April 12, 2025
Dear Howard,
I’ve been holding this in my heart and needed to reach out to you directly, not just with thanks, but with truth.
Thank you for the years you spent pouring your soul into Sixth Street, and for allowing me to grow within that space. Thank you for entrusting me with both the youth program and the Teen Climate Justice program—two programs that helped shape me. You allowed my vision to come to life with very little resistance, and that kind of faith is rare. It meant everything.
You built a place where radical imagination had room to breathe, where young people felt seen, and where community wasn’t just a buzzword—it was a living, breathing thing. Thanks to your belief in all of us.
It truly hurts to witness how you’ve been treated. After all your years of tireless devotion, to be cast aside so carelessly; it’s not just unfair, it’s enraging. But I see the pattern clearly. This is what happens when “progressive” boards lose their way—when they become echo chambers for ambition, silencing dissent, rewriting truths, and executing decisions behind closed doors under the guise of legality. Boards that speak of community while gutting the very spirit of it. That cloak capitalist mimicry under the guise of radical language. Community isn’t a brand, and you embodied that fact. Don’t you dare doubt that.
You deserved better. You deserve better.
And I hope you know, no decision made behind a polished table can erase the legacy you helped build for decades.
You are the reason so many of us stayed. The reason so many of us fought. Your trust, your vision, and your belief in the power of true grassroots organizing will always be a part of who I am and how I move through my own work now as a teacher.
Please know that I am standing with you. In grief. In rage. In deep, unshakable gratitude.
Con todo mi cariño y respeto,
Noelle