Anti-Racist Action at Freire Schools

Statement Against Violence Toward Individuals of Asian & Pacific Islander Descent

March 9, 2021

Over the past twelve months, there has been a dramatic increase in hate crimes and violence perpetrated against individuals of Asian & Pacific Islander (AAPI) heritages across the country. Fueled by misinformation regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, political rhetoric, and a history of anti-Asian racist violence, these incidents have skyrocketed, increasing by over 150% in major cities. Stop AAPI Hate reported over 2,583 anti-Asian hate crimes between March and August of last year alone, and these incidents are historically grossly underreported.

Violence has continued in recent weeks with multiple attacks against Asian businesses and individuals, many of them elderly, including the horrific murder of Vicha Ratanapakdee, an 84-year-old man, in San Francisco, and the subsequent diminishment of the crime by the local district attorney. Many of these incidents have received very limited coverage in mainstream media.

As our work as an aspiring anti-racist organization continues, Freire Schools condemns this racist rhetoric and violence and stands in solidarity with our Asian and Pacific Islander staff, students, and families. We see the burden you carry of hearing about this violence, seeing it minimized or dismissed in our society, and experiencing racism directly. And we acknowledge that our own anti-racism work needs to be broader, to support all community members experiencing racism. We commit to act in our school communities to address racism in all its forms and work alongside our Freire Family members in this quest for justice.

It is important that our work for justice extends beyond our staff dialogue to our students as well. Leaders across the network have created student-facing materials to learn about these hate crimes and take personal steps to eradicate bullying and racism from our school communities. 

We challenge all of us to support, collaborate, and act in support of our Asian and Pacific Islander community to bring justice to our schools, our communities, and our world.

Stay safe, stay connected, stand together.

Freire Schools

Our Commitment to Anti-Racist Action

From Freire Schools Network & School Leaders
June 5, 2020

The past week has been among the most difficult any of us have ever experienced as educators. For some of us, this week represented the boiling over of fear and tension we have known our entire lives. Others among us spent this week educating ourselves on systemic racism and realizing harsh truths about our own privilege and biases. All of us stand firmly with Freire Schools students and staff engaging in community protests against racism and police brutality.

This week, we marched in protest of Black death at the hands of the police. We watched in horror as our friends and neighbors were gassed and beaten by police while rising up against deep-set racism in our cities. We feared for the safety of our students, ourselves, and our loved ones. We cried. We expressed anger. We supported our kids and each other.

Most of all, we listened to our students, our families, and our teachers and staff. We heard clearly your grief, anger, fears, and frustrations. We heard the pain that you feel that Freire Schools has not done all of the work we need to do to acknowledge and fix the real and important ways in which our own systems perpetuate racism and white supremacy.

The memories of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and too many more demand that we sit with the intense and often uncomfortable emotions that we feel and use them to better ourselves and our schools.

So, today, we make a commitment that Freire Schools will develop an actively anti-racist school network. Starting now and continuing over the summer, we will develop an actionable plan to achieve this goal. This is what we know today:

• Our goal is for 100% of our Freire Family members to be actively anti-racist.
• In order for this work to be successful, those in leadership – our board members, network office leaders, and school leaders – need to identify our own biases and how they transfer throughout our organization.
• We need to think about systemic racism within our organization and how to uproot it. To do so, we will audit bias in our thoughts, our actions, our leadership, and our Freire Program (i.e. pedagogy, programs, policies, and systems) and identify our organizational blind spots.
• We admit that we may not always be able to identify our own weaknesses or be best able to assess the needs of our Black community, and so we will ask for help from experts in institutional racism.
• We will move with urgency while also recognizing that our action plan must include immediate, near future, and long-term work.
• We commit to concrete, ongoing work that continues far into the future, long after this moment of national attention and momentum.
• We will create diversity, inclusion, and equity training for all Freire Schools staff – both during onboarding and as an ongoing part of professional development. This includes our own training as school and network leaders.
• We will establish an explicit, regular timeline for leaders and staff to reflect on our anti-racist work and areas for future growth and communicate our progress to all members of the Freire community.
• We will remember at all times that our school was founded on social justice principles, and that Paulo Freire believed that education was the most powerful act against oppression. Anti-racism work is essential to our students, our mission, and our shared future.

Finally, we know that all Freire voices must be heard as we develop our path forward. We encourage all Freire Family members who are interested in working on our anti-racist action plan this summer to email racialjustice@freireschools.org to let us know that you want to join the planning team. This includes students, alumni, teachers, staff, parents, board members, leaders – anyone who is committed to developing a baseline of trust and empathy in our community, having real conversations about race in our network, and reforming any parts of our Freire Program that do not protect, support and uplift our Black students as they prepare to build the future.

We have work to do – real work to make our schools, our network, and our Freire Family better. We will make mistakes, it will be sloppy at times, and our work will be filled with highs and lows. But our students, our families, and our schools are worth it.

Statement on Racist Violence

May 29, 2020

The Freire Family grieves with our community and our country for George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and the many other Black lives lost to racist brutality.

This grief has many forms. We are sad for the Black lives lost and mourn with their families over futures brutally cut short, celebrations that will never be had, milestones that will never be reached. We are angry that systems that promote racism continue to persist and that our leaders continue to fail to hear our cries. We are scared that neither daylight nor threat of public exposure provides safety from violence, and that our young Black students inhabit a world where their lives are consistently in peril.

Racism is a failure to recognize our shared humanity. Today, we remember the names of those lost.

George Floyd.
Ahmaud Arbery.
Breonna Taylor.
Tony McDade.
Michael Brown.
Tamir Rice.
Quanice Hayes.
Aiyana Jones.
Eric Garner.
Stephon Clark.
Sandra Bland.
Kendra James.
Trayvon Martin.

This list is too long, incomplete, and ever-growing. Our hearts break.

The repeated experience of racist violence takes a profound traumatic toll on our kids, our families, and our staff. Over the next few days, each Freire campus will be offering forums for the entire Freire Family to come together to grieve and discuss these acts of violence and racial injustice. In these safe spaces, sadness, anger, frustration, confusion, and the entire spectrum of emotions are welcome. We will also continue to reflect on ways to further develop a school culture where every student is seen, heard, and supported—and where Black lives are celebrated and protected.

As a core pillar of our program, Freire Schools has always encouraged students to develop their voices, recognize and speak out against injustice, and be agents for positive change. Peaceful protest is a powerful act of freedom and a beautiful expression of our hope for the future. As our students use their voices, the Freire Family stands shoulder to shoulder with them in this urgent fight against racism.

Freire Schools is resolute in our commitment to Black students and their power to build a better future.