When you organize, one of the first things you come to understand is that things aren’t as sexy as they might make it seem in the movies. You may read a book about some activist and think, “Damn, what an intense career!”, which it is in the sense that it is a lot of work, but not at all in it's pace. The moments usually highlighted-the protests, the marches, the big movements-are all very exciting, but they are often short lived. Sadly, the average joe will forget about the latest #BLM video not long after it is released. They may be outraged by it, but our attention spans only last so long, even when the issue can last for centuries. The job of the organizer is to maintain the fight in the times where no one is watching. And I have learned that the foundation of it all is strong relationships. Organizers get to know people and keep them engaged by listening, sharing, and continuously reminding them that the things happening in our communities are examples of injustice. They help them to understand that these unjust circumstances do not and should not be that way, in turn getting them to step up to the plate and change it. I was watching Netflix last night after getting home from the ACLU and on the show I was watching, the protagonist said something that made me think of organizing. Anyone can stand anything for 10 seconds. So count to ten and when that ten is up, start over. The context she was bringing it to was more about staying happy or holding your pee, but I use that philosophy every day in activism. Anyone can get 1 vote. Anyone can get 1 volunteer. After you get that one, which may take longer than ten seconds, but we are changing the limit here, you start over. If everyone does this, and there are ten of us working, that means that every cycle we are actually getting ten votes or ten volunteers. If those volunteers then join, we then have 20 votes and 20 volunteers. It is about taking things in small enough chunks to where you are never left thinking, “Well what does 1 vote mean if there are millions of people in San Diego County.” That is only your impatience. Anything that gets you all the votes in a day will just as easily lose them in a week. So at the ACLU I am not doing any sexy work. I am making sure that every conversation I have with people over the phone is genuine, I am knocking on people’s doors with information and telling them “This is where you fit into this.”, I am presenting to young people like myself in their classrooms or communities to build a new generation of warriors, and I am asking people if they happen to have a few sets of 10 seconds to spare for a good cause. This is how you organize. Even when there is no fire in the media or riots in the streets, you persist, and persistence is never like the movies. But as Fred Ross once said, “It isn’t hard to organize if you take it granule by granule, brick by brick.”
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Trying to get people to vote can be very difficult. A lot of the time, through phone calls, knocking on doors, or more, you only ever have the opportunity to speak to the select few willing to have a conversation with you. In working at the ACLU, I spend a lot of time with the community organizers helping them with their efforts, but Gerrlyn has believed in me enough as an intern to give me the creative freedom to do my own outreach plan as well. I was going to be presenting to young people all over San Diego, specifically court involved youth and/or “at risk” youth. I feel like many of my peers who are just getting an opportunity to vote for the first time are not aware of the upcoming election. They are only a year older than I am, so if I was not aware, then how could I expect them to be. I wanted to focus specifically in communities that are not typically reached by campaigns. These are the communities most impacted by the district attorney, who holds so much power over the criminal justice system, yet these are the places where people are not typically engaged in elections. This includes Chula Vista too! I set out to try to find organizations or schools that I could come present to and started mapping out my presentation. At first, this was very difficult. How was I supposed to turn such a vast subject as Smart Justice into something that could be taken in by a class/group of teenagers like myself. I know I often get bored or stop paying attention when someone gives me too much information at once, but as I got into planning I realized how familiar my process was. I looked back to my Ethnic Studies plans and tried to remember my lessons that were best received. Mainly, the best ones were the most interactive ones. When I asked our group lots of questions, gave them time to talk to partners, and used plenty of examples that put them in the subject we were learning about, we always ended up having the best conversations. I tried to replicate this in my presentation. I got my presentation fairly complete, but no one was responding about letting me come present! I emailed more and more people and reached out to connections I already had. I remembered what Gerrlyn taught me on the first day. If you want 10 people, talk to 30. As I did this, I eventually started to get responses. Now, I am scheduled to present at 3 schools and 3 community organizations! I am so excited to present and looking forward to finally putting my own work into action!
As a community organizer, one has to have a deep sense of identity. Everything about organizing is building relationships with people and inspiring others to take action on the issues that are affecting them, but this is incredibly difficult to do unless you are able to be vulnerable with people about why the issue is important to you too. You need to be able to share your story. You need to connect with people so that you can build the bond that will push everyone, including yourself, forward. This can be difficult for all sorts of reasons. A person might find it difficult to share things about their personal life because it is traumatic. Then again, a person also might find it difficult to share because they do not experience this issue first hand. I can relate mostly to the second. I feel passion and will to take action through second hand experiences. A family member, a friend, people in my community, or honestly any individual’s hardships are what make me feel so determined to make change. I have problems of my own, as we all do, but I am half white, light skinned, middle class, and I come home every day knowing that, for the most part, things will be alright for me when the sun rises in the morning. So how do I go speak to people who do not have this privilege and claim to know what they are feeling? First of all, I don’t claim to know what anyone is feeling because I will and have only ever known what I feel. I need to be grounded in who I am, where I come from, and know in which situations I can share my story and in which I should allow others to share their own. Although, this does not mean that I should try to hide or keep myself from connecting with anyone I hope to build a relationship with. Every person can find a way to empathize with another. We are all, at the core, human beings. We have emotions that we have all felt for different reasons. We have plenty of moments in our lives that we can share and find solidarity in. I love this about my workplace. Everyone at the ACLU comes from somewhere different, but we all have a common goal. As a teenager, I am still finding my identity. It is inspiring to be surrounded by so many people who know who they are, know what they want, but are always, at the core, human.
The first week anywhere is usually a bit nerve wracking. There are all sorts of new trainings to go through, all sorts of information you need to absorb, all sorts of people you need to meet, etc. At my internship at the ACLU, I was lucky to have some familiarity because of my work here last summer, nevertheless, I still found my voice cracking a bit when responding to my mentor. Within a few hours, I realized that it had no reason to! My mentor's name is Gerrlyn and she is very kind, funny, and is doing the job that I hope to be doing at her age. She is still young, but has an amazing wisdom from her years of working as a community organizer. When Gerrlyn started telling me about the campaign I'd be working on with her, I got so excited. When I am an adult, I hope to work for a non-profit NGO dealing with criminal justice reform (meaning putting an end to mass incarceration, racial bias in the legal system, over-policing, police brutality, etc.) or immigration reform. The current focus for the ACLU is on the district attorney election and getting people to vote in favor of their smart justice campaign. The smart justice campaign is centered around the goal of decreasing the number of nation-wide incarcerated people by 50%, eliminating racial bias, and much more. It includes all of the issues that I feel most passionate about. One of the things I have helped with this week is helping to set up phone banking. Something new that the ACLU of San Diego and Imperial Counties is doing is that they are hiring people who were previously incarcerated and giving them jobs as phone bankers for this campaign. Through this, I have been able to meet some amazing folks with stories that perfectly illustrate why we need smart justice. One of those people is in the photo above! He was sentenced life in prison due to the three strikes law. For petty theft, he spent 17 years behind bars until his case was reevaluated and he was set free. There is no logical reason that someone should be stripped of their freedom for life because of petty theft. Now that he is out, he is hoping to go to law school to make sure that this doesn't happen to others. It has been an amazing experience to witness justice work in action. I am so excited to pursue this career path as an adult!
As many mothers do, my mom always told me that I was creative. No matter how much I tried to disagree, eventually I came to the conclusion that she was right. I’m not necessarily creative in that I excel at painting or playing an instrument, no matter how much I love the arts I am no prodigy, but I am creative in the way that I think. I am able to come up with grand concepts very quickly and I get very passionate about them. Creativity, however, is useful in more ways than painting. Just because I cannot build sculptures like Michaelangelo does not mean that my ideas always go to waste. This skill makes me an amazing planner! When my group of organizers and I began formulating ideas for our walkout, I immediately bubbled with ideas about how we could make the event more engaging. I brought up the fact that we should have an area full of art for people to look at while speeches go on, that we should connect with the ACLU to help ourselves better understand student protesting rights, and many more along the way. When teaching Ethnic Studies, I often came up with ideas for new units or lessons. This would help me at my internship because these are the exact skills that a community organizer needs in order to be able to connect the people that they work with to the issue they hope to change. I could definitely see myself planning an event for the ACLU, and now that I have finished my organizing of HTHCV’s anti-gun violence walkout, I feel much more equipped in doing so. Organizing is primarily creating ideas from scratch about new, interesting, and informative ways of revealing injustice to society, therefore paving a way for change. People are starting to get tired of the same old protests and picket lines, many of my peers told me that they didn’t feel like a walkout was going to accomplish anything because no matter how many happen, change never follows. I think that persistence is important, but a movement cannot persist unless a large amount of people stay empowered. Activism now has all sorts of new terrain to explore in order to keep our progress from halting. I would love to do behind the scenes work for an event around immigration, criminal justice reform, or racial justice. I think my ideas could bring a different perspective to the table.
I am an activist. It is sad to say, but the many issues that threaten my community have become so ingrained into my life that I know I have to be an activist. Contrary to popular belief, this does not mean that I am destined for sadness. Fighting for your rights is empowering for the self and the community. My dream is to work for a non-profit organization dealing with racial justice, immigration reform, and/or criminal justice reform. I know that in order to take on a strenuous job like this, I need to set high standards for my enjoyment of every day at the office or in the field. Here is my declaration:
I will work with people who make me laugh, teach me things about the world and myself, and have been enlightened to the truths about oppression in our society. I will make helping people face to face a staple in my everyday life; I will be a part of my community by being with my community and not (always) stuck behind a desk. I will have some form of autonomy, but still work collaboratively; we are strongest when we are equal and together. I will be treated with respect and respect those around me. I will find ways to be creative and express myself through my work. I will have fun and focus every day on celebrating achievements, learning from failures, and making baby steps toward specific goals. I know that I will never be happy about the issues, but I will always be happy about the progress. I often struggle with balancing between bettering the world for future lives and enjoying my own present life. In the future, even though it is something I hold very close to my heart, I will keep my activism within the workday and devote the rest to myself, family, and friends. If either one ever takes over too much, the other will weaken. I am strongest when I include myself in the long list of those that I will take care of. So lastly, I will have a loving partner, two children, a home with character, a savings account for travel, and make sure that fun is always a priority. This week was the week before Festival del Sol, and as usual, it was very stressful. What I am used to at this time of year, and what I found myself doing in the beginning, is frantic listing of all of the things I need to do, but then spending so much time stressing about or not wanting to do the work that the list only grows. Something I found, however, is that certain work, while frustrating, can also be very peaceful or meditative. I really enjoyed working on my stencil and essay because I got into a zone. My mom used to describe this to me and tell me that I would know I had found a passion when I was able to do things in this frame of mind. For example, if a passionate rock climber explains what it feels like to think about and choose every hand and foothold as they climb to move higher and higher, they will not tell you about the experience as an long chain of events, they will explain a feeling. Even though there is a constant change in where they are reaching, there is stress from not knowing if they will make it all the way up before the sun is down, and there is a lot of work ahead of them, the rhythm is what keeps them calm. This is what I felt when making my stencil and when writing. I was in a very focused state where I could work for hours without even thinking about all of the thought that was going into the refinements I was constantly making. Something I have realized about myself is that the hardest thing for me is starting. Once I am in the right headspace, I can do anything.
This week was the epitome of High Tech High. Exhibition is drawing near, projects are heating up, and we got tons of time to work on whatever we prioritized as needing to get done. In my personal experience, this is what I have found to be the closest school experience to a real workplace. When I worked at WorldLink or the ACLU as an intern, I had things I needed to get done. For WorldLink I needed to do research on gender based violence and write abstracts. We would only meet once a week in the Institute for Peace and Justice, the rest of the week I had to balance between having my Freshman summer and getting all of the work and reading I needed done, doing my part to move the organization toward the eventual goal of having a Youth Town Meeting. For the ACLU, most of my work stayed within the office. I had times where I had a specific task, like shadowing one on one meetings between Gracie, a community organizer for the Southeast San Diego region, and the community members who she hoped to support, or setting up for a volunteer night. However, I also had hours where I knew what I needed to complete but had to manage myself. This is especially the case at my current job at Allegro Music Studio. My boss even told me that a good portion of my job will be anticipating the needs of the workplace. I do the important things first like managing the daily settlement reports, uploading new students or payments into our computer system, or answering to customers in person or over the phone. Those things usually take me about an hour, the rest of the time I work on whatever I see fit. I really like how my school has trained me to do this. Instead of micromanaging us or having the teacher always direct what we work on, we are given goals and the freedom to achieve them however we need.
Our trip to UCSD was tiring, but it was also inspiring. To put it simply, there were different parts of me having different reactions. My left brain, metaphorically speaking because we learned in biology that the right and left brain characteristics are subjective, was nervous. It told me when I walked through the lab with all sorts of mice brains being examined for radioactive kisspeptin, when I sat down to study in Geisel library and saw the length of surrounding college students’ material compared to mine, and when I interrogated the HTHCV alumni about the shift from high school to college, that I was not ready. However, my right brain was exhilarated! So many flyers were being pushed into my face, I immediately saw organizations that I wanted to join, and as I looked around, I realized that the work that people were doing, no matter how stressful it may have looked to me, was work that they had signed up for voluntarily. Even though Dr. Kauffman’s microscopes were showing me neurotransmitters that have little to do with the things I hope to study in college, looking through the lense at those little glowing dots was looking at the stars. I could imagine to have been looking at any of the millions of constellations that could be my life in a little over a year. I am both nervous and exhilarated. College is going to be a change. My entire life will have new responsibilities, but also new freedoms. I push myself now to practice taking care of myself as much as I can, but in the back of my mind I feel a sense of calm and assurance that everything will be okay. I know I can keep myself as motivated as the people I witnessed on campus, I trust myself.
I was doing research for my socratic seminar. I knew what I wanted to write about. The question was, “Is having empathy at odds with American Values?” so of course, I said yes. In my mind, America = Capitalism = sociopathy and oppression. I was looking for ted talks, studies, articles, or anything that could help me to get proof of the reality I knew so well. I found a scientist names Paul K. Piff who does a lot of research on the association between empathy and privilege. Throughout his career as a sociologist at University of California Irvine, he has found that, “as a person’s levels of wealth increase, their feelings of compassion and empathy go down, and their feelings of entitlement, of deservingness, and their ideology of self-interest increases.” So as a person climbs up in capitalism, they become less and less able to care about the needs of others. This also works in the reverse way. Capitalism can actually reward and work better for people who experience sociopathy. The whole system is based on self interest. It encourages independence and self reliance, one of the exact ideas that Piff found as a major quality that allow a person to forget about the needs of the greater community. He said, “Wealth and abundance give us a sense of freedom and independence from others. The less we have to rely on others, the less we may care about their feelings. This leads us towards being more self-focused.” This process of researching and reflecting were very helpful to me because it allowed me to gather more evidence on a subject I feel a large emotional connection to. However, something I could have done better was to look at resources that did not come from a perspective I was necessarily looking for so that I could broaden my perspective on the complexity of the issue.
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What is this?Hi everyone! This is my junior year blog. Here you will find weekly reflections up until the completion of my junior internship. I hope you enjoy this inside look on my learning! Archives
June 2018
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