Hi!

This is a new newsletter that I’m starting, with occasional writing help of some of my friends, as an outlet to talk about how to resist generative AI’s attempt to take over public life, in particular in educational settings.

First: Basics.

My name is Kelly Clancy. I am the founder of Parents for AI Caution, a member of the AI Moratorium Coalition in NYC schools, I sit on the District 20 CEC, I’ve got three precocious and opinionated kids in the NYC public school system, I have a PhD in political science and own my own editing business, and I've been meaning to start this newsletter for quite a while.

If you don’t want to read this, totally fine! Just unsubscribe and you’ll never hear from me again. If you do want to read this, forward it to people who are thinking in similar ways about AI!

In the coming weeks, I have some thoughts to share on why we it’s worth resisting AI, how to organize, climate, ethics, learning, humanity, democracy—all of the big picture. But I wanted to start off with sharing my conviction that we are going to win, and that, as Liat Olenick from Climate Families NYC says, this is the fight of our time.

Second: The narrative is shifting.

Here’s my inspiration:

—> Arco. It might sound out-of-touch to find solace in French animation, but hear me out. This movie features Arco, a time traveling child from the far future who accidentally winds up in the year 2075. And things are not great. There are climate disasters, teacher lounges filled with robots, holographic parents who travel for work and leave their kids to be raised by sentient nannybots—the fate of Iris, the girl he befriends who helps him find is way back to his own time. (Their names, together, are rainbow in Spanish. Kind of lovely).

We learn that, in the far future, there are no robots. The earth is in the “Great Fallow,” so humanity has taken to the trees in some kind of ecoanarchist semi-utopia. We are healing. As I watched this movie, it struck me that my generation made movies about dystopia. Now, we’re looking beyond: dystopian, bot-run eco-collapse contained the seeds for another, softer vision of humanity. This time, without bots.

—> Rustage. Until yesterday, I did not know this band existed. Apparently they are a D&D artist, so I’m a little out of my element. But last night my son shared this song with me:

The kids are smart (and some of the lyrics are good!)

They ain't gon' care, it's your son or your daughter/ If they make the money, they'll profit on slaughter/ Death of consumer and death of the author/ They gambled your future and burned up your water

He drops a Barthes reference right there!

If you’ll allow me one more verse:

I'm seeing teachers use it/ I'm seeing colleagues and peers abuse it/ Why do I feel like the weird one? You’re not the weird one, Rustage. Welcome to the resistance.

—> Tressie and Rebecca are out there connecting dots for us. Tressie McMillan Cottom’s critique of generative AI as “mid” rightly pops the bubble (and puts a lie to all of those voices that saying that the only people who object to AI are those who fear it. I’m not afraid, I’m just skeptical, angry, and unimpressed.) and Rebecca Solnit, have published pieces in the past few days helping us understand the stakes of this moment. Consider Rebecca Solnit’s words: (this is an excerpt, but it’s worth reading in full)

Silicon Valley is full of tyrants of the quantifiable. For decades, its oligarchs have preached that our criteria for what we do and how we do it should be convenience, efficiency, productivity, profitability. They have told us that to go out into the world, to interact with others, is perilous, unpleasant, inefficient, a waste of time, and that time is something we should hoard rather than spend…public spaces and public life have withered, including some of the places in which we once acquired our goods. All those errands – buying milk or socks (in the past, I would have said the newspaper) – meant moments of human contact, moving among strangers and making acquaintances, maybe observing the weather and the natural world…

All this, I believe, underpins democracy: ease with difference, familiarity with the lay of the land, a sense of connection and belonging, knowing where you are and who’s out there, relationships – however casual – to people beyond your immediate circle. To embrace the tyranny of the quantifiable is to dismiss the subtle value of these daily acts out in the world and the ways they generate and maintain networks of relationships.

Finally: This is why we’re going to win.

Yesterday, I got to talk to talk to a local news reporter about generative AI in NYC public schools.

And if you listen closely, you can hear the shift. In December of 2025, the former NYC chancellor was billing the rollout of an AI playbook as something that would usher students into an exciting new future. Today, it’s being rebranded as a document about guardrails in response to parental concerns. Jessica Gould’s article in the Gothamist talks about it in the same way: a set of guardrails that parents will be able to give feedback on.

If we’re going to win the battle against letting the tech broligarchs into our classrooms, we need to know three things: Generative AI is not inevitable. You’re not alone in thinking that AI is sketch. And the fight against AI in schools is one that preserves our democracy, our community, our creativity, our environment, and our kids’ right to an education that is based on relationships with teachers, deep critical thinking, reading whole books, and engaging in inquiry inside of a community. Those are things worth fighting for.

Thanks for reading! If you have things you want to know more about, drop them in the comments.

Kelly

www.parentsforaicaution.com