So, to start telling you some of my history with political activism... here is a quick and dirty rundown. I think I have always had an anti-authoritarian streak in me. In school, especially high school, I would always complain about what bullshit so much of what we were doing was. I might have told you this story already... in middle school, when the school board passed a rule saying people couldn't wear images of Malcolm X, my Mom encouraged me to wear a Malcolm X stamp on my belt (the same belt I am wearing to this day). She explained that it had multiple symbolism, it wasn't just breaking an unjust rule, it was pointing out that the US government endorsed such images as good. If I had the courage I do now, I would have worn a Malcolm X every day until they did something. Then I would have gotten some of my friends to do it. I would have made it a big deal, and shamed the school board into reversing their decision.
In high school, I would have started organizing if there had been people who wanted to organize. But sadly, no one but me was into activism. So I joined the school newspaper staff, and senior year I wrote an op-ed against the Iraq war when it started. Then, when I gave a speech at graduation (I was 5th in the class and got to give a speech) I gave an anti-war speech. It was awesome, I bet I surprised alot of people in the audience.
Then my freshman year in college I looked and looked for activists to organize with, but as I would later learn, the entire activist left had collapsed in early 2003, before I was at college. So, toward the end of my Freshman year I started up a discussion group around envisioning an alternate society. Never got too many people to attend, but lots of good conversation. So my sophmore year was pretty quiet, activism on campus was basically non-existent. The beginning of my junior year, an anti-war meeting was called and like 30 people showed up. I was one of them. This meeting would shape the Brown activist left for the next 4 years, as so many of the leading activists in the community attended and really started their activist careers at this meeting. I feel honored to have been there. We had a few meetings to determine what we wanted to do and started organizing. We called ourselves "OIF (Operation Iraqi Freedom, anti-war group)" People who were at those meetings went on to dominate BEAN (Brown Environmental Action Network), SLA (Student Labor Alliance), The Brown Democrats, SuFI (Sustainable Food Initiative), SSDP (Students for a Sensible Drug Policy), Democracy Matters (public funding for elections), SDS (Students for a Democratic Society), and a few others that I can't remember.
So, in 2005, we started organizing against the war. We wrote articles for the newspaper. We brought some speakers to campus. We tried to raise our profile and make the war an issue that was talked about on campus. We got together with a few local community groups and did alittle Truth in Recruitment. We went to the large anti-war marches in DC. There was this one rally in Providence when it was single digits outside, and we rallied for 2 hours. I was so cold, I had like 5 layers on, but I was still cold. There were about 200 people there, and their commitment was so amazing to be out in the cold for so long. Very inspiring.
This is a picture of the first time I addressed a political rally. So far, it has been the only time. I gave a short intro for a professor who was speaking. It was cold that day. You will notice Bucky is the left-most person in the picture, holding a sign. We were holding a protest of Hillary Clinton in 2005 because she was promoting really Hawkish policies and saying Bush needed to escalate the war in Iraq. So yeah, we protested, it was fun.
At the end of my Junior year, we started talking about getting a group together that could tie together all the issues everyone was fighting for. And it just so happened that one of our professors was hosting the first Students for a Democratic Society conference since the 1960s at Brown. It re-formed in Jan 2006, and we started a chapter in March. I spearheaded this group for most of 2006. We held the conference and started organizing the left community at Brown. Then in May 2006 we started laying the groundwork for the Social Justice Network to get all the small groups on the left in campus talking. I am proud to say that alot of the impetus for this came from me. It is still going strong, they have potlucks I hear. So over the summer and my first semester of senior year we worked on the SJN and getting a Disorientation Guide published to help with the SJN. Here is a copy: http://www.campusactivism.org/server-new/uploads/browndisorientiationguide-2006.pdf I wrote about a third of it. I also designed the front cover graphic.There is more to tell... but i think it will have to wait for the next letter.
In high school, I would have started organizing if there had been people who wanted to organize. But sadly, no one but me was into activism. So I joined the school newspaper staff, and senior year I wrote an op-ed against the Iraq war when it started. Then, when I gave a speech at graduation (I was 5th in the class and got to give a speech) I gave an anti-war speech. It was awesome, I bet I surprised alot of people in the audience.
Then my freshman year in college I looked and looked for activists to organize with, but as I would later learn, the entire activist left had collapsed in early 2003, before I was at college. So, toward the end of my Freshman year I started up a discussion group around envisioning an alternate society. Never got too many people to attend, but lots of good conversation. So my sophmore year was pretty quiet, activism on campus was basically non-existent. The beginning of my junior year, an anti-war meeting was called and like 30 people showed up. I was one of them. This meeting would shape the Brown activist left for the next 4 years, as so many of the leading activists in the community attended and really started their activist careers at this meeting. I feel honored to have been there. We had a few meetings to determine what we wanted to do and started organizing. We called ourselves "OIF (Operation Iraqi Freedom, anti-war group)" People who were at those meetings went on to dominate BEAN (Brown Environmental Action Network), SLA (Student Labor Alliance), The Brown Democrats, SuFI (Sustainable Food Initiative), SSDP (Students for a Sensible Drug Policy), Democracy Matters (public funding for elections), SDS (Students for a Democratic Society), and a few others that I can't remember.
So, in 2005, we started organizing against the war. We wrote articles for the newspaper. We brought some speakers to campus. We tried to raise our profile and make the war an issue that was talked about on campus. We got together with a few local community groups and did alittle Truth in Recruitment. We went to the large anti-war marches in DC. There was this one rally in Providence when it was single digits outside, and we rallied for 2 hours. I was so cold, I had like 5 layers on, but I was still cold. There were about 200 people there, and their commitment was so amazing to be out in the cold for so long. Very inspiring.
This is a picture of the first time I addressed a political rally. So far, it has been the only time. I gave a short intro for a professor who was speaking. It was cold that day. You will notice Bucky is the left-most person in the picture, holding a sign. We were holding a protest of Hillary Clinton in 2005 because she was promoting really Hawkish policies and saying Bush needed to escalate the war in Iraq. So yeah, we protested, it was fun.
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