Grace Lee Boggs was a prominent feminist, scholar and social justice activist who dedicated her life to civil rights movements, including the Black Power movement and many labor movements. One of her main focuses within these movements was sustainable activism.
Grace Lee Boggs passed away at the beginning of this month at the age of one hundred. To honor the legacy she left behind, the Asian/Asian American House, Asian American Student Collective, and Alpha Delta Phi screened a documentary about her roles in many civil rights movements on the evening of Wednesday, Oct. 14, titled “American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs.”
This screening was preceded by a lunch event in which many campus activists gathered to discuss how sustainable activism could manifest itself on the University’s campus.
At the beginning of the meeting one of the organizers, Grace Wong ’18, posed a big question to the group.
“On campus, we have all these movements that tend to be isolated and short lived,” Wong said. “How can we connect these movements?”
Sara Chen Small ’18 expanded on the issue of isolated movements on campus.
“If groups aren’t linked to race they tend to be out of the loop,” said Small. “[We] need to find other ways to link them in.”
In response to Small’s comment, Tedra James ’18 offered a proposal to create a unified network of activists on campus and to record the history of student activism.
“[We should have] a database that describes all groups and acts as a map,” James said.
Many of the people in attendance agreed that it was important to find a way to link all of the University’s the activist groups together. The group also discussed the idea of building off of the campus’s past activist movements in an effort to encourage sustainable activism.
“[We should] look at [archived] notes from previous SOC meetings and see what is useful,” said Hailey Broughton-Jones ’18.
Giselle Lawrence ’18 shared her concerns with having enough information to create a comprehensive database. In response, Broughton-Jones proposed that this group take initiative to research University students’ past activism and create a more comprehensive and easily accessible archive.
The conversation began to shift to a discussion about what specific tactics will be effective for campus activism. Wong encouraged the group to reach out to alumni for inspiration.
“[The alumni have] done so many great things,” she said. “What can we do outside of what we’ve been doing?”
Broughton-Jones responded to this question by emphasizing the importance of creating spaces to foster a sense of community that will support its members with the emotional difficulties that come with being an activist.
“We… need to prioritize strengthening our bond within our communities [and] create a strong base,” she said.
The final point that the group addressed concerned the role of media within activist movements. James offered a question to frame the rest of the discussion.
“How do we make them pay attention?” she said.
Small addressed the power of direct, in-person contact.
“Media is great, but I don’t want to lose the physical space,” she said. “There is so much power in all of us turning up in a physical space.”
One of the biggest challenges for organizers has been figuring out how to get activists to work for causes rather than against the causes with which they disagree. This conversation was the direct result of the media backlash many campus activists received for condemning an opinion piece written in The Argus. In most of the articles, the activists were depicted in a negative light.
James proposed two ways in which activists can avoid damaging media attention.
“[We need to] make sure the press that we’re contacting is friendly press, and also release press releases so that we’re in control of the narrative,” James said.
The group also discussed the Black Lives Matter campus movement that was organized by University activists last year. They critically examined the successes and failures of that event.
Wong compared this march to campus activism in the past and present, explaining how mass mobilizations like the Black Lives Matter protest are becoming less frequent in the University community.
The meeting concluded with participants feeling optimistic about the future of campus activism at the University. Throughout the entire event, the space was full of ideas on how to improve and sustain this activism.
“If we could focus on mobilization more across groups, we could make progress,” Wong said. “We don’t protest anymore; we try to negotiate.”