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!
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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!
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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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