br0es we did some cr8zy shit ! michelle // dec. 2019
THE GOAL IS TO BECOME SO AUTHENTICALLY ME WHERE BEING UNDERSTOOD IS NOT EVEN IN THE QUESTION, LIKE IM SO FAR AWAY FROM CARING. I WANT TO BE RESPECTED FOR THE WAY I CARRY MYSELF + MOVE THRU THE WORLD. I WANT MY TRUTH + BIG HEARTED COURAGE TO MOVE OTHERS TO LIVE THEIR TRUTH WITH BIG HEARTED COURAGE. YOU KNOW, LIKE THOSE KINDS OF PEOPLE WITH AN ENERGY THAT JUST BREATHES WHOLE LIFETIMES INTO YOU. LIKE FUCK SOFTNESS + BEING “GOOD”. I WANT TO BECOME ANCESTRAL.
TO MY QWOC “quock” STUDENT ORGANIZERS my loves, they have nothing on us. we: literal godtier. even our pinkies too big for institutional memory to contain. now imagine the size of our hearts: to make joy as we fight, to hold ourselves and each other over isolating fog. we’re barely 21 and already past them. creators of new practices, processes, legacies, languages to forgive and feel and family. like, our power! we throw down for fun, alongside papers & crushes, deep fried memes & dark dinners. like br0es, we did some cr8zy shit. i can’t wait to know the love you will grow. we are already winning.
INTRO i created this zine with the intentions of: • a love letter, a praise poem. i feel a real deep gratitude for student organizing at uchicago and everyone who i’ve built with. this is for the homies! where would i be without you all? we don’t celebrate each other enough!! • reflecting on the mistakes i’ve made, lessons learned, growth experienced. i offer this with the hope that you will find something here that is useful and generative for you. while i’m speaking from personal experience, i know my experience would be nothing without the city of chicago and those who came before me. special shout out to the OG big kids: jessica, alyssa, alex, julie. thank you for the guidance, encouragement, and game nights. special shout out to jessica for her continued advice, even though you graduated 1.5 yrs ago and are now in caliazn central!?! thank you for reminding me of the importance in looking back and asking for help. your quick messages pointing out our mistakes or something i’ve missed stress me out and remind me i still have to be sharper, but our campaigns are stronger because of you. also qudsiyyah!? so much of what uc united + cultural centers campaign are now goes back to you and your fearless ~aries/virgo~ energy, in the very beginning and later on too, with the structure + support you continued to provide, even when you turned towards other important fights. i see myself working in your lineage + legacies.
MY GROUND, MY TOUCHSTONES these are things that have stuck in my head and that i come back to when i need a reminder of why i am doing the work, especially when i get tired, feel frustrated, stagnated, too much, edge toward burnout. shout out to kosi for introducing the idea/ language of “find your ground� to me.
student organizing is supposed to be FUN. -- nash
your heart is a muscle the size of your fist. keep loving, keep fighting. -- dalia shevin, by way of dean spade
low ego, high impact; the strength of our movement is in the strength of our relationships, which could only be measured by their depth. -- adrienne maree brown be brave with your tender heart -- chani nicholas to aries the holographic matrix of the universe: the invisible threads that connect us materially, spiritually, intergenerationally, that remind us our actions divinely fit into the complex systems of the Universe, that we are moving towards Freedoms. Synonyms: synchronicity, coincidence, spoopy. -- pearl
we need to take our roles as ancestors more seriously. -- shaktii
“br0 WHAT’S YOUR POWER ANALYSIS?” something that organizing has really pressed into me is how to think about POWER. it doesn’t matter how organized & mobilized you are, when you don’t have a solid analysis on power, it becomes easy to fuck up and waste time + energy. of course, sometimes you only have that realization upon reflection after you’ve made the mistakes, but there are ways you can minimize the false leads you need to go through to get on the right path. i feel this way especially for the cultural centers campaign. see extension pack aka pt.2 for a more in-depth, nittygritty reflection of the cultural centers campaign, 2017-2019.
when uc united first started and i took lead on the campaign (fall of 2nd yr, 2017**),, i did not know what i was doing AT ALL. i didn’t have that clear or that articulated of a vision for cultural centers. at this point i also knew n o t h i n g about organizing. i knew what the manifestations of organizing looked like--media campaigns, rallies--but i didn’t understand how you went from action to the actual change. i also didn’t know the core of organizing yet: building relationships, building power. then i was intro’d to organizing tools like power mapping, spectrum of allies, and building “strategy” through short-term, midterm, and long-term (horizon) goals by angela, a vista fellow at ——— ** note: i date things in this zine according to quarters / academic year. so fall = sept-dec. [new year] winter = jan-march. spring = april-june. i omit writing quarter.
coalition for a better chinese american community (cbcac) in chicago chinatown (winter of 2nd yr, 2018). it was at this point that the cultural centers campaign started to feel like an actual campaign with some kind of direction. see extension pack aka. pt.2 for more info on these organizing tools: power mapping, spectrum of allies, and building strategy
the fall of that academic year (2017-2018), uchicago also announced their new diversity & inclusion initiative with melissa gilliam appointed to steer it. our focus became very much about influencing her agenda and shaping her plans. we had several meetings with her throughout that academic year. it started with us being roundabout, polite, and trying to just get info. then, as we got more frustrated with her deflections, and she got more frustrated by our increasingly confrontational attitudes about it. she became more explicit about shutting us down. imo, admin meetings can be a good politicizing tool to disrupt narratives of authority + get people to see that being polite will get you nowhere. it’s never about figuring out the right argument to change admin’s minds. admin only respond to power. that academic year ended with our working group holding our first, agitational action: #OccupyOMSA. we mobilized 60+ students of color to disrupt the culminating presentation day of one of melissa’s diversity + inclusion projects. in doing so, we showed our power to melissa, and the recently hired directors of our multicultural center, raja and ethan, who were present. this resulted in a meeting where we achieved some small “wins” to be applied to the multicultural center (though i don’t consider
them to be wins now; i talk about this more in pt.2). HOWEVER, the superficial changes we got, in combo with the new directors eagerness to working with us, gave us the (VERY FALSE) impression that we had allies in the form of these mid-level administrators, and that working with/pushing them could get us what we wanted. this set us up to direct our energies in really misguided ways the following year. when i think about the cultural centers campaign that year (my 3rd yr) i just feel an immense sense of “AHHH� like this:
we spent so much time + energy doing things that ultimately was not productive (did not move us towards our goals) and drained us (was not energizing, felt pointless, had demobilizing effects). we were doing things like passing a student government resolution in favor of cultural centers and running a petition to have cultural centers be a donation option for alumni, which were small concrete things that made us feel like we were doing something when we lacked direction at the
time. i don’t think these in and of themselves were necessarily bad things to work towards, but they were not helping us bring people into our campaign in meaningful ways. we also spent too much time meeting with raja + ethan, which was a big distraction. raja was SO good at this. they were the newly hired executive director of the center of identity + inclusion, a south asian queer, non-binary person previously at UCLA who’d always invite you to “grab coffee.” they had this whole show like they care about you as a person, PLUS used “woke” language that made you feel like they actually understood you. maybe they were a nice person with good intentions (...who also took credit for our work and was constantly boosting themselves lol), but DON’T BE FOOLED INTO THINKING NICE ADMIN ARE YOUR ALLIES OR COULD BE YOUR ALLIES. at the end of the day, admin are HIRED to manage students. the lesson here is that we made these mistakes because we/i was not clear on POWER. part of it was not having a power analysis with administrators: we were still trying to convince melissa to take our side and have her + raja, ethan to advocate for us. we weren’t thinking of how to build enough power so that we could leverage these different admin to TARGET the ACTUAL person with power to get what we wanted. but the other part was not having a power analysis for ourselves: i remember jessica and alyssa asking me at some point something like, how do cultural centers build student power on campus? and i was like :0 oh f u c k. we had spent so much energy showing why we wanted cultural
centers that we did not think deeply about what they would look like / how they would function. we often diverted to things like, “it’s what the community would want it to look like,” or “it’s not our jobs to come up with a detailed plan for cultural center. this is the job of administrators. they’re the ones being paid for it.” which, i think is a fair point re: compensation for labor BUT if cultural centers got ok-ed at that point, im not sure we would’ve been prepared to shift gears to fight for what we wanted. we were not prepared to take control of the process to make sure we wouldn’t be co-opted immediately. in an ideal world, we would and should have the opportunity to think things over, make mistakes, and recover, but we don’t have that luxury right now. i’m worried that a “win”--a “yes” to cultural centers--could severely demobilize us and lead people to think that our fight was done when it would have only just begun. this is also why reinforcing a narrative like this is something i regret in retrospect: that students were exhausted from doing all this diversity work, that we shouldn’t have to do it, that admin should make change and let us just focus on being students. there are parts to this narrative that are valid: uchicago’s DOES exploit POC to do diversity work. BUT by pushing this narrative, we were effectively disempowering ourselves!! this work of organizing to transform the university IS our responsibility as students. we aren’t passive consumers here. without us, the university would cease to be a university (creds to claudio for this last bit of analysis). every so often, me and kosi marvel at how much work students do to support each other and fill in uchicago’s gaps: the
emergency fund (founded by jahne and marlin; $$ fundraised from + by students to give to students in emergencies), orgs to provide academic support + highlight opportunities for POC majors in STEM (founded by marlin) and social sciences & humanities (thought of by kosi, created by raven), and all the formal + informal collectives and networks that help us survive through the toxic culture of stress + isolation. all of this is fulfilling + empowering work(!!!) that can help us unlearn so much of the narratives we’ve been taught: to be passive, deferential, disengaged. what makes this work exhausting wasn’t the work itself, but that we weren’t doing it together in a way that builds student power, strikes at root issues, and transforms our current conditions in the university. after that spring, we shifted to foreground power in our campaign. how can cultural centers be a container that helps build student power? doing research over the summer also helped me personally see that cultural centers isn’t the solution in and of itself. there were cultural centers out there that were more about professional development or community service. i was also reading the book the revolution will not be funded: beyond the non-profit industrial complex (by Incite!) over the summer. that made me realize how much multicultural centers function like non-profits in the way they manage and neutralize student dissent. how can we make sure our cultural centers help break down walls, redirect resources, and bring together different groups within and outside the university (workers, grad students, faculty, community members, grassroots organizations)?
i think getting clear on power has been So Good for our campaign, not just in focusing us and revealing who the actual targets are, but also laying the groundwork for the campaign after the campaign (creds to asha from byp100 + columbia divest for this idea). getting cultural centers doesn’t mean we’ve won because they can always be co-opted. cultural centers is the short-term goal. we need to stay mobilized and organized to make sure cultural centers stays by us for us so we can use it to build something bigger.
“OK, BUT HOW IS WHAT UR DOING B U I L D I N G O U T THE WORK?” at this point, this is a guiding orientation / touchstone question / core metric of how i evaluate my own work + the student organizing that i am in proximity to. one of the biggest struggles of student organizing is the turnover. it feels like once you get a grasp of organizing at uchicago, you’re on your way out. i think the question of how to make our campaigns sustainable and long-term is one that i’ve had since the beginning, and one that naturally comes up in organizing. but articulating it in this specific way helps me foreground that the building-out work needs to be incorporated intentionally as constant practice, and not an afterthought. building out the work doesn’t have to involve a super formal structure (i.e. a structured mentorship process, teach-in, workshop). honestly i feel like its more effective to put people in the splash zone / cross fire to accumulate experience, and being there to support in processing (yay 4 experiential learning!). the impact of 4th years graduating is something i have felt every year, but i think the transition from 2nd to 3rd yr (2018) really emphasized the importance of building out the work. when all the then-4th years left (organizers of class of 2018! lowkey a powerhouse generation), all that was left of care not cops (cnc) was me and paola. and it’s not that the 4th yrs did nothing. we learned a lot just by organizing with them the initial cnc rally (in front of rosenwald hall during prospective student week 2018, right
after soji was shot) and the 1st cnc occupation (camped 24 hours on the quad during alumni weekend 2018). but it was all moving too fast, and there were too many things we had to deal with at the time within and outside the campaign, for the work to be built out properly. the transition from 2nd to 3rd yr was hard, and i felt pretty unprepared to pivot so suddenly from a learning role to a guiding role. at that point, i don’t think i had a real clear grasp on the work either. like yes, we had the horizon goal to abolish u of c police and i knew why it was important. but it wasn’t clear what we were trying to create, how we were going to get there, what seeds to plant, what reachable things to build towards. all of this piled up in 3rd yr spring (2019), which was extra hard because we had all these new people to pull into the work, but i didn’t feel like i had anyone to guide me in guiding others. what i needed was at someone in the group (who knew the context, could offer alternative ways of seeing the context) who i trusted (had a relationship built out of organizing + struggling together, so knew where each other was coming from) to process ideas, think things through with. building out the work isn’t just important for the longevity of the work, but also the sustainability of the work (avoiding individual + collective burnout!) in the present. i felt a lot of resentment that quarter towards cnc, and then frustration at myself for feeling that resentment. a lot of that had to do with because i wasn’t in trusting relationships with people--not because of anything deep, just that so many people were new to the group / organizing, and i hadn’t spent enough time to get
to know them, where they were coming from, what do they care about etc.--and they didn’t know those things about me either. i left meetings often feeling drained + unsettled. even though i was part of this collective, i felt really isolated from others. i was constantly agonizing over whether others felt this way, or was it just a me-problem (i.e. being hypercritical, too negative)? during this time, i struggled a lot with distinguishing between: am i‌
...or am i taking up too much space / acting as an authority figure not offering my wisdom to the collective being controlling / shutting people down not supporting others enough / being conflict-avoidant not trusting others to take lead making decisions for others leading with my ego not believing my voice is worthwhile straying from our commitments to horizontal leadership? confused on what it takes to build collective leadership? what helped us as cnc come together was a mix of things: a peace circle that emma (in cnc) led, recalibrating our spring qtr campaign timeline, and then evaluating our spring campaign together, naming tensions, and getting clear with each other in the new academic year (fall 2019). for me specifically, working together on actions in an un-rushed, very thorough way helped me develop trust + relationship with people.
i remember, after a meeting (to gear up towards our cnc quad occupation #2 during alumni weekend, spring 2019) where i said i was feeling pretty anxious about our upcoming action, alicia (in cnc) approached me to check-in with me. she asked how things were going and if there’s anything she could do to support--even though she was a 1st yr at the time who had just joined our campaign that quarter! this really touched me because it made me feel very concretely that i was being supported. it also reassured me that even with all the tensions + growing pains we experienced that quarter, we were still building out the work and really cultivating a culture of mutual care + support. struggling through the difficulties of spring together and then witnessing us landing on the other side, still committed to building together, made cnc feel real and good. what building out the work means + looks like for me: •
bringing people in to work together on projects in meaningful roles so that they can learn concrete skills, build their collection of experiences, hone their intuition, build deep relationships, feel supported as they take risk & practice boldness, and then evaluate their own & our collective work. i think approaching it in this way, rather than teaching “how to organize” (though 101 trainings are still helpful), is a concrete way you can mitigate the power dynamics that come from age + experience differences.
•
a really concrete practice we have is to making new peeps tag along with older peeps on small, then increasingly larger tasks -- i.e. making an agenda, taking a role on an action/ event, co-leading an action/project. there’s no particular
timeline for this / order you progress through / hierarchy of value assigned to these roles though. we approach this pretty casually and everything is through a volunteer basis anyways, with some active encouragement sometimes. •
regularly (once or twice a quarter) include all involved people in reflecting on the work, big (year-long, quarter-long) and small (single events, short-term projects), and thinking about how this fits into a larger strategy/vision. how do these small parts fit into the big strategy?
•
good “success” markers that you’ve built out the work is that people feel excited + empowered to start proposing their own ideas, take lead on things, bring others into the work on their own initiative, and especially when they push back + build on your ideas (in a generative way). it also looks like going from only having the capacity to support a core group to having smaller committees.
“SMH THAT’S JUST A RECIPE FOR BURNOUT.” so many thoughts around burnout! it’s true,, the work is hard + people are messy + there is no way to make it feel good and smooth always bc that’s just life + learning !! uchicago makes this extra hard: the bone-deep fatigue you feel, the constant care giving that we are all called to do for each other to support ourselves in surviving here. but its not the organizing work/ workload that burns people out (its very possible to organize sustainably at uchicago). a lot of times, it’s the way we do the work!! i like the way dean spade articulated this in class (paraphrased): we all grow up and live in these oppressive structures, ingesting its poison, being shaped by its interests. how can we come together to skill up, unlearn harmful behaviors / patterns, and be bold in the face of authority? worst quarter was definitely 2nd yr spring (2018). i had a heavy academic load, had over-extended myself, reacted by becoming pretty avoidant of most obligations, stopped doing art regularly / at all, was chronically sleep-deprived, became more snappy at friends, felt distanced from my nonorganizing relationships, and disengaged emotionally / became numb. i think back to 2nd yr spring and it feels like drowning in a fever dream. alongside all of that was an organizing collab that was the hottest of messes, and that, in retrospect / reflection, was not an issue of miscommunication (which i feel like is rarely the actual root problem), but something bigger & deeper. i think it had to do with the conditions we were organizing in, the time-
line + pace we had put on ourselves, and deep distrust between groups stemming from unresolved harm. personally, it was also taking a risk i wasn’t in the right headspace to be taking, having a lot of unresolved insecurities + internal shit, and still struggling with my own silences. it’s not productive to hash out what exactly happened, but this is all to say that i was pretty burnt out by the end of that quarter, and then i went straight into a pretty wild summer (shout out to the seeding change peeps lmao!). i spent that summer holding onto a lot of resentment + anger towards student organizing + also certain people, to the point that i thought (at the time) i would never get past it. i felt that student organizing was meaningless, tended to be / was inherently toxic, and was not real grassroots organizing work. but! thank goodness that that’s not the end of the story because im a fourth year, still organizing!! and also with a deep belief that student organizing can be a really powerful way to transform our campuses + beyond. after that arc in my life, it became really important to me that i never lose touch with myself like that and to organize in a healthier way that doesn’t confuse selfsacrifice + being reckless w. myself with taking risks + being bold. this doesn’t mean that i never got tired or edged towards burnout again, but that i am more intentional + grounded in the ways i organize. how to not set yourself up for burnout / how to avoid collective burnout, or at least the things that help me: •
taking time!! when it constantly feels like we are going too fast / working with a crisis mindset, it becomes so easy
to make decisions that leave people behind, excuse toxic behavior, and reproduce oppressive dynamics. this is also connected to… •
setting expectations grounded in collective capacity (not just #s of people) + strength of our relationships (beyond friendships; “move at the speed of trust”). escalations + big risks expose all of the latent weaknesses, fractures, and unresolved issues in our communities + campaigns. that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t escalate or take risks, but that we need to take seriously the work of getting prepared.
•
get clear + be real with yourself and each other about your alignments + non-alignments. having non-alignments doesn’t mean we can’t work together, but that we need to be purposeful + intentional on how we work together. sometimes not working together or working together with strict, overly formal boundaries makes the most sense at a specific moment in time. just because we are all “left” or “radical” or “progressive” doesn’t mean we are aligned in politics, in values, in practice. that’s ok because we’re out here to build a shared, collective vision, not trying to force a certain reality onto each other. also be real (to yourself + others) about how your personal feelings about an individual or an organization may impact the way you work with them. all of these differences are opportunities to learn how to co-exist in mutually dignified ways, which is important if we are all trying to get free!!!
•
get out of the mindset that i/you/we “have to” do something. you don’t have to stick to the original plan, even if
you’ve spent most of the quarter/year moving through it. something that’s really common among me + my friends + all of us living under capitalism, is the sense that our productivity = our self-worth. we’ve all spent energy unlearning this: what are our actual responsibilities vs. the ones we put on ourselves because we think we have to be a certain kind of person / fulfill a certain role. our strength comes from our ability to stay dynamic. if you need to, recalibrate your campaign. learn how to let go. you and/or your org don’t need to do it all! there are so many other people doing the work, and there will be so many people after us. we’re part of a lineage, a movement. •
move together, not alone. if you start feeling like the only person who cares / the only person doing work, check in with somebody (break out of your isolation). this can look really casual (like getting a temperature check of what they’re feeling) or something more in depth (“here’s where i’m at. where are you at?”). sometimes, moving together involves agitating each other to recognize and/or unlearn our toxic mindsets/behaviors of isolating ourselves, being self-sabotaging, feeling we’re not worthy enough, thinking we’re the only ones that can do something correctly. sometimes it means re-calibrating the way we do things. but it’s not just you making this call--it’s all of us, collectively, who are doing the work together.
•
stay grounded in your actual collective goals + vision. what are you trying to build? why are you doing this work? it helps to regularly make space to remind ourselves and
each other of this. •
know the signs of burnout for yourself, others, + the collective. if things are not working, people are dragging their feet, take the space to name tensions / wack dynamics, diagnose the problem (creds to jessica for this language), really take time to get to the heart of the issue (which may involve wading through our conflict-avoidant responses and initial defensive reactions), and recenter together on what we actually care about. trusting in the process (and not focusing on a specific outcome) really helps.
•
always build out the work [see previous section]. build deeper relationships. build a community culture that centers our capacities to change + transform and allows us to show up as our real, whole selves.
“YEA I HAVE TO REMIND MYSELF, LIKE, IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY.” organizing is life work is healing work! i think back to who i was as an underclassman. i lacked courage, was conflict avoidant, often downplayed my own or other people’s (righteous) anger for the sake of passive peace, distrusted my own intuition, did not see the value of my ideas, kept silent, did not ask for help, held myself back. it’s wild how much i’ve grown since then, because of struggle, because of organizing. i think this is common for a lot of people. when we come together, we realize that all the things that make us feel bad and small are not because of us, but because of the system. we see that things don’t have to be this way. and we can feel (like raindrops in our palms) the power we have together to change things in ways we can feel right now. In order to change/transform the world, we must change/transform ourselves. -- grace lee boggs what makes me believe in organizing the most isn’t when we win campaigns (because that doesn’t happen often), but when it turns out that something i thought was not possible is, actually, indeed possible. i’m reminded that things don’t have to be this way. we don’t have to burn out. we can work together in
generative ways. the disagreements that felt so insurmountable are actually not that deep. the relationships that became frigid are warm again. transformation is so, so possible: it felt so meaningful + demonstrative of healing for me when at the end of this quarter (fall 2019), me + anna facilitated a meeting with other student organizers to talk about collaboration between uc united and uchicago student action (and other groups). 1.5 years after that wild 2nd yr spring, after i spent half a year feeling irreparably angry + thinking that a productive collaboration was impossible, we were working together to build a shared vision of, essentially, a liberated university. now anna’s one of my closest organizing homies and i trust her so much! all this came out of multiple 1:1 conversations where we had to be brave + real in naming what happened, taking responsibility, being willing to put ourselves in the crosshairs of accountability etc. i’ve felt so, so grounded this quarter--probably the most i’ve ever been in my life. i am more secure in who i am and what i want to do. i let my work speak for itself. i love + support those dear to me. i feel like whatever happens, people have my back and i have their backs and we are co-conspirators and struggling together. i still catch myself moving from a place of insecurity or falling back into bad patterns at times--but the thing is i catch myself, or my homies do. im sharper and bolder and can feel more growth just waiting at my fingertips. i feel solidarity in very real ways, like gritted teeth, clenched hands, a small fire burning in my gut.
some questions that i come back to in times of uncertainty: what is blocking me? how are ways that i am (still) moving from a place of insecurity + ego, and not from a place of believing i have the capacity to be loved? what are dynamics that i am noticing? have i named these tensions to those involved? what’s stopping me from naming them? how am i putting myself in relationships + communities where i can be held accountable? am i acting + moving in a way that shows concretely that i can be held accountable, esp for those younger, less experienced, quieter?
LESSONS FROM THE HOMIES
where i would be without the homies! here are some of the close co-conspirators, collaborators, and/or generally good buds who have touched me + pushed me to grow in a real, deep way. i asked for their reflections on student organizing in general + the lessons they learned, presented in no particular order.
KOSI, (BA’20)
pisces softie / virgo overlord, realest homie + co-conspirator since day 1
student organizing has been everything to me as a college kid. i felt so lost after my first year but then i really got into UC United my second year and found family. Family in the big kids, family in michelle, and brian and emilio and liana and lilly and many others my role in family when it comes to those who are after us, who look up to us. I was found my purpose: to challenge and fight power with the loved ones who carry swords alongside you. Student organizing is community building and when you’re a student of color, you’re queer, you’re children of immigrants, community is our survival which blurs into family. Of course it’s not all uwu and roses. We have disagreements in strategy, we realize we’ve been running on different expectations for each other, stress from school, jobs, racism/sexism/queerphobia/etc at an “elite institutions” can bring us to a breaking point and/or force us to step back at critical times when we need everyone on deck. Even as we grow and become a more known organization, we face attacks from the outside that put pressure on
our weaknesses on the inside. Things get especially hard when your work as co-organizers directly overlaps with your friendships. The problems of one bleed into the other and becomes a mess that is extra hard to clean up. But there’s a reason we keep going and a reason we are all still here: the memes are absolutely priceless. Just kidding (but not really). We know we are bringing about a better campus for those who may not even know we existed and slowly but surely chipping away at issues that extend beyond these ivory towers. Be creative! Be creative! Be creative! Don’t be afraid to think big, to think weird and unconventional. If the norm is oppressing us, what use is there to conform to it in our work. Think tents and banners from towers and swords and dank memes. Know how to balance the serious and the fun and take (smart) risks. Learn from those more experienced but don’t take their words as law. Be ready to see your heroes as human. Never forget we are all human. Be open, never cliquey but do have core values that everyone is grounded in. Meet people where there at but that can mean coming down to meet them and/or giving them tools to meet you. Help people find a home in our work and our community. Love fiercely and passionately.
PAOLA, (BA’20)
organizing #comrade, aquarian mastermind behind the detailed “tiktok”
as i’ve talked a lot about, i often feel the weight of having been programmed into certain behaviors that have trained me to excel at institutions of privilege. a key component of this priming process is your ability to take instruction and read your grader/ teacher/interviewer/audience in a way that will get you the best
results. aka, my reading, writing, and communication skills are highly adaptable based on who i am speaking to, and they are adapted in such a way that i am always (consciously or not) trying to get myself ahead in the best way possible. if this sounds like a NEOLIBERAL ROBOT wrote it, then I AGREE. i say all of that because student organizing spaces have pushed me out of relying on others for direction, and has shown me how “priming” or “training” is actually a quite insidious way of teaching students to accept status quo power dynamics as a) natural, correct stasis and therefore b) fundamentally good and safe. Unlearning this mostly took place through my own reading and friends sending me articles, honestly. (As well as having a very intimate textual relationship to Karl Marx’s 1844 manuscripts, and inhaling anything Mariame Kaba worked on or shared.) Student organizing, though, was the embodied form of that learned, textual knowledge. By which I mean: I learned that I could facilitate a meeting without being the Editor in Chief or President of something, which were the only previous roles I had inhabited and the only options given to high schoolers who want to work on art or social issues. I learned in practice what it means to rely on other people, and watching my student comrades fumble through base-building and keeping up morale showed/show me just how much we’ve all been taught to rely on coercion in every other aspect of life. (AKA: It’s hard to connect with people in a world where certain types of coercion are our primary form of building networks. Watching us run into this problem and work around/through it has been really instructive.) As soon as you
remove student energy and student work from the structure of the RSO or IOP-sponsored group, and into a volunteer-based, student-led space, you realize you can inhabit space beyond a role and share your full abilities. By the same token, it’s also incredibly scary, because you are suddenly accountable only to yourself and your community, a community which is unstable and partly your job to actually build (as opposed to a “House” or an office space or an RSO). IN SHORT: Organizing has required me to relearn and unlearn a lot of robot-training, particularly the robot-training of following instructions and deferring to power that I described at the beginning of this quick reflection.
LIANA, (BA’21)
astro (sun/moon/rising) twin, big baby of the apt, cultural centers homie
I didn’t know what organizing was until I joined UC United. I would have never expected myself to do student organizing at all--the person I was in high school wouldn’t have been able to distinguish activism from organizing, or solidarity from allyship. My perception of organizing was always through public-facing aspects like direct actions, which I didn’t consider myself capable of doing. But these past two years pushed me to question everything I’ve learned from institutions and authority figures, politicized me by giving me the language and tools to fight for collective liberation, and forced me to confront the difficult work of emotional + psychological healing. I think especially because I came to UChicago with the perception that it was a stepping stone in my writing career, I had a very detached, disempowered outlook on the world. I viewed success and validation through external, institutional approval. I worked
within boundaries I thought I could not change. Through organizing, I’ve been able to recognize my own power and stand by values informed by experience, relationships, and the work of movement ancestors. I am constantly challenging myself by applying sharper analyses and never settling for anything that can’t be changed through people power. I think organizing is life work for me in the sense that everything in my life--the conversations I have, the work I create, the people I hold close--is rooted in questions I constantly ask because of organizing: what do we need to realize our power? How are we healing, changing, and growing with each other? What are we imagining, and how will we build that future together? I feel less alone in this world because of the collective power, struggle, and hope I find through organizing; I feel a sense of purpose and intentionality in everything I do because it’s done together.
JESSICA, (BA’18)
OG big kid, ½ of “the moms”, taurus ego-killer, is actually pretty caring tho
Student organizing has almost a degraded status. Sometimes there’s a sense that organizing students is not as meaningful, not as durable, and the interests are too narrow. I sometimes feel this way. But then I see how many of my friends have continued to be organizers after graduation. Student organizing takes advantage of the unique hub that is the university campus space and turns it into a site of intense radicalization. There is nothing more encompassing than being a student organizer. It consumed my entire life and shaped who I became friends, who I knew, what I was interested in. I am indebted to student organizing. I would not be who I am--someone I
am proud to be (most of the time)--if I had not organized in college. Organizing gave me an especially unique way of thinking about social problems, diagnosing them, and finding solutions. Now that I’m in grad school, it’s become even clearer how much people, who are interested in social issues, spend all of their energy on just thinking about how to fix these issues. I just had a 2 hour conversation last night with a friend of mine in grad school. He became politicized through sociology, it seems, and has never organized before. The entire conversation, he brought up questions or doubts he had about organizing: how do you deal with violent people, how do you get people on your side, how do you learn to be charismatic? My answer to a lot of these questions focused on what I see as the lifeblood of organizing: relationships. The absolute essentialness of organizing, building relationships and building community, is the greatest lesson I learned. Relationships aren’t something you can think through and tinker. They’re something you do or build. Organizing is a way of thinking and a process.
ALYSSA, (BA’18)
OG big kid, intimidating at first but ½ of “the moms”, makes good dessert
a lot of my thoughts around organizing have changed since I transitioned to community organizing. Student organizing is exciting because you start off with a lot of passionate young
people who are hopeful and excited abt their capacity to shape the future. Obvi there’s some caveats here re: class, race etc. but I feel that a lot of students come into college w the affirmation that they can make a difference. I’m not sure this is something shared in (other) oppressed communities all the time. I think the challenging part of student organizing is reconditioning that part of ourselves that would work independently, and star front in center of movement work. We’ve been taught for so long the boot strap narrative and exceptionalism that working and struggling as a collective isn’t second nature. Another challenge is moving students past intellectualism. We can’t think ourselves out of oppression. You can write a great paper on Fanon or racial capitalism--but that’s not building power or the capacity of your community. But I also think that across history you can see really good examples of student collectives putting ideas into action and starting these incredibly powerful movements for housing, labor, accountability, self-rule etc. Something I think I still struggle with is the tension between community building and building power. I’ve seen white org do the latter and de-emphasize critical thinking, the work of undoing oppression, healing etc. But I’ve also seen orgs of color depoliticize community and shy away from tension. On one level there’s a multiculturalism that’s hard to evade and the plain fact that it’s important to find others in similar oppressions as you. That said, there’s too many spaces that would reflect on that oppression without having people reflect on their collective ability to effect institutional/structural change. Because these spaces are lacking, we get these very homogenized politics. I want to see more student organizers struggling over what a
radical anti-racist anti-capitalist future could actually look like. Too many people in these spaces just want to be affirmed for being “woke” or ostracize others without doing the work of organizing which is bring people into the fold through relationships. Important lessons: Focus more on developing people and structures than the day to day strategy and logistics. The four year system/quarter cycles encourages burnout and fast turnover. We need to build lasting organizations and leaders to continue that work or else it’s all for nothing when you graduate. I think I did an okay job but I didn’t realize how important leadership development or relationships were when I was in the throes of student organizing. Power will co-op your issues and your narratives. Be careful and deliberate about what you ask for and how you ask for it. There’s a fine line between being strategic and compromising your core values. We want concrete action/wins but we also are working to shift frameworks and future possibilities.
JULIE (BA’18)
OG big kid, rally emcee of your dreams, cool auntie w/ the good style
Kathleen Cleaver visited and spoke in my 2nd year and something that has stuck with me was how she talked about the completely different economic situation that we are currently living in as compared to her work in the 1960s and 1970s with the Black Panthers. She said “the new economics of survival have inhibited activism.” She spoke about how when she was in
California, her and other members of the Panthers shared an apartment where rent was $100/month and they spent the rest of their time doing political work. The closest experience I have to this was my time in undergrad student organizing. the freedom, while limited, felt like I was living my politic while I was growing in it. Which is something I’m realizing feels much harder when you have a job, a boss, and compromises to make. I was reading about struggle and then getting to transfer those lessons in real time which is a beautiful chance for experimentation. The tension was that that chance I was given to try and fail, that freedom and relative abundance of time + resources, didn’t extend to the people “outside” the walls of the university, who in fact are a part of university in inextricable ways. I would want people to remember that as long as (as Mariame Kaba calls it) “death-making systems” exist--the fight is not done and to remember to use whatever tiny space of freedom you can carve for yourself to expand and crack those death-making systems little by little for those that come after.
MAYA (BA’19)
literally the glue that held us together ‘18-’19, also just hilarious + so kind
what i appreciated about student organizing was getting to see everyone’s strengths and what gets them excited, like when we’re all moved by the same issue but have different ways of tapping into help + strengths + how to pull our organization together. thinking about uc united, especially how we were able to pull folks from different parts of campus experiencing different issues particular to the student groups they’re representing, and being able to find the common ground between them to
work together was really cool. tensions i struggled with: figuring out my priorities when it comes to organizing. as a student, i think i spent a lot of time thinking about student issues and issues impacting students directly, and not as much time as i should have or wanted to working on issues affecting a broader chicago community. but also because i was a student, my time was limited. i think the struggle was always there’s so much i wanted to accomplish, and we always had so many ideas. figuring out what we could do and where i could spend my time was something i struggled with. im energized by people in organizing and being able to learn from other people’s experiences. i think it was interesting to me especially because i was away my 3rd yr. to have helped start uc united in 2nd yr in 2016, and then come back my 4th yr to see so much work had been done--it was just really incredible. the structure and thought that had gone into creating uc united and care not cops and like the campaigns and the structure and the values. just the work that can be done when ppl come together in a motivated way excites me. that’s also the lessons i learned: the power of organizing. and thats something ill carry with me forever.
ANNA (BA’20)
nyc + oax +perennial trip buddy, mutual wack-checker (esp for EJ things)
Student organizing has truly reshaped how I think about the world and my place in it. I’ve grown so much and learned so much through this work. Organizing has challenged me, exhausted me, and frustrated me, but it’s also given me
profound hope, joy, and so many deep, beautiful relationships. The risks I’ve taken in this work have made me feel brave and powerful in a way I never expected to feel before I started organizing. I feel so lucky to have been organized, radicalized, and loved by the students who brought me into this work and who are doing the work alongside me (sounds cheesy but true!). As far as tensions go, I grapple with a lot of tension about how much change we can actually make through this work, especially as students (not because we’re young and don’t know enough, but because so many of us are so overwhelmed, and the nature of student organizing is that the membership of our orgs changes so quickly, etc). I think the best way to deal with this tension is to remind myself that ‘winning’ can look a variety of ways, and even when we ‘lose’ campaigns, we’ve built power to set us up for a win next time. One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is that our organizations can’t be powerful if they aren’t also nurturing + joyous spaces. This sounds obvious, but I think in practice it can be really hard to build these spaces, especially when we’re doing work that feels really urgent. There’s also no formula for building these spaces--it will change based on who is in your org and what their needs are, and what tensions exist in the org that need to be addressed. I’ve also learned that it’s important to know who the real enemies are (it’s not the organization across the street with a slightly different theory of change). Finally, I’ve learned the importance of using creative, outside-of-the-box tactics (doing the same rally ten times won’t move our targets and definitely won’t make our people any less burnt out).
(That being said, we don’t need to re-invent the wheel, and it’s important to look to the organizers who have come before us to see what has worked and what hasn’t.
WENDY (BA’20)
sweetest cancer buddy, fellow panasia grandma, absolute master chef
i personally feel like the community of student organizers on campus is an open, welcoming group of driven, caring, and diverse individuals that have both supported and encouraged me to apply my interests in an actionable and political scale. although organizing groups often centralize around one issue for a campaign, i feel like the organizers on campus are always cognizant and proactive in connecting how structural barriers are interconnected and how to address them at a systemic level through an approach rooted in understanding + empathy for the well being of others. i love the energy that organizing fosters, thinking about alternatives outside of the structures we live in and how to create a profound radical shift in the ways we conceptualize things that are normalized. i think in general, organizing has been one of the more influential experiences within my college career. i don’t want to claim that i’ve been incredibly active in campaigns (because i really could do more), but the peers i’ve been influenced by and learned from and the interactions that i’ve had within organizing have shaped the way i approach problems and my care for others. one of the main tensions i struggle within organizing is just simply not having enough time to contribute to all the causes im passionate about, as well as a lot of the burden falling on
students to initiate and create change that is later taken on by administration as their own achievements, but i really have appreciated how understanding and communicative student organizers are about our capacity to take tasks on and archiving the great work of our peers. i think im most energized within organizing from the opportunities to just learn from experience and the knowledge + experiences of those around me as organizing gives a platform for those that are usually silenced to address their concerns. i also really appreciate how organizing is centric on community and relationship building as not only do you come out with a killer campaign, but close friends that i admire deeply.
OLGA, (BA’21)
sweetest cap in the world, plus has the best fits, cultural centers homie
I hadn’t ever partaken in student organizing until I joined UC United during my second year at UChicago. Since then, the amount of confidence I have in myself has grown; I definitely feel more confident in my ability to voice my opinion and take up space (because I’ve learned I should absolutely take up more space!). Doing organizing work with UC United has opened my eyes to a number of issues on campus, and in elite institutions in general, that I hadn’t ever considered. I think before I had a very conformist mindset. I felt like I couldn’t demand more of the university because I felt like maybe I wasn’t meant to be here in the first place. I realize now that, as a student at UChicago, I have the right to demand that the university prioritizes my needs and that of other students of color. We’re here and we’re putting in the work to made radical change at the university.
That’s why organizing with my friends, and growing alongside them, is all kinds of inspiring. I want others to know that organizing shouldn’t be overwhelmingly stressful and that it should, instead, be something we partake in because it makes us feel empowered.
VICKI, (BA’22)
super fire sag with the biggest heart, ethnic studies homie
even though i’ve only learned about this quote (kind of) recently, it fits what i appreciate about organizing. mariame kaba, when asked about coalition building and organizing, responded w who’s your people? i always struggled trying to find where i belonged bc the childhood i had/the society i lived in determined that the community i dreamed of was impossible, the thing of dreams (and the sinful kind of dreams to have). but, when i began to organize at the border, i connected w people i only felt cared about pachamama (mother earth) and all the biological connections between the earth her people her gifts etc. i felt compelled to be a better person bc of them. coming to uchicago and continuing that vein of service is honestly the greatest blessing i’ve ever received. organizing alongside my friends and other people concerned w what i care about, makes me feel like i found my people. the dreams i have aren’t questioned and the type of person i want to be isn’t torn down in order to be built back up. instead practices like calling in, one on ones, retreats, check-ins, capacity checks, education, growth, self-care all rooted in an understanding of the evolution of our community helps me to thrive. i found the people i’m meant to experience life alongside for right now and i love the commu-
nity we share in that could be a model for something bigger. i don’t know but it makes me hopeful for the future reactionary behaviors can be helpful <at times> but all the time can be vvvv destructive. i’ve had to calm the way i react to actions i’ve learned r harmful from fam and friends. this is not bc i believe they’re terrible people or that they aren’t capable of radical future-building but bc building relationships and environments of care is how to foster change. i know that i react w anger sometimes and organizing has taught me to react in kindness instead. to forgive, not forget! but to forgive and create spaces where growth and not shutting down is practiced. it’s not easy but it’s necessary bc relationships r at stake and a shared future is only possible w everyone involved.
ALICIA, (BA’22)
most tender pisces egghead of care not cops who is also very powerful!
student-organizing is building power: it allows people to relate the injustices they experience to the experiences of others, to see that they are not alone in the fight. as far as lessons i have learned, the biggest one i would like to share is the importance of always coming back to a set of goals. to critically evaluate what your campaign is striving towards, keeping room for flexibility + change, is especially important when you begin to look at what “winning” entails. even “losses” can be reframed or refocused to push your base forwards towards bigger-picture goals. recently, i was working on a paper for a class where i was looking into the origins of campus police. one thing that stuck out
to me during my reading was that a huge justification for the intensification of campus security was that college campuses (with growing student populations and sheer land area) began to be characterized as mini-cities. ultimately, student activism eradicates that isolated view of a college, forcing students and administration to think outside of the â&#x20AC;&#x153;mini-cityâ&#x20AC;? bubble and consider the impacts they have on both a small scale in the immediate community, and on a larger, global scale. student activism challenges the ivory tower that universities strive to confine the focus of their students into, and dares to break free of the conceptualization of the university as a patriarchal, all-powerful provider with students as the unquestioning, ever-grateful consumers. to be involved in this now, during my time as a student, is empowering because it has given me the tools to recognize where this consumer-provider relationship is being pressed upon me in other aspects of my life. i feel like i am being trained for the fights of tomorrow while fighting the fights of today alongside other young, passionate people. i feel like i am entering a movement, The Movement--a space that has a long legacy to learn from and an even longer future to look forward to.
MY DREAM ACTION // THE VISION IS: we--as in all the different people that allow the university to exist: surrounding community, workers, undergrads, grads, faculty, etc.--have become so organized within and across groups that we are able to, in one collective move, divest from the university of chicago. imagine: as undergrads, we stop paying tuition to the university. everything still goes on--teaching, working, learning--except weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve cut off the circulation of $$ to admin + their ability to invest in gentrification, police, prisons, war. the $$ instead goes to the people. we collectively figure out how to allocate this pool of re-directed $$ to pay people enough so they can live full, dignified lives, fund reparations to communities around us and abroad, invest it in life-sustaining resources open to all, and so much more. what can the admin do? weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve created an autonomous, liberated university from the bottom up, within its very walls.
now you! this is the cover.
<< cut here thru all following pgs
this is inspired by Youth Womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Empowerment Project (YWEP)â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Girls Fight Back Journals, a resilience + resistance focused, fill-in-the-blank zine for girls in the sex trade / street economy to reflect on the ways they fought back + healed. some girls found the act of filling in the zines healing in and of themselves, and filled out the zines multiple times as a result. while our situations are different, making this zine + reflecting on student organizing was really grounding + healing for me, and it made me feel very deeply real, held, and grateful. as student organizers, we donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t often get time to thoroughly reflect on things that have happened, so i made this fill-in-the-blank zine for you all to fill out. you can follow the prompts, journal, collage, talk through it with a friend--whatever works for you!
1. MY GROUND, MY TOUCHSTONES these are the things i come back to, when i feel frustrated, stagnated, and/or need a reminder of why i’m doing what i’m doing:
2. GENERAL REFLECTIONS
——— ** when it’s hard for me to get started on a zine/creative project, i like to start with general reflections of what i want to talk about. i usually do this by free-writing or making a mind map, but you can also set a 1 minute timer + list words (by word association) to expand on afterwards, talk it over with a friend, re-read an article or re-watch a video that usually gets you fired up.
3. GETTING CLEAR WITH MYSELF this is what.... •
building power
•
community
•
collective / horizontal leadership
•
burnout (individual + collective)
•
building out the work
•
solidarity
•
[ _________ ]
•
[ _________ ]
...looks like / feels like to me.
4. LESSONS LEARNED, MY GROWTH AREAS what are some of the mistakes made, lessons learned? what does growth feel like for me? what has helped me expand myself emotionally? connect to something deeper?
what are the questions iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve struggled with in the past+ the answers that have emerged? (ex. how do you build sustainable movements? how can we have real solidarity with each other?)
what are the questions iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m struggling with now?
5. WHAT HAS EXPANDED MY VISION OF THE POSSIBLE? things that i used to think “had to be” / “the way it is”...
...now i remind myself that, instead, things can be like...
...which i now see because of...
...and so i remind myself, things don’t have to be this way, a better world is possible.
6. TO COME TO IN TIMES OF UNCERTAINTY
1.
what is blocking me? how am i moving from a place of insecurity, ego, fear, self-hatred etc.?
2. what are the actions i need to take? what do i need? if unclear, what do i know and what don’t i know? 3. what is my inner potential? what is my ground (what holds me)? what burns in my solar plexus (what fuels me)? what is my northstar (what guides me)?
——— ** based off of a 3-card tarot spread i often do when i feel lost.
7. ACCOUNTABILITY CHECK how am i putting myself in relationships + communities where i can be held accountable? am i behaving + moving in a way that shows concretely that i can be held accountable, esp for people who are younger, with less experience, quieter?
8. THANK GOD FOR THE HOMIES! who are your homies, co-conspirators, fellow schemers, collaborators, confidantes, etc.? who are you in relationship with?
t!
map it ou
9. THE DREAM // THE VISION what are you fighting for?
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