Hi Reader,

It’s summer! If you are an educator or an academic, I hope that means a change of pace, a moment to catch your breath, to ground yourself and reconnect with who and what matters to you before we launch into another year (good luck to those already beginning!).

This year I had the opportunity to share my work with educators and communities around the country. Wherever I went, I heard about the attacks on education, equity, history, and research, budget cuts, hostile institutions, and fear, fatigue, uncertainty and worry. Amazingly, though, in the midst of all that, I also met folks still “doing the work” of enabling learning, connection, healing and flourishing with and for young people, especially those in the cross-hairs of institutional harm. You won’t see them in the headlines. But everywhere I went, from big East Coast cities to the South to the bustling Midwest and up and down the West Coast, I met educators, systems leaders, community leaders and caregivers who are still getting up every morning and insisting on the humanity of every young person.

I asked one teacher in Florida why he continues to advocate for his LGBTQ+ students when he’s on the receiving end of such vitriol. He told me the story of a young woman he coached in track over the years. After she graduated, she told him he had saved her life, simply by supporting who she was. With tears in his eyes, the teacher told me that he doesn’t have a choice - he shows up for the young people he cares for because their lives depend on it. Not heroics, just showing up because that’s what our fellow humans deserve.

So despite the harm, I have been humbled and gratified to be reminded that there are educators, community members, and engaged scholars everywhere who are staying the course. And as you’ll see below, I’ve been learning some amazing solidarity histories this summer. I hope you glean some new insights ahead:

• “Quiet knitting” of Black and Japanese American histories in Arkansas
• “Doing the Work” book tour finale
• Solidarities past & present
• Quick updates

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“Quiet Knitting” in the Arkansas Delta

"I put my pain to work."

I met Dr. Hampton at the Rohwer/Jerome Pilgrimage and hope you will be as inspired as I was when I learned her story! It was my first time visiting the camp in Arkansas where my maternal grandmother was incarcerated during World War II. Rohwer and Jerome were the two farthest-east of the camps -- the farthest by a LOT -- the camps were in the Arkansas Delta, just across from Mississippi.

It’s important to know that the Rohwer and Jerome camps were built in the midst of the Jim Crow South. At the time, many Black and some white sharecroppers were barely surviving. They often had no running water, no electricity, limited health care facilities, and deeply underfunded, segregated schools. So when the camps were erected, Black sharecroppers saw the government providing housing with electricity and running water as well as 3 meals a day (though the reality of the food in camp wasn’t great) and schools for children. A panel in the WWII Japanese American Internment Museum in McGehee, Arkansas, put it poignantly: neither Japanese Americans nor African Americans had their civil rights as U.S. citizens, so “was it preferable to be poor and uneducated with a low standard of living and free; or to live behind barbed wire and guard towers with a higher standard of living?”

Fast forward 15 or so years to 1957. You likely remember the story of the Little Rock Nine who integrated Central High School after the famed 1954 Brown v Board of Education Supreme Court ruling that separate was not equal. Dr. Sybil Hampton came just after the nine. She was the first three-year African American graduate from the school in 1962. As the only Black student in her entire class, nobody spoke to her for 3 years! I have a very socially-oriented 15 yr old; I can’t fathom what that must have been like to wake up each morning and still go to school in that context.

See the fat green notebook in the photo under Dr. Hampton's arm? It's filled with a statewide curriculum (fortunately we later discovered it had been digitized). After going to college and then getting her doctorate, Dr. Hampton later came back as the president of the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation. She explained, “Out of my own pain, I could not only understand the pain of others but also put it to work.” She launched a multi-year effort to ensure that the history of the Japanese American camps in Arkansas would not be forgotten – Life Interrupted included a documentary aired nationally on PBS, the state-wide curriculum, an art exhibit, a civil rights and social justice convening of over 1200 Arkansas students, educators, and community members, and countless local student-driven projects, like murals, a garden, and a virtual reality project in one rural community school.

In response to the current suppression of justice-focused work in schools and universities. Dr. Hampton told us that now is when we must do some “quiet knitting.” When the doors open again, we must be ready to go. Dr. Hampton is working on her memoirs, and I’m so grateful to have learned a little of her powerful story!

Grand finale of doing the work tour

Our Fireside Chat with RELOC (Regional Equity Leaders of Color) at the Puget Sound ESD (PSESD) this past spring was such a beautiful finale for the #DoingtheWork book tour. Amid efforts to erase the efforts and accomplishments of the educators doing the work every day, it gave me life to know that they felt seen in the pages – and the connection and renewed spirit at the event helped us all to keep on keeping on! Dr. Tanisha Brandon-Felder's gracious and skillful facilitation enabled us to dig into the chapters and unpack the stories, and Brad Brown and his crew at PSESD were such welcoming hosts. In addition to being a transformative leader (whose own journey parallels the story of the book in so many striking ways), Tanisha also has a YouTube channel, Talking Books with Tanisha!

As we close the campaign, I want to give a big shout out to our PR guru Nanda Dyssou and the team at Coriolis for all their support and efforts to get the book out into the world!

SOLidarities Past & Present

Did you know that the lack of agricultural labor on Japanese American farms when they were incarcerated was a catalyst for the Bracero program? Many Mexican Americans trace their families’ arrival in the US to this program, which officially started in August of 1942, a scant 6 months after the signing of Executive Order 9066 (which sent the Japanese Americans to the camps). Our communities share farming, labor and immigration roots shaped by government intervention, family separation and incarceration.

Because of the disconnected ways I learned history, I didn’t make the connection between JA incarceration and the start of the Bracero program until just this month, when I got involved with a last-ditch effort to digitize federal records at the National Archives.

Turns out it’s not an exaggeration when people say there’s a federally-orchestrated effort to erase history currently underway! This June, an internal memo revealed that some of the National Archives will be closed or “moved” in San Francisco/San Bruno, Chicago and Seattle, starting as early as August 1. Thanks to the Kansha History Project led by Amanda Mei Kim, I’ve joined a group of Seattle volunteers in an effort to digitize records related to Japanese American farms in the NW. I am just a worker bee in the effort, but it has been fascinating to go into the National Archives and scan internal (but public for now!) documents about how the U.S. government orchestrated power of attorney over Japanese American farmers’ assets, turned farms over to white farmers, placed incarceration camps where they wanted to develop land for agriculture, and supplied skilled JA “volunteer” agricultural labor for harvesting crops near the camps.

You can help push back on the erasure of U.S. history here: https://www.saveournationalarchives.org/​

Quick Shares

• Mochi Magazine writer Malia Ogawa wrote a lovely article about my work: Schools Want Leaders. Ann M. Ishimaru Starts With Communities​
• Embrace Race recently (re)shared a resource I developed for them about collaborating with other families for educational justice ​
• I logged lots of frequent flier miles this year visiting 9 different U.S. cities, Japan, Brazil, Mexico & New Zealand! They say returning after sabbatical is like re-entering the earth's atmosphere without a heat shield, so wish me luck...
• The 94th Seattle Bon Odori just wrapped up - my family has helped run the kakigori (shaved ice) booth for many years with the help of many kids and other families. We made 2750 cups of kakigori (shaved ice) this year over 2 beautiful days of remembering the ancestors, dancing, music, joy and gratitude for community.

It’s officially been a YEAR since I started this newsletter. Let me know what you think - I always enjoy hearing from you!

My hope for you as summer winds down is that you have been able to reconnect with the places, spaces, and people that ground you, recharge you and bring you joy, whatever that means. We have a long road ahead, peeps – let’s keep on knitting!

Love,

Ann
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