CAES (Civic Alliance for Equitable Schooling), was started by a group of people from different parts of the education spectrum and who hold some combination of various identities, including: professor, teacher, educator, coach, parent, student, learner, active community member, activist. This group first came together virtually during the summer of 2020, a time of greater exposure to racial violence that included the killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and too many others. Some group members recall experiencing a racial awakening around this time-- The kind that acknowledges that working toward being anti-racist can be held in unison with being complicit with explicit and structural acts of racism. Concurrent to the group’s origins were the first few months of the global pandemic COVID-19. While we started as a group that wanted to work toward understanding the systems and histories of race and racism in the United States, we quickly pivoted toward producing actionable outcomes. Long term, we hope for CAES to be a resource for moving critical conversations into action. We acknowledge that working toward anti-racism and equity in schools is a life-long endeavor, and we position ourselves as learners in this realm.