Respected fellow teachers,

Read the articles below and then come back. And I don’t want any of those  tl;dr bullshit excuses. This is your life, your real and holy life, I am talking about.

As part of academia, I read the articles above not with a growing sense of dread, but with a sense that what they describe is entirely possible. In fact that what they describe is already happening.

I am not asking you in your official capacity to lead any kind of uprising, but I am asking that perhaps as colleagues we need to be preparing for the worst.  The speed at which power is being consolidated and police force is being manifest is way faster than most reasonable folk thought possible.

I hope I don’t sound crazy alarmist, but I am crazy alarmed. Along with black, trans, Latino, and gay communities you have to add academics as a vulnerable class. Governors could be the local vectors for financial browbeating (read performance funding), local student groups/clubs/organization could be vectors for outside agitprop, local communities could give vent to immigrant fears by cracking down on sanctuary wherever it is given.

Of course, I could just be a hennypenny.  If so and when this national nightmare is over, I can buy you a drink and we can have a good laugh.  Whew, dodged that one, yes?  But I live with the precariat out here in the country. I live with them among the part-time and adjunctified.  I am damned worried that the new Civilian Conservation Corp will be a euphemism for the American Brown Shirts. Their job? To round up those guilty of insubservience and put them in the border camps. All for four years of paid service AND the forgiveness of their student loans.

Yours,