When schools push up kids, they’re directly facilitating interactions with legal enforcement who are also historically, anti-Black. The OHRC is clear, the Ontario Human Rights Commission is clear in all of the reports. I was reading a report the other day that said that Black students are four times more likely to be expelled than white students. Again, this is not because Black students are more rowdy or because of how Black students act; it’s about the weaponization of policies and procedures to push out and alienate Black students because the education system by design is created to uphold a particular type of student and build a particular type of students.

There’s this theory by Paulo Freire, who’s an author who’s very critical of the education system. He talks about the banking method. The banking method is basically a process where education or where the role of the educator is to deposit information to students who are passive agents. The banking concept in education is creating, again, like a class of students who are adaptable and manageable beings, not individuals who are critical thinkers, who are given space to learn and grow, but they’re placed into a dynamic where all they are able to do in the system is to receive, is to be passive agents of a curriculum and an education system that again is colonial.

I think the last thing I’ll say about this answer, this question as well is when we think about the trajectory of public education in Ontario, I think we can think very clearly about the trajectory of health care. We can think about the trajectory of this province and those in government, and how all of those issues also impact kids, students. Students not having access to health care is going to impact students’ learning. Students not having access to safer streets and bike lanes is going to impact how kids can get to school if they can even get to school at that point if they don’t have access to bike lanes. All of these issues about the defunding of the health care sector, Doug Ford’s initial plan to build on part of the green belt, his plan to scrap bike lanes. All of that in tandem with defunding the education sector is also going to impact how kids are able to learn. We know that through redlining policies, historically how schools are funded, which schools get funded? We know that poor, Black, working class communities are going to be most impacted by the trajectory of all of these systems, including education.

Kojo: There’s a quote, and I remember this because you mentioned Paulo Freire, he says, “liberating education consists in acts of cognition, not transferals of information.” So what that banking method is like, liberating education is not about just giving you information. It’s about what are the things that give you that cognition. Which then goes back to what your dad said. That is not information. That is about relation and how your brain interacts with people in relation to you. Information doesn’t do any of that. Right?

So I want to follow up with, and Cassandra mentioned this, how would you define abolition? And I asked that question because in the current climates that we are in right now, the discussion around abolition seems to move towards anarchy. “If you don’t have this, then who does this? If you don’t have that, then who does…” But the tradition of abolition is something that’s also rooted in Black knowing, right? The fact that you can go and capture a whole bunch of people, put them on a boat, transfer them over the Atlantic, and then ask them to work and dehumanize them, all of that. So how would you define abolition in our current times?

Sabreina: I want to preface this by saying there’s a wealth of knowledge by incredible Black thinkers, Black women who I think have a lot more, I think, thoughtful things to say about abolition. But when I think about abolition in the context of education, or in general, I also think about the now. And what we build in the now. Again, I don’t think that the education system in its current form can stay the way it is. I think that I think one of the things I have really talked about a lot is unions and the role that unions can play in either upholding or building a new type of education system. I think unions have been some of the strongest voices against the privatization of education obviously in support of more funding and better policies. But when I think about abolition, I think about what can we do now again to protect and create something else for young students in the system?

At an event a couple of months back, I was at a conference actually. I was talking, there was a question that was asked about how, something to the effect of school spaces specifically for young Black boys often are forced, young Black boys, to grow up a lot faster. and the question was around, how do we protect young Black boys from that? The answer is something I actually think about often. The answer to that question was this parent actually regularly brings around her young kids, her two young Black boys, in spaces and in community where they actually don’t have to think about that stuff. In places in the community where they’re surrounded by other Black boys by aunties and uncles where they don’t have to feel like they are being surveilled in a particular way, or being looked at in a particular way, where they actually do feel safe, and can see a different example of what things should be like.

And I think about that a lot, what can I do in the now, in the interim of abolition, to actually make young Arab kids, young Black kids, and students in our system know that there is a different way of doing things, that how they feel is not how things should be. Is that there’s an alternate way of existing together in community. I think about some of the things that have changed in school systems around you can’t really share food anymore in schools, because obviously there are a lot of allergies and there are things to consider. But the simple act of sharing food is so inherent to so many of our communities, and what does that mean for young kids who are now not allowed to think about how to eat together in that way or how to share their food. That’s just one small example. But it speaks to how neoliberalism is ingrained in and how the school board sets up all of its rules. Again, considering that there are allergies, but there are other ways for us to think about how to make sure kids are safe, while also making sure that they can still exist in collectivist ways. Even a simple fact, a lot of the schools in Ward 2, which is the ward I represent, don’t have a lot of green space, the lack of access to green space. That means that kids don’t have access to the Earth and to play and to run around and to make friendship in that way.

And so I know this isn’t fully answering the questions, going back to what are all the bad things about the education system. But what can we offer in the interim of a completely different system and structure that complements what currently exists, that we can show young students that there are alternatives. There is a different way of doing things. If that makes sense.

Kojo: Maybe let me do another follow up and if others have interventions, they can jump in. I totally get what you are talking about. Like, I wasn’t born in Canada, I was born in Ghana and I went to boarding school. And in boarding school, everybody who had food brought to them would share with a whole bunch of people. So going back again to your dad’s philosophy of “you are not alone.” How are you going to have your own piece of food and you’re eating it alone and you can’t even share it with someone that’s next to you? So what are the alternative things that students and anyone else can do to ensure that we are creating those spaces in the now? Here at Mac, there’s the Black Student Success Center, right? We have Africa and Black Diaspora studies that gives students an opportunity to focus on things that are related to Africa and the Black diaspora. So what are other things? What other complimentary things do you think need to be created to support that here and now in your definition of abolition?

Sabreina: I think a lot about what students do in schools and a lot of their work happens through clubs. The clubs that they create, which is space for them and their peers together to think about these things. Which is super important for us to have access to our histories, to think about and to have spaces to think about higher education and all of that stuff. But I also think it’s just as important for us to think about how do we create spaces for joy and for things that aren’t just about dealing with the way oppression manifests across the country because I don’t think that everything that we have to experience or building something else also means we should be able to embrace our cultures, embrace our languages, embrace our ideas around food, music, and all of that stuff. As much as I think it’s about learning our own histories and thinking about higher education, which are absolutely important. I think about the need to also create spaces for joy and spaces to just be and not have to think about or fight against anything.

Cassandra: You touched a bit on this earlier, but I would appreciate it if you elaborated more. What does centering emancipatory pedagogies and Black epistemologies in education mean to you?

Sabreina: For me, I think it’s about bringing community along everywhere we go. I think it’s also knowing and believing that institutions, as we know them now are temporary, that they won’t be here forever. I think it’s that we do have a duty to fight for our freedoms for the freedom of our community. In the interim, we also have a duty I think centering that is centering the fact that we have to bring each other along in every space we’re in that we enter, and that at the end of the day, our allegiance, our solidarity, our commitment and accountability has to come back to communities and the people, I think most impacted and marginalized by these systems in the way that they’re set up.

Kojo: Well, thank you very much. This was a very illuminating conversation and we really appreciate you taking the time out of your busy day to spend with us. So yes, this is one of the many episodes of a project that we’re doing it’s called an open educational resource. So there’s going to be a textbook, an online textbook, and this is the podcast portion of it. There might be folks that don’t want to read stuff online so they can listen. So we have more episodes to come so stay tuned. And yes, thank you, Ahona, Rebecca, Cassandra. We’ll see which students show up for the next episode. So you have to tune in to find out and we hope to have some exhilarating episodes.

Sabreina: Thank you for having me.

Kojo: Yeah. Thank you.