In 2014 and 2015, several local (to Troy, New York) and national events presented opportunities for me to combine my commitments as an engaged community member and my professional expertise. I corresponded with broadcast, print, and digital media, offering information and analysis. Not long after major controversies over the deaths of Michael Brown (in Ferguson, MO) and Eric Garner (in New York, NY), police officers in Troy, New York, brutalized several Black men and women at a downtown nightclub. Afterword, I attended community forums, protest marches, city council meetings, and press conferences, addressing this particular event and its social, political, and historical contexts.

Though this activity prompted threats on my life and to my career, I remain steadfast in my commitments to justice. In the past years, adjuncts and professors—especially faculty members of color—have had our careers threatened by reactionary enemies of higher education and justice. All to often, compliant and complicit administrators have brought these threats to bear on their behalf.

In Fall 2020, I am teaching a course called Community at Rhode Island College. The course emphasizes experiential learning through supervised participation in an internship or other embedded activity within a non-profit or activist organization.