Happy New Year!
Dear Subscribers,
Happy New Year! I realize we are long past New Year’s Day and well into the first month of 2023, but for me, it is still the season of new beginnings—a time to reflect on the year just ended as we plan for the year ahead. In that spirit, I hope this post finds you well and that you have much to look forward to in 2023.
As you may have noticed, I did not post as frequently in the second half of 2022 as I did during the first. I sincerely apologize for that inconsistency. I had hoped to continue posting at least once per month, but for a variety of reasons, I could not maintain it. One reason had to do with the newsletter’s initial focus. I started the newsletter to share information more easily about the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board’s redistricting process. The initial posts—A Good Law is Hard to Find, Parts I and II—provide a fairly substantial amount of background information on the issue. Regardless of whether it was readily apparent or not, the subsequent posts built upon that foundation. (If you have yet to read those initial posts, I strongly encourage you to do so.)
When the redistricting process shifted from the school board to the courts, my ability to discuss this issue became complicated in a manner I was unprepared for. I am still not sure how best to write about it. The lawsuit filed against the school board in regards to the map it adopted is still active, so technically, the redistricting process is not finished. At some point, I expect to write about the issue again, but I am not sure when.
This is not necessarily a drawback. It may be a blessing. I had always intended to write about more than school board redistricting and public education. During the more than ten years I have been engaged in community advocacy, I have worked on a variety of issues. I may not be an expert, but I do believe my experience and the research I have conducted often provide me with unique insights. Are these insights useful? The only way to know is if I share them with others and invite others to share what they know with me. My hope is that these insights and any related discussions will be useful and that they will help foster a community that can strategically work towards a more just and more equitable world by focusing locally.
Where to begin? I am not certain, so please know that 2023 will be a year of discovery for me. First and foremost, I must determine if this is how I would like to use my time. I hope to write at least once per month, ideally more often. But life may intervene, my priorities may shift. I may not write much at all. So be it.
I am also giving myself permission to experiment with a variety of topics and approaches. I hope to try out other formats—webinars and podcasts. Many of these experiments may fail badly. I am confident I will learn from those failures as much if not more than I would from any successes. I hope you will join me in this process by continuing to subscribe and by providing feedback. Let me know what you think works and what doesn’t. Send suggestions for topics or issues. Most importantly, please allow me some grace. If something fails miserably, please bear with me and give me another chance before you hit the unsubscribe button.
In order to allow myself this time of discovery and invite feedback, I will adjust and periodically modify the settings on the newsletter. The first change I will make is to pause the paid subscriptions, but before I do, I would like to profusely thank those of you who signed up for a paid subscription in 2022. It was only a handful of you—four, to be precise, but I was humbled by your support. I cannot explain briefly why your generosity was so meaningful to me, so I am not going to try to do so in this post. Just please know that I am deeply grateful.
Of course, I appreciate all who subscribe to this newsletter. I recognize that our most precious resource may be our time. How we choose to spend it matters, and I am grateful when someone spends even a bit of time reading what I have written. I hope that by 2024 this newsletter will be a valuable source of information, that most if not all of you will regard the time you devote to reading posts (or listening to podcasts) as time well spent. I will do my best to work towards that goal.
All my best,
Tania