Here's To Hoping.

Dear Here4TheKids Supporters -

I’m writing to let you know that Here4TheKids, the organization, is formally dissolving as of December 31, 2025. It’s been a while since I’ve put pen to paper. I’m a bit out of practice. Please bear with me.

Let’s start with the perfunctory pleasantries.

I hope this note finds you and your family enjoying a healthy, happy and peaceful holiday season. At bare minimum, I hope this. But the reality is I hope for so much more.

I hope this note finds you with a heart, one that hasn’t stopped feeling, one that hasn’t fully swapped empathy for clicks, likes, dollars, shiny shoes, tickets to the Broncos, Broadway, Bad Bunny.

Feeling is the foundation to everything else. America will have you believe the end of the road is an empty bank account but the truth is, it’s your heart. A numb heart is soul death. Without a soul there is no human and without a human, there’s no humanity. Just ask the millions of millionaires and billionaires who are swimming in cash but haven’t spoken out against the two plus years long public genocide of Palestinians at the hands of Israelis and Americans.

Our souls are in deep existential trouble. I hope you’re clinging to yours for dear life.

But it’s more than that. Our minds aren’t right.

I hope this note finds you with the capacity to still think critically.

By design, Americans are undereducated. Rich Americans, poor Americans, Black, brown, white Americans. Even those with fancy Ivy League degrees. Maybe those with degrees from institutions of Higher Lying are the worst off, trained by the best of the best liars to not think critically, but to accept everything the status quo has to offer.

My guess is the Epstein Files are chock full of Harvard, Yale, Penn, Stanford.

Losers, crooks, pedophiles who’ve traded in any shred of wisdom and decency for money. Isn’t that what we’ve been taught? Whoever amasses the most money, wins. But what do you win exactly? A ton of blood on your hands and a bunch of shit you never needed to begin with which is now landfill, burning the climate and ensuring your rich progeny won’t have ample water and food.

In the end, these pasty genociders might live a few decades longer with their billionaire bunkers and islands but they’ll eventually off each other Hunger Games style.

That is, if history is a guide - and it always is.

My great hope for you is that you are able to think about what’s happening right now and how it’s all connected. How guns being the number one killer of kids and teens in America is directly connected to America and Israel being the number one killer of Palestinian kids and teens and how capitalism is the number one killer of humans, plants and animals on this Earth.

Money, racism, genocide, ecocide, rinse, repeat.

You know this because you are thinkers. You also know that your silence will never save you. Or your kids. Or your pets. Or anything else you love and cherish. And that saying one thing and doing another won’t save you either. More on that later.

I hope this note finds you with a healthy dose of bravery. All the bullshit works on scared people. Stop being afraid. What are you afraid of? Dying? Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but until and unless Peter Thiel finds an end to mortality, it’s going to happen to you no matter what. Wouldn’t you rather have lived a life of morality and integrity rather than hiding under your high thread sheets shivering in silence?

I hope this note finds you aware of the power you possess, that we all possess.

A few years ago, a man of tremendous privilege told me he’d never spoken out against racism because he “didn’t have any power.” This was a white American male with a professional degree who made a couple million dollars a year. If this guy didn’t have power, who did? Yet he really and truly believed he didn’t. Once he started speaking out, he was amazed to see how many people came along. Amazed by the magnitude of his power.

And then he got super scared and silent again after October 7th. Classic white liberal, the world’s ubiquitous menace. Meanwhile we saw millions of folks, most with way less institutional power than the rich white dude – Black, brown, Indigenous, trans - speak out. They lost jobs, marriages, food and housing security. But what remained intact: their hearts, critical thinking skills, bravery and deep belief that all of us humans possess power.

The fascist fuckers depend on you thinking you lack power. Don’t fall for it. It’s patently untrue.

I hope this note finds you imagining. We have to imagine a different world, one that we can create, one abundant with all the things – for humans, plants, animals, oceans, streams. We often say what we are against. Less often do we think about, talk about what we are for.

For starters, I imagine a world where there are no guns, no bombs, no chemical weapons, no genocide, no ecocide, no enslavement, no prisons. A world where my self worth isn’t based on my skin color, the way my body looks or functions, or how much I can produce. I imagine a world where I can lay by a river with others who share a deep passion for pork vindaloo, terrible 80’s rock and ELF.

Now it’s your turn. Imagine away!

I hope this note finds you in alignment. The former lawyer in me would explain it like this: It is necessary but insufficient to speak out. It’s critical to call out injustice at every turn, but if your actions don’t match your words, you’re out of alignment.

There is no purity test here. We live under capitalism and many of us pay taxes in the U.S., the most evil empire ever to have existed so we are all complicit in multiple ways. But the goal is to minimize harm and be aware of your power and your actions and how you’re making and spending money.

Nobody is perfect. Perfection is a fictional tool of white supremacy. But we can – and must - strive to have our actions match our words every chance we get.

I hope this note finds you in community.

We are living in isolation, drowning in loneliness, glued to our phones watching multiple genocides play out and our world flooding, burning, drying up, convinced we can’t do anything about any of it so we’ll just hustle more so we can buy more shit.

Especially now. During “the holidays.”

I hope this isn’t you. That instead you are in community, that you have humans, actual humans that care about you, and about whom you care. That being in this community makes you realize, truly realize that you love yourself – and as a result have the capacity to love others and as a result you are actively FEELING the horror, the pain, the suffering of each and every human, many of whom are children, being massacred in the name of American empire, money money money, oil, phones, fast fashion, you name it.

Building community was my greatest hope when I started Here4TheKids right after the Covenant School Shooting in March 2023 (there have been hundreds since then). That surely we could lock arms around ending guns, the number one killer of kids and teens.

We’d called for 25 thousand cis able-bodied white women (thinking those with the most privilege would be the safest from police violence) to come sit on a beautiful lawn on a sunny day in Denver, Colorado. Sit to save their own children, or their friends’ children, or their nieces or nephews. Not even a thousand showed up. So no, we didn’t ban guns.

Here’s where I’m supposed to say a version of: In Spite of That, It’s Been A Wonderful Experience, The Honor of a Lifetime.

Only it hasn’t.

In many ways, it’s been a nightmare, one filled with people – all kinds of people – wanting our original mission of banning guns to fail from the outset.

Republicans and Democrats alike openly mocked the mere notion. My goodness gracious! The sanctity of the Second Amendment, which clearly trumps children’s lives. After all, billions of dollars are at stake and a bunch of racist, rapist, land-stealing, human-enslaving white men divinely ordained the Constitution centuries ago which means it must be more important than your kids and mine.

Democrats in Congress – including those from “The Squad” - shrugged and ghosted. An actual white woman Democratic Senator who’d run for President told me this: “I wish there was something I could do.” I reminded her that she was literally one of one hundred sitting US Senators and if she couldn’t do something, who could? She never texted or called me back. Elected officials in Colorado - same thing. A bunch of media covered it, but the reality was, they thought it was dead in the water and said as much every chance they got.

All of this, expected.

Less expected, the white women, the white mothers, aunties, grandmothers, friends, who didn’t show up for their own children. On the morning of June 5, 2023, I learned that white women hated their own kids. The reality is they hate themselves so thoroughly, that there’s no way they can love others, including their kids.

We can’t organize our way around self-loathing. The deep, ancestral self-loathing of colonizers. They gotta do that shit on their own.

And then, after October 7, 2023, we pivoted away from just talking about a gun ban to ALSO talking about a ban on genocide. That’s when I got another shock.

A ton of former Here4TheKids supporters - mostly white women – made it clear that the only thing they were against were guns that could harm their own kids. Genocide of Palestinian kids on the other hand? They were hip hip hooray for burning beheading and starving them. Why? For starters, harming Black, Indigenous and brown children is a white people pastime. Then there’s antisemitism. Apparently to be against the torture and depravity of Palestinian humans means you’re antisemitic.

If the definition of antisemitism is opposing genocide and ethnic cleansing, then I’ll proudly wear that label.

Remember the heart and mind discussion above? If your heart isn’t screaming for you to scream out against this horror show, your soul is dead. And if your mind is telling you that Palestinian humans mere existence is an existential threat to Jews and Israelis you are (a) extremely not smart and (b) a racist.

Nothing is more racist than genocide. Period. Full stop.

Then there was the bit about not supporting Kamala Harris for President, the same Kamala Harris who said she wouldn’t change a thing about Joe Biden’s policies. The same Joe Biden who was funding and arming Israel. Obviously if you were against Israel’s genocide of Palestinians, you would not support Kamala Harris. For the record, I supported nobody. It was the first time I didn’t vote in an election. I was obviously not alone. Many thousands of former Democrats skipped the election and it cost Kamala the Presidency.

Which means Kamala’s unwavering support of genocide cost Kamala the Presidency.

For this, I was dragged for being anti-Black. An Indian woman refusing to vote for a half Black half Indian woman because of her support of genocide was anti-Black.

Multiple folks demanded that I apologize. For what, I ask? For not supporting the mass torture and murder of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians? I would never apologize as I’m not sorry. What I’d like to ask those making these demands: Are you asking Kamala to apologize for committing to genocide and therefore delivering us all Donald Trump? Are you all personally sorry for unabashedly supporting a woman committed to genocide? One who mocked actual Palestinians on the campaign trail?

I’ll wait.

This whole Kamala thing is end stage DEI – putting Black and brown faces on empire (see also Rishi Sunak, Usha Vance, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, Cory Booker). Honestly, I’d rather take my white supremacy and colonialism from the usual suspects - the whites. I truly don’t see how having a Black/Indian woman leading violence is progress. And if not supporting a Black and Indian genocider makes me anti-Black, then I’ll take that label too.

I sometimes wonder if the army of women who dragged me for Kamala - led by Black, brown and white alike - feel like they’ve won something. If they feel better. Because the guns keep killing, the bombs keep falling – and now ICE is kidnapping folks all across the United States.

Kind of feels like their hours, weeks, months and raging passion could have been spent more fruitfully but that’s just me.

On the subject of ICE, we’ve arrived at the final nail in the coffin of Here4TheKids. The details of what happened with someone close to the organization is for another time. But suffice it to say, you cannot claim to be an abolitionist and scream and yell about ICE being the gestapo while taking a paycheck from ICE. Just like you cannot be against Israel while collecting a paycheck from the IDF.

You also, it turns out, cannot be an inspiration to white women without eventually becoming their greatest nemesis. Three years after thousands and thousands of white women became obsessed with White Women, the book I co-authored with Regina Jackson, and Deconstructing Karen, the documentary about our work, I went from heroine to villain.

Anti-semitic. Anti-Black. A plagiarizer. A monster. And my personal favorite from a white woman, married to a white man, raising a white son in an all-white neighborhood: “More racist than white people.”

Yes, a brown woman who wrote a book called White Women: Everything You Already Know About Your Own Racism and How To Do Better was now more racist than white women.

If this entire experience hadn’t been so utterly violent and traumatizing, it’d be hilarious.

In the end, my work largely served as a dating app for the absolutely most toxic white liberal women in the world to connect.

The OkCupid for Karens. Bumble for Becky. See… the jokes write themselves.

There is so much more to say and after taking a long time to reflect, I’ll be writing about a lot of it over on my Substack.

So, while Here4TheKids, the organization, is formally dissolving (this is the entire reason for this piece and I am realizing I’m only now saying this) there are still ways to keep in touch and connect.

Going forward:

1) The H4TK Substack will live on and will feature more content in the New Year. How much or how often and by whom remains to be seen, I’m officially done hustling, scheduling, grinding. And I hope you are too. If you want to benefit from and support the Here4TheKids Substack, here is the link. If you want to contribute to the Substack as a writer, send me a note.

2) If you want to benefit from and support Dr. Xochitl Vallejos amazing work - Xochi who provided so many of you so much wisdom and comfort, subscribe to her Substack. Here it is.

3) If you want to benefit from and support my work, here is my Substack.

For those who can afford it - and you know who you are - please sign up for paid subscriptions.

4) Continue to engage in mutual aid – in your communities, here there everywhere. The government just told us that in addition to robbing Americans of housing and healthcare, it’s now willing to starve folks. Make sure you’re helping your neighbors stay warm and fed and housed.

Please support Rateb and his family in Gaza and Tahira’s fundraiser for Jamaica. We Americans have raped and pillaged the Earth, the least we can do is care for those we’ve harmed.

5) If you want to stay in touch, I am available via email at rao.saira@gmail.com. Compliments welcome, critiques less so. I’ve heard enough of what folks hate about me for a lifetime so feel free to keep that to yourselves… or share with all the other OkCupid Karens and Bumble Beckys if that makes you feel good.

One self-critique I’ll offer before signing off.

Prior to October 7th, I possessed a purely American anti-racism lens that failed to contemplate the horror show of what all of us Americans do to those in Asia, Africa and Latin America. While racism burns in the US, the US burns the entire world. My previous lack of imperial analysis was harmful and I’m wildly grateful that my understanding is far more comprehensive now. On the flip side, a bunch of white leftists have a keen anti-imperial lens with no understanding of racism. We need both. Anti-racism AND anti-imperialism.

Also the United States is to Turtle Island as Israel is to Palestine. I have been a settler on stolen land for many decades. Yes, one who experiences racism as a matter of course AND is a settler nevertheless. Both are true. Grappling with this will be a forever project. Nothing changes by pointing fingers at others without interrogating ourselves.

I’ll have more to say about all of this later but I did want to recognize these critical shortcomings on my part.

As I laid out in the beginning, I have so many hopes for all of us.

My hope is that we keep our hearts, souls, minds, bravery, belief in our power, alignment and community not because these are inherently good things (they are) but because our collective humanity and liberation depend on it, the world’s plants and animals depend on us getting our shit together.

If it’s not abundantly clear, elections will not save us. Diversity will not save us. Marching will not save us. Posting on socials will not save us. Your Christmas bonus will not save us. Nor will ski trips, beach trips, trips to the mall.

We continue to fail our kids - and kids all around the world. We are murdering them actively. We are murdering them passively. We are murdering the planet so they have nothing to live for, and nowhere to live.

We are sick with American narcissism and must get well for the world to survive.

We say the American Empire must fall – and that’s absolutely true. But for that to happen, our internalized imperialists, white supremacists, misogynists, ableists, transphobes, classists, American narcissists need to go.

And only we can perform this instrumental exorcism.

Time is ticking.

I will forever be here for the kids. My kids, your kids, our kids.

I hope you will too.

Saira