Activism as Creation —Grad Students for Working Wage

5:15 P.M. Campus is quiet at dusk on Wednesday evening and I walk along the path next to the green of Mudd Field, the site of the Tent City occupation a mere six months ago. I cut through Holmes Lounge as a shortcut, noticing the intricate ceiling detail and the grand oil portrait of the building’s donor. Spilling out into Brookings Quad I see the cobblestones and the dual towers which create an undeniable and intentional collegiate feeling. These are the structures which inform and shape my daily experience as a student on this campus.

Heading into Duncker Hall, I meet with Trent McDonald, one of the co-executive chairs for the Washington University Graduate Workers Union. After hours, the otherwise vacant building is brought to life by the flip of a light switch, illuminating a long row of desks, each representing distinct personalities, genres, and modes of study.

Trent’s cubicle is orderly, and several books line his top shelf. In his third year PhD program, his desk is one of many units within this cross section of the Graduate English Literature Department. I notice the pin on his shirt reading “I Heart TA’s.” A pop of color, he’s pinned up a purple activism poster on his right wall. The desk itself is clear, and clean. “Nothing too fancy,”

a common phrase of his, I come to learn, is how he might describe his space. To me, it appears to be the canvas for the planning of his next creative action.

As we begin chatting, Trent’s vast knowledge enriches the conversation, informed by comprehensive labor history and shaped by an adept awareness of current events in union politics. Trent grew up in the small town of Zanesville, Ohio, where his family has been rooted for generations. He explains that as the product of a long line of working class laborers, his parents were the first to graduate from college in his family line. His dad is a proud member of the Laborer’s Union, holding a job on the white collar side of construction in a typically blue collar union. With his family history as his blueprint, Trent became aware of WashU’s sustained union effort through a mutual friend, and knew he wanted to get plugged in.When institutions and places of work do not yield power to workers, allowing them to voice what they know is best for themselves, workers must in turn intervene with direct actions. These actions, in Trent’s words, are often predicated on creativity. For thirty-three days last Spring, students occupied space on main campus in the form of Tent City, an act of sustained ingenuity grounded in the fight for a $15 minimum wage for all graduate workers and campus employees. Calling upon the past to bolster them along the way, members of the Union notably employed a 1960s tactic known as the Teach-In. Lecturers from the Anthropology and English departments alike made their way to the site to teach histories of activism at WashU and across the nation.

Tent City also became a hub for undergraduate students who felt their views and ideologies aligned with the mission of the action. One of these undergraduate members, Sienna Ruiz, a senior from Oakland, California, first encountered the Graduate Union last Spring in the context of her English Literature class entitled, “Imagining Racial Coalitions.” It was in this class that she met Trent, along with other graduate students involved in organizing efforts on campus. While the WashU undergraduate experience is often characterized as a bubble, this personal connection with her graduate classmates ignited her passions, opening her mind to the transformative space of Tent City and the opportunities for alignment between graduate and undergraduate students. As her class covered a unit on literary utopias, Sienna couldn’t help but feel that Tent City, also known as Martinville, was in itself a kind of multi-racial, interdisciplinary utopia. Students of all ages studying everything from Physics to Japanese Literature, connected under a unifying mission. A union, Sienna claims, provides the language and the structure to work across boundaries. In the daily experience of being a student at WashU, one can notice the artificial borderlines which define campus life, whether that be the sectioning off of students into majors and departments, the separation between undergraduate and graduate students, or even the divisions between graduate workers and contract workers on campus. Parcelled into subgroups, we are often kept divided rather than merging in solidarity. Sienna further explains that walking through campus, you might notice the people “who clean classrooms, or prepare food, or cut the grass,” and wonder if they are earning a sustainable wage, but feel there are not ways to readily access more information or assist in securing fair pay for students and workers alike. The function of a union, then, is to provide the framework for undergraduate action to be linked with graduate action, while at the same time joining efforts with contract workers.

Expanding more on this alliance, Trent highlights the importance of occupying space in union bargains and contract negotiations, even for those who hold different jobs and work in different fields. He believes that on a fundamental level “we’re all in the same boat, even if it’s not an identical boat.” Essentially, while workers, on campus and off, come from all walks of life, their outcomes are all strengthened when they join together to call for what they deserve. I reflect on my own identity as a student employed through Federal Work Study, and realize the ways in which I have become complacent in my weekly routine.

Meditating on the role of creativity and public art in direct action, Sienna Ruiz, while spending time with graduate students involved in Tent City, was also researching, planning, and designing a mural for the Danforth University Center last Spring. Originally created to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Rodriguez Scholars program, the initial idea expanded, incorporating images of the Mississippi River, indigenous communities, Latinx labor organizers, and members of the Washington University Graduate Workers Union. The legacies of history echo alongside contemporary displays of activism. Painted into an alcove on a public wall, the piece carries a certain timelessness, each viewer “able to touch it because you are a part of it right now.” In her own political praxis, Sienna believes art is an essential part of social change. Public art allows viewers to engage with and imagine realities that wouldn’t otherwise be visible, and to take them seriously, even when they seem idealistic. It visually reminds us of what we can always be working towards. Tying her creative endeavors back to union efforts, she claims, “If a union is one way to create a longer memory of student activism, a mural is also.”

In conversation with both Trent and Sienna, discussing the diversity of experiences, stories, and lives which intertwine under the umbrella of collective action, the essential role of community in activism becomes clear. It’s about advocating for people who you’ve built something with. It’s about showing up for the people who have shown up for you. It’s about occupying space with one’s creations, whether it be Tent Cities or public murals. It’s about looking to the past, dissecting the work of A. Philip Randolph and Mother Jones, Cesar Chaves and Dolores Huerta, while simultaneously inventing a future.

Within the structure of the Washington University Graduate Workers Union, there is ample, and ongoing, room for alliance. Because unions are established under the basic notion of workers coming together, its efforts are intersectional, transcending the differing facets of field, age, and nationality. At the end of our chat, Trent reminds me that there is still much to be done, and reflects on an old labor saying: “An injury to one is an injury to all.”

I make my way back across the historic grounds of Brookings Quad, and for the first time in a while, I feel the potential of what can exist, not only within this space, but far beyond these prevailing structures. I feel newly empowered in imagining possible futures, knowing now that ingenuity, artistry, and alliance are crucial means in getting there.