A note for Public Servants and DEIA Leaders: I’m speaking to you now—especially if you’ve felt that slow, corrosive sting of being silenced or “canceled.”  I am also talking to anyone who hasn’t been there but wants to understand what it really does to a person who served in good faith.

Hear me: erasure is uglier than the headlines could ever say. It’s not only losing a job, but also your livelihood for you and your family. It’s also the steady devaluation that follows—the unanswered calls, the invitations that stop, the coworkers and mentees who step back because proximity has become a political risk. It is your life made into a warning.

I know this place. I stood with LGBTQIA+ youth during the first battles of the War on Woke and paid for it. Institutions that once celebrated my work stopped returning my calls. Allies whispered that I’d “gone too far.” Organized groups tried to get me fired each time I got a new position or contract. They even showed up at my dissertation defense, attempting to disrupt the proceedings.  My family and I received credible death threats. There were mornings I couldn't get out of bed—not from regret, but from feeling invisible in the place I had poured my life into.

We are the miners' canaries. I also thank you, I see you!

If you’ve never been canceled, imagine this: your work reduced to “politics,” your reputation reframed as troublemaking, your livelihood turned into a public lesson. That silence taught me something urgent: belonging is not only what you give others; it is something you must claim for yourself. I returned to ancestral sources—Maya spirituality, family, the long work of civil rights—and learned to practice radical accountability and agape: a fierce, sacrificial love that refuses to answer hatred with hatred.

But my story is not an outlier. It sits inside a current national pattern: credential revocations, threatened licenses, frozen DEIA funding, rebranded equity offices, suspended commentators, curated outrage at museums, and the sidelining of inspectors and statisticians. When referees and reporters are threatened, institutions learn to prune curricula, cancel speakers, and warn staff to “avoid controversy.” That lesson moves fast—from D.C. to your local school board, your university, your county fair.

While I turned my grief into work, I went back to school, found language and theory that named structural exclusion, and leaned into community. That pathway needs to be rebuilt for others, and you can be part of it. Here are concrete ways to stand with someone who’s been canceled:

•              Reach out with consistency. A single message matters, but steady contact is what undoes isolation, especially after months go by. 

•              Offer practical support. Help with references, portfolio reviews, introductions, or fundraising. Small acts open doors.

•              Validate their experience. Do not privatize or gaslight the harm; name it, believe it, and listen without redirecting to convenience or politics.

•              Protect opportunities. Invite them to speak, to consult, to teach—actions that restore economic and professional footing.

•              Build community care. Host referral circles, mentoring pods, or mutual aid funds that redistribute risk across a network.

•              Advocate publicly. When institutions try to discipline truth-tellers, use your voice and privilege to push back—write op-eds, sign petitions, call decision-makers.

•              Help them reclaim narrative. Offer to co-author statements, edit applications, or craft CVs that center the work rather than the controversy.

•              Hold space for grief. Rebuilding is not only professional; it’s emotional. Encourage therapy, spiritual practices, and time for rest without pressure to “perform resilience.”

Why this matters, the price of principle was real for me—professional exile, grief, and the erosion of trust. But silence costs our young people far more. I found clarity of purpose, a community of truth-tellers, and a spiritual grounding that insists love is a revolutionary act. I still believe in positive youth development and in 4‑H as a moral classroom for pluralistic democracy. I say this now as Vice President of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at a large community college system where cancellation is not a distant memory but a recurring risk.

If standing up for youth, for truth, and for belonging means losing comfort, status, or even safety—I will pay that price again.

But no one should have to pay for sharing agape, bravery, and commitment to pluralistic democratic principles alone. If you know someone who has been canceled, please reach out. Help them rebuild emotionally and professionally. Show up when others walk away. Because having a scarlet letter is one of the loneliest, most disruptive states a person can be in, your steady presence can make the difference between erasure and a renewed life, especially since that scarlet letter was earned on the arch towards justice.