Creating Opportunities for Historically Underserved Communities: The Way to College Podcast with Dr. Cristobal Rodriguez

Hi, this is Dr. I'll leave it with another episode, the Way to College podcast. And one of the guilty pleasures of this podcast is the opportunity for me to seek out guests, find guests that who I have found either through my network or through the work that they're doing that come across on social media, on LinkedIn, Instagram. And so it gives me a reason to, reach out to folks and to say, hey, how about you join me on the podcast or would you be so kind as to share your story on the podcast? And my guest today is, is one of those individuals, and I want to say we crossed paths might have been at UT at the same time, working on our doctoral. But I've since kind of followed his trajectory, seeing the work that he's done and is doing phenomenal work these days. And so I wanted him to join me on the podcast. And so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna let him introduce himself. So Christo, all you wanna introduce yourself to our listeners out there? Yeah, Jose, gracias. And you know, for me it's always a blessing to have the opportunities to connect with like-minded spirits. And especially when you share the same fronted ISO history, Borderlands history, and above all for the love we have for our communities. And you know, what we're trying to achieve within the day is provide transformation opportunities. So thanks for having me on here Jose. For me, it's always about connecting the dots. So I currently serve at Western Michigan University and other end of the other border, I guess you can call it that. And the need is everywhere you go. And interestingly enough, in this part of Michigan, there's a lot of routes down to South Texas. And so it's always nice to connect with folks and it almost feels like three out of four, familia, sort of three out of four people that I connect with up here, we'll have a connection back to the Valley, right? Back to South Texas. And whether they came up to school from here or their familia came to be part of the migrant work needs or something rather, there's always a connection and I always appreciate that it pulls me back to Texas. And it's always also nice to have a place that I can go to and that a Mexican restaurant that has those Texas routes and it's like, oh, man, at least I can get my no palis with the Webos breakfast or I can get my minuto or I can even better. And so I love that dimension of even being up here in Michigan, even though I asked myself, like, what am I doing way the heck up here on those stormy days or weather crazy days? But everything happens for reason. For me, it's been a journey to be where I'm at now and at the same time know that like a good migrant worker, I always say academic migrant worker is you sometimes you're called with the need is where the work is and that's where my work has taken me or previously to come in here. I spent a couple years at Arizona State University prior to that I was at DC at Howard University, which is an HBCU prior to that. I spent five years at my alma mater and they're my undergrad masters are at New Mexico State University. I spent five years there as an assistant professor and born and raised a nice bussel. For me, this work of the continuous struggle for access, the continuous struggle for educational opportunity for all of our community, this is still the struggle and still an effort ever more so. Under the current politics of division and been definitely blessed with opportunities that I currently serve as a chair and the president of the American Association for Hispanics in higher ed. Just came off of my term, even though we were kind of fired by the current administration on day one serving as a commissioner on the White House commission for educational equity and excellence and economic opportunity for Hispanics. And that provided a rich experience and thinking about how federal policy plays a significant role in access and educational opportunity. And so today we'll probably connect on some of these intersections from HSI's to educational opportunity and access throughout the pipeline and I will rather to be more correct throughout the educational pathway of our community which is a P through 20 pathway system. And so for us, it's important to connect the dots and moving forward as always. So thanks for the invitation for allowing me to connect with you. Well, really the honors mine. I appreciate you taking the time. I know you're busy. But like I said, I followed your work. I saw the work that you were doing on the commission. Really proud of that work. But I also wanted to know your journey. And so to begin, I always ask my guess. If you had to identify a starting point for your own educational journey, that starting point be for you. I have several. For my own personal moment that I would call a significant moment and my own educational experience. And you had some one that are significant that if it weren't that for one experience, it wouldn't have led me to the next experience. But one that always stands out was 16 years old, begin from El Paso, familia, meganos, from the frontera, from El Valle, Juanis. And my mom said to us, you have the Niles Pagnol, you already speak Spanish, you're not taking Spanish in high school. Well, the only other language they offered was German. So my German teacher said, you all need to learn how to apply the scholarships. There's this congressional scholarship to study abroad. You need to complete it as if you were going to submit it. I won't know for sure whether you submit it, but it needs to be complete. I said, okay, so I took it serious. I did good letters of reference here from some programs I was in from a community college, college early college programs. And got good letters, recommendation, took my time, applied. And then, I'll be home. I get awarded a congressional scholarship to study in Germany for one year. So the first time I were flew on a plane, this little chicanito from El Paso was flying from El Paso to Dallas, Texas to Dallas, Washington, Dallas to Frankfurt. And for me, that was a transformational moment that altered my worldview, that altered how I connect the dots as a humanitarian to the needs of our communities and seeing the connection that we have in a global approach to identity, how we're all interconnected and why we need to strive for access and opportunity, and as well as at the end of the day, the important things that matter to our communities that then they matter to almost all communities, our families, our educational aspirations. And you see that in a very global way. So for me, that was a big moment. And then part of that was also knowing that from a historical perspective, being in Germany at the time, this is right after the reunification of Germany. And this is just a few couple of years after the Berlin Waffa fell, that there was also the historical issue to contend with. And that's the response to World War II and the Holocaust and the pain that the world had suffered. From that experience, led me to this idea of how do we address these historical traumas in this history and ensure that they're not repeated. And at the same time, think about how do we move forward? And so one of the things that we directly hit on in my time in Germany was reconciliation. And when you think about reconciliation, it applies to not just that context, but it applies to even our American society when we have to reconcile our slave past. When we have to reconcile the genocide on indigenous peoples when we have to reconcile, even continued systemic challenges, whether educational or in health or an employment, you know, things that we have been fighting with the civil rights movement, and still ever more so today in the current politics of division, that there needs to be reconciliation of our histories in order to move forward in a way that allows us to truly achieve a level of educational opportunity for all, a level of access for all. And that's still the struggle, right? When you talk about that, we're still in the fight, we're still in the struggle, we're still very much are. And there's some little bit of an ocean of like, what does that mean? Well, we are now, we still in this fight. Well, there are some things. And I appreciate the new scholarships that are out there, the new scholars that are breathing new energy, the creativity that is needed to really keep the discourse going and growing and evolving. And so there is some growth and there is more community and more Henten, but we still have a lot of ways to go still. But for me, that was a big transformational moment in my own educational pathway. What followed after that, and me going to college, there were some experiences through a Latino fraternity that I was in that really grounded me to my interest in being involved in community service. And we were doing programs where we were mentoring middle school kids who were in a drug rehab program. And this is down between El Paso and Las Cruzes, Noo Meiko, I was an undergraduate student at New Mexico State University. And that just started to feed me that I was being called to our communities, knowing that children at that age were already being set up to fail for a number of reasons. And a few years after that, when I was working on my, I finished on my master's eye and gotten this job to direct a federal grant. And this was a big transformational moment in my own career. And one that is probably the marking point in my career and how I make, why I do what I do today still, is directing a federal grant where we were working in a number of migrant communities, a number of tribal nations, working throughout southern New Mexico and knowing that these are communities some of the highest disparities in health, some of the highest inequities. And realizing that at some point, these communities, these children, these communities were being set up to fail. So we knew that in order for this program to be successful as a federal program to prepare high school students to go to college and go into medical professions, with the goal that we are trying to get them to go into the medical profession to go serve their communities, we knew that we, part of it was building solutions as health professionals from the communities they come from. And if we didn't tread mindfully, we knew that we would possibly contribute to the continued trauma, particularly of our indigenous communities of the boarding school trauma history, meaning for educational reasons you're taking our kids away and they never come back. If we're gonna achieve this goal of using the rich cultural linguistic assets of these migrant communities, Latino communities, as well as indigenous communities, tribal nations, that it's leveraging those cultural linguistic assets to prepare them for college, go into the medical professions and go return, we need to do something different because the discourse their narrative was, I just wanna get out of the barrio, I just wanna get out of the rez, I wanna get out of the hood, there's nothing here and I don't wanna look back. That was their discourse. And we hear that in our borderlands, for don't dead us, we hear that in numerous communities, I hear that here in Kalamazoo, I hear that on the many communities about their educational aspiration is based on just wanting to get out. Yeah. But of our needs and our communities are to build solutions so that they can go back and leverage those cultural linguistic assets, we knew we had to do something better. So part of the program became not just about academically preparing them, knowing that a lot of these students were, as high school students, were performing at fifth and sixth grade levels of math and reading. But also that we needed to transform the narrative of seeing themselves as solutions to our communities. And so we added that additional engagement of ensuring, and you know, ensuring that they began to see and acknowledge their own rich identities and how they can leverage that as part of the solutions to their communities. And it became as part of the process that we enacted and just even having conversations around when you go to La Klinika, when you go to Indian Health Services, when you go to the Health Center, who's translating, who you're going with to navigate that space, which are well-o, which elder, which the, or the, right. And they themselves were doing it already. And so from those types of engagements, we realized that they were making those connections of seeing themselves as those solutions. And knowing that it wasn't them, then who? I'm asking, who, when you go to the clinic, who's, who, there looks like you or speaks like you, it was like, well, there's a dental hygienist out of the dentist, nurses and doctors, that's it. Yeah. So we got into that point, they were transforming themselves or narratives, their academic achievement was at great level of not higher. And then we were defunded under the Bush administration. At that point, the hardest thing I had to do in my career was tell these students that we had been defunded after we got them to this narrative, only to get a message of now they're being disinvested. On, like, the conversations of us investing and believing in them suddenly felt like it was going away. Hardest thing I had to do, I broke down, sobbed in front of these 35 kids, high school kids, and they had to compose myself and told them what was going on. At that point, I knew that our fight and our struggle was in the politics and policies of education. That eventually led me to UT Austin to study education policy. And that informed some of the, a lot of the work that I do today from being in community to some of the policy research to the need for understanding how leadership and policy go ahead and hand to transform the opportunities that we need to provide for our communities. So those are the like, the big connections are big moments in my own educational journey that were truly transformational for me, that still today play out in very powerful ways. When you think about the current political climate, it brings me back to those moments and numerous ways. When we think about what our needs are in our communities for our communities, brings me back to that. When I think about the need for certain research that we need to advocate for, it connects back to that. So as an example, we've been today, I had a few meetings talking about, how do we work more specifically with our school districts to enhance college readiness, college and career readiness? And that what is across the US is that black and Latino students are not getting access to that college preparation or college readiness, even worse work and so on. So in the community like ours here who has a Kalamazoo promise that funds higher education, they will pay your higher education two year, four year, as long as you go to college. The issue is they're not getting their kids ready for college, but we know from research that tells us if you controlled for preparation, if all kids had access to AP coursework or preparation, the eighth grade algebra, all those things, black and Latino kids are more likely to enroll in college than white and Asian kids. But because the system is so inequitable, that's the systemic challenge, right? So how are we working more specifically and strategically with our communities, with our districts to take that next step? Again, all that goes back to that work, to those moments in time. And for me, we're still in the struggle, it's a blessing to do what I do. And we will continue to do this work as much as we can despite the administration and the politics of division. You let me ask you because one, I mean, commend you on the work that you've done, right? But also just recognizing that moment, that moment, and I'm gonna go back to going to Germany and having that experience and having that exposure, you know, I can point to similar moments in my own story, two things that were in the causes that were much greater than myself, right? Causes in the community causes. I mean, I think about immediately, like your conversation here and I immediately thought of, you know, before we jumped on, we were talking about where we were from and I'm from Elsen. But I remember, you know, I was one of the kids that was in the college program. But I remember questioning for some of my classmates, who I thought, why isn't anybody talking to them, right? So these moments are incredibly impactful because then they sort of lead us down this path. Or asking why me. Yeah, why me, right? At least Luis is just a smart of not smarter. Or, you know, and these are actual friends that I had in school or, you know, Maribel, Maribel. He asked in seventh grade math, like, why is Cristóbal going to eighth grade algebra and not me? I thought, I wish I could find her to the end of the year. That she has been a big point of inspiration for me, thinking like, yeah, why not her, right? And she, and to have the bravery, not only the capital to raise her hand and ask the teacher in front of that, she felt like there was an injustice. And I referenced her and I referenced Luis because to me, it's like, yeah, they should have had the option, but because there was limits on opportunity, limits on access. It put me in the spot that as I went through my own journeys, it was like continuously reflecting on why me and ensuring that like kids like Sim should have had access and should have had opportunity, right? So I take it very seriously to do the work I do because I reflect on them. Yeah. And were they cut some, and wonder where they are now, right? To that point. Let me ask you really quick. You talked about college and career readiness. You've talked about your own story and sort of these moments for you. But you're doing undergrad, you're a New Mexico state. What is it that you're studying? No. So I wanted to, my mom's a nurse. And so I knew I was called to serve and I'd wanted to go into the medical professions. And was studying chemistry about chemistry, going into the sciences, thinking, oh, I think I want to be a pharmacist. And I was actually a certified pharmacy technician that I studied on my own and got certified while I was an undergraduate student. So I worked for Walgreens pharmacy for about five years. And while I went to school, I was involved and so on. And along the way, it was when working at these mentoring programs that we were doing through the fraternity. It was a, we call it the United Program. It was a fraternity, it was a mega-delta fight. When you have their stories that you're connecting with, and when they're going through, to me, that was like a moment of maybe, well, I'm called to serve Katie. Maybe it's not in the medical professions. Maybe it's an education. But I had already progressed enough. And I was actually doing foreign languages and chemistry. And I said, well, the quickest way out is let me just finish the foreign language degree. And nearly it was like just one more semester, a half a year, and then quickly turn around getting to a master's education. And then the department of the master's program and curriculum instruction, because he was one of the original advisors to the fraternity when they was founded in Lubbock. I had Mangarcia, Dr. Garcia. He's like, yeah, we can make this work. We can let you in. And because of him, I started the master's right away in education, and that put me in that direction, right? Knowing that I was being, and then realizing, my first job was a high school tutor. My second job was, again, continuing to tutor. Then I started working at Walgreens. And but I was always doing something around schools, community service, around reading programs, or in this case mentoring. And so that was a transition point. The work that you do, the work that we do is not easy work. You've talked about some specific moments where, you know, from working with those youth, and then having to explain the funding got pulled to serving on this commission, and then being let go the day one of a new administration. Where do you find the resilience to keep doing the work? Because, you know, it's work that's, it feels like peaks and valleys. Like you have the highest of highs, okay, I'm on this commission, I'm doing good work, we're doing this, this, this, this. But, but I don't know, in the back of your head, are you thinking, when is the rug going to be pulled out from under me? Or what if, right? The what if, what you remain consistent? You remain committed. Why? You know, there's always a fear of something or another. There's changes in it, not just the politics, but there's going to be changes even in one's own institution. And it's always kind of a search for one, not only were the, were you needed in the work, but also you have to also put yourself of making sure your wellness is, is important that you have alignment, right? And when it comes to educational leadership pathways and opportunities, and I'm a very action oriented individual, I feel like for me, I always have to be, making some kind of work or progress engagement that feels like we're moving forward in some way. And there's days that feels like, oh, today's one of those tough days where it just feels stagnant, or we're having to deal with a political fallout or whatever situation. But what always helps me is when I'm in community, with our students, when I'm in community out, with this week we had our NAACP meeting for our branch here and engaging on some of the important conversations as to where we're called to work, or being in community with this morning night, meet with one of our former vice presidents, who's an elder, scholar, pillar in the community, and just strategizing on how we can move this work forward in certain way. Those are the moments that you feel reenergized, you see your commitment, and it's important to our communities. And even though sometimes it feels like, well, you're not going anywhere because of the current sets of politics or because there may be leadership challenges or even thinking about one's own wellness that is impacted by some of these. Like those are the moments you have to look forward to, uplift you to reflect on why this is important. And for me, those are the rewarding. Those are the moments when I feel that what we do is a blessing. And then I've got to give credit to this use of the word blessing to my time at Howard University, you know, the Bob Recognized HBCU, listening to the late Congressman Elijah Cummings who was talking to us about his father dropping him off from the yard and telling him, well, you know, don't be protesting like all them other kids. But remember, you're here to get blessed so that you can bless others. And he's talking to us as a room full of faculty saying, that's the role of being faculty, that's the role of your work is this becomes critically important in that formula of blessing our students so that they can bless others in their work. And for me, just connected in the number of levels that I felt like, man, it is a blessing to do this work. And when you get to that space, like, those are the moments that you always will feel uplifted. Those are the moments that you feel like the why, even if it's just one engagement with a student, it will reinforce the why we do what we do. It will reinforce of those situations that sometimes I feel like are we making any progress? And it says, yes, we are making some progress because those that one and one engagement you just had shows you and demonstrates that we are indeed making progress. So those are the moments that are important as well as always appreciating time to connect with golegas or on our networks, but it's really the being in community part that the uplifting, the moments that are empowering, that tells us, yes, cease of weather. We can keep pushing. This is possible. This is doable. You've, thank you. You, I think are one of the few guests with it sounds like early on, you identified your why. Right? And you've shared some of those critical moments that have helped solidify your why. Let me ask you, you know, because you've talked about the young people in Michigan, you've talked about the people in the community, those people that maybe lack the preparation, but even what advice would you give somebody, a young person who's finding, looking for that, who's looking for that purpose, who's looking for their why? What advice would you give that person? You know, it always goes back to that. I've probably often, most often said, building solutions for our communities. And I should, you know, and they were down and I'll correct myself or remind myself that no, we're simply affirming the solutions are there. There's just things in the way, right? And that's not necessarily their fault. That's the fault of the system. That's a fault of the inequities. That's a fault of politics. That's a fault of the historical challenges, the trauma and so on. And how do we get our youth, our kids, to begin to recognize that they indeed have these rich, cultural, linguistic assets that does in fact contribute to their success? And not just those, right? I'm a big fan of Terry Yosu's work in community cultural wealth. Now, when you ask folks, and not just within Latino community, but also the Black community, Indigenous communities, Asian communities, it goes back to the why is our families, the narratives of our families, the sacrifice that families make to ensure that their child will have opportunity. And so that familial cultural capital becomes a big reason of the why. And it's acknowledging that, affirming that, right? That is part of that transformational moment. So when we talked about even working with students and at some point it was saying, okay, let's leverage that. Let's leverage what they already have, those rich cultural, linguistic assets and familial assets and so on, so that they can use that to help them in their own journey, to acknowledge that they indeed matter, that they indeed are important to the future of our communities and how they can continue to be solutions, no matter where they are in their careers, or no matter where they go in their careers, they're going to be solutions, right? And I remember having that conversation with back to Edmond Garcia, the professor, because I was getting ready to go teach in Colorado as early in my career. I said, what am I going to do over in Colorado? And the very more affluent five communities like, no matter where you go, you will see a need and respond to a need. And there's Latinos everywhere. You will find them and they'll find you. Yeah. I was like, okay, and sure enough, quickly the Latino kids in this school that was a white affluent high school navigate towards me. You see that in every role that I played. And at the same time, you'd learn how to see those cultural connections, those capital, those cultural linguistic and familial capitals and across communities for more indigenous communities as well as African American Black communities. And learn to acknowledge them, right? I, for me, I love that at commencement at Howard University, one of the most popular shirts that are sold are it says proud on T. And then you hear their stories of how it's not just their immediate families who are sacrificing for the education of their child to find funding to make sure that they can pay tuition. It's the entire extended family, their churches, all pulling to ensure the success of that. So and that becomes part of the narrative of saying, like, your solution to your family, your solution to your community. No matter what role you may have at some level, you're going to enact those leadership connections of serving, of being a solution. You can be in business, you can be an educator, you can be whatever it may be, you're going to be responding to a need at some level. And it goes back to their indeed solutions, truck media. So it's not that they were having to build them. It's we have to affirm them and acknowledge them and grow them, enhance them. Right. And that becomes part of the conversation. So when it comes to connecting with youth, how do we start with that, right, the cultural empowerment, that acknowledgement, that they begin to value themselves, that they begin to see themselves as part of the fabric of success, part of the fabric of excellence as well. And for me, that's important. And that's, you know, takes me back consistently to all those pivotal moments in my own career that I, you know, it's part of the way. I appreciate that. You, I'm looking at the time. So what I'm going to ask is, one, your thoughts on the next question, but then, then if we can come back and maybe do a part two, because I'd like, this next question I think is going to lead to this, to a larger, that second conversation, I think. And so I'll let you decide, but this question is, you know, given the work that you do, given the work that you were doing as a commissioner, on this commission, if we took a snapshot of Latino, Chicano, Black educational experience in America today, what does that snapshot look like? You know, there's a lot of, what I call, sometimes the parallels of systemic inequities, or parallels of systemic oppression that affects all of our communities, right? Now, contextually, they do play out uniquely, historically, they do play out uniquely, but it's the same system of oppression. It's the same, you know, we are frayed in theorists, like, I, the part of me is, and talk about, you know, pedagogy, the oppressed, that a big part of the process of concertization starts with us, but at the end of the day, that whole system of oppression affects the oppressor and the oppressed as much, and so there's work to be done where, the, you know, in that model, it's the oppressor cannot liberate, the oppressed, it has to be the oppressed liberating themselves and then liberating the oppressor from the system of oppression. So when we think about that whole system and the challenge that we face that is systemic, right? Now, how do we then think about moving the conversation strategically so that we can build solidarity so that we can build and be strategic and working across communities? Because that's what we're needed right now, especially because the political movements that we've seen by the right, that we've seen by the current administration is the politics of division. And at the end of the day, there are intersections that we can work from to say, look at the end of day, these policies are going to hurt all of us. These actions are really an assault, even though we say, okay, this is a challenge to DEI initiatives and it feels like it's just targeting people of color. It really is an assault on public education and public institutions, K-12 and higher ed and behind the scenes. It's really an effort to privatize public funds, whether it's an education or an health and all aspects of government to try to privatize and make profit on that. That's why you have a mask. That's why you have the different people that have been appointed. It's to privatize. And during the time of the commission, it really opened my eyes to spend some time in Puerto Rico. And this was in September of this past year, so not to long ago. And seeing how the privatization of education, K-12 and higher ed was harming the public good, right, was harming la comunidad, la gente. And then amidst all that was in bad politics, that created a number of conditions that made even more challenging. But very clearly, you saw that this investment in public education and K-12, the disinvestment in higher education and the impact it was having on opportunity, on access. And unfortunately, Puerto Rico's had to suffer such politics to a greater degree than other communities in mainland US. But there's a history of that, right. And it's not a new play. It's just on steroids in some places and others. And what we're seeing this administration, the assault on public institutions on public education, K-12 and higher ed, we're just seeing some beginning implications of the current administration. And we're excited. We're going to really feel them come summer, come fall. And this next year, where we're going to start to see the stories of financial aid and support that becomes critical for poor communities, for students of color who have that need, for access, for equity. All these initiatives, right, are really going to start to hit public education, K-12 and higher. But it really is about privatizing those funds. And they're using what I call escape coding, like the way the historically of escape coded on immigration as an attack. It's escape coding now, DEI, to use as the wedge, the politics division, right, to use the wedge to then essentially privatize federal funds, right. And you see the move that's playing out a number of, so I appreciate that the previous Secretary of Education that he spoke to, we need to remind ourselves that there is a promise in public education that we have to maintain, right. And that history of public education and who it serves, when you think about at the state level, whether it's Texas or Arizona where they've threatened funding to education or policies like charter schools. All that is again, threatening public education, who does it educate, who does it serve, you know, our community. That's a lot. Yeah, it's access. We're still in the struggle and the fight for access and educational opportunity and equal opportunity. And so I think it's helping our communities think about where our fight is right now. And having a conversation with NAACP and other communities in St. Luke, if at the federal level right now there's a little room for us to put up a fight, then our struggle is to ensure that at the local community or at the state level, across our states that we're ensuring that they have to, at least, have a responsibility to uphold and regulate federal laws around bilingual education, IDEA. All these important policies that have been centered historically on access, right. Because that's what's that threat at stake. And right now what we need to be is thinking about our own school districts, our own school boards, or state agencies making sure we hold them accountable. And we leverage legal challenges in the states to ensure that they still have a responsibility to uphold these federal laws on access, right. So I think those are things that we need to think about more strategically. But in my work, especially with the commission, to me was very eye-opening and spending that time in Puerto Rico. And despite the challenges that there were still hopeful examples of excellence, like the Montessori Public Schools. Not there's Montessori Privates in Puerto Rico, which creates another conversation. But there's a great example of one of the other commissioners, Ana María Garcia Blanco, who've been doing some fantastic work, were they using the Montessori model to have local control and local involvement into the educational experiences of their children to ensure that they were getting ready for college and career, right. And we saw good examples that the local control pad directly addresses the politics that were playing on the island, where superintendents are politically appointed. And there's no local control, which has created the right condition for horrible politics and dysfunction as well as just overall fraud at number levels. And so when you wonder why, okay, the island has been given billions of dollars for infrastructure after Hurricane Maria, billions dollars after their earthquake. And it's not used, new, we're not even half of it, is because of those bad politics. And it's because of structure. So when you look at the initiatives that we're trying to address, it was back to the need for local control and influence to ensure that there was access and opportunity and resources. And I see that parallel to an opportunity for us to take note of that, right. Of where we need to be in our communities now, how we need to be activated, organizing, if you talk to the lotus fuerza and ask her what does our community need to always say our youths and anyone needs to learn how to organize. And I agree that that's where we have to be right now is to learn how to organize our communities to be involved politically and to hold, you know, our local governments as well as our state governments accountable. That was a nice bow to put on this conversation. You know, as a, as an academic, you give me a little nugget, I will run with it. Chris, thank you for your time today. I hope that we can come back and we can continue the conversation because I think I think what you've laid out, right. I think there's still a lot to unpack there. And particularly I think as we think about, you know, the local at the local level, what do we do? What is it? What is it? You know, the closing of the department of Ed, what does that mean for me? Because I think a lot of people don't understand what that means, even for their local school districts, right. So I hope we can come back and we can continue the conversation. But in the meantime, this concludes another episode, the way to college podcasts. Thank you to my guests. Thank you to our listeners out there. Don't forget to subscribe, rate, follow all of that good stuff and make sure you share the podcast with one other person. Thank you. We'll do this again. And Jose, gracias. Thank you for your work and it's critically important for our communities. And we'll do a part two for sure. Awesome. Thank you, Chris. Thank you. Bye bye. Bye.