Two Educators Discuss the History and Tips for Organizing in Difficult Times

 

 

Christina Ewig, director of the Center for Women, Gender, and Public Policy at the University of Minnesota, spoke at the 40th anniversary celebration of Minnesota Women’s Press. Here is an excerpt of her talk:

 

In March of 1911 the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City burst into flames. 500 women workers were locked inside by their employers. Some jumped out the windows to their deaths, and these women worked in a context in which women’s rights and men’s rights were violated every day, not just in New York City, but across the country, and it was women that organized for change.

It was women that led a march of 350,000 to commemorate the deaths of 146 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory workers that died that day.

But they built it on years of union organizing, including in Minneapolis, a strike by the “striking maidens” that walked out of the Shotwell factory in 1888 these women’s actions culminated in critical labor reforms in the United States at a time in which women did not have the right to vote. Yet, even when women did gain the right to vote in 1919 suffrage was granted to just some women. Black women in the U.S. South remained disenfranchised alongside Black men. The Jim Crow South was not a democracy. It was a government founded on fear and violence, and again, women organized. Black women, especially those in Black churches, formed the foundation of the civil rights movement, and they also led the movement.

Anna Arnold Hedgeman, who grew up in Anoka, was the only woman on the organizing committee of the 1963 march on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. That was the march that was so significant to the success of the civil rights movement. The second wave women’s movement was inspired by the Civil Rights Movement, and in fact, women like Anna Arnold henchman and Pauli Murray were founders of the National Organization for Women. That movement made important strides for women’s rights, things like no fault, divorce and reproductive rights, among other things.

Fast forward to 1985. A confluence of policies led to both an unprecedented rise in undocumented immigrants in the United States and simultaneously provisions that tightened border security, the result a tiered reality in which citizens and documented immigrants have one set of rights, while undocumented people live in fear and often without vital social services. Unfortunately, we still live in this tiered society, one that’s today marked by even greater fear. Most often, it has been the daughters of undocumented immigrants who have been at the forefront of the immigrants rights movement, daughters like Emilia Gonzalez Avalos, Director of Unidos Minnesota, and featured in the special issue in collaboration with Minnesota Women’s Press.

I’ve named just three examples of how we’ve faced undemocratic times before, and we’ve faced them through organizing, organizing in which women have been central, and they carried out this work in solidarity — solidarity among women with very different life experiences, alliances with men, alliances with gender-diverse people.

So, as we celebrate the 40th anniversary of the women’s press — a milestone that happens to also be shared by the center that I direct, the Center on Women, Gender and Public Policy at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs, which was also founded in 1985 — we pay homage to the movements that led to these important organizations, and we pay homage to the critical roles that they play in seeking knowledge, in providing voice, in building community among bad ass women. These are elements that are fundamental to any social movement.

We’ve inherited the responsibility to keep organizations like the Women’s Press strong, especially now, as we face new challenges that require us to maintain our values, insist on truth, and organize.

---

---

 

Yurie Hong, Gustavus Adolphus professor and member of the Saint Peter/Mankato chapter of Indivisible, spoke at the 40th anniversary celebration of Minnesota Women’s Press. Here is an excerpt of her talk:

 

Ten years ago, I never would have imagined that I would be here knee deep in this fight for our democracy. By nature, I’m actually quite a private and fairly introverted person, and when I got started with Indivisible eight years ago, I didn’t have any activism experience, not as a volunteer or anything like tha. I always figured my contribution to society was helping students think critically about the past — I’m in Greek, Latin and Classical Studies at Gustavus Adolphus College — prepare for their futures and to become, honest, thoughtful, engaged members of the community.

But after the election in 2016 all of that changed for me. I woke up the next morning like so many people did, in this state of shock and despair. My kids woke up with us the next morning, and I kept saying, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” because I had this gnawing sense of guilt that I hadn’t done more. I read the news. I posted things on Facebook. I talked to people about it. I voted. But I knew that there was more that I could have done.

One night in January 2017, after Trump was inaugurated, I was crying into my laptop at four in the morning, and I stumbled across this Google Doc. It was the Indivisible Guide, and it was written by a couple of former staffers under the Obama administration that provided some concrete tips for how to resist, and what grassroots organizing looked like.

In that moment, I took a look at that document, and I thought “this is not that different from teaching. I could do this. I can get people to read some things, show up, talk about some stuff, and maybe do a project.” So we got a Facebook group going, and we planned our first meeting. The night before, I asked a friend, “what if only five people come.” They said it doesn’t have to be that big; anything that you do that gets people involved is a plus.

About 65 people came to that first event. It was really exciting. What I remember is that there was this palpable sense of relief, like, “we’re not alone. There’s other people in this with us.” And that was really great. Over time, though, energy and focus started to wane, we weren’t really sure what we were supposed to be doing, and people stopped coming to meetings as frequently, which made it hard to plan things. As I struggled to figure out how to turn this around and recapture that energy, I read a book about Black women’s organizing during the civil rights movement, called At the Dark End of the Street. I was stunned when I got to the part about the Montgomery bus boycott and the fact that it lasted 381 days. How did they do that? I can’t get people to come to meetings.

And then it dawned on me that it was the church ladies who kept the thing going by providing each other with logistical, emotional, and social support so that they could hold the line for over a year — and that’s what we were missing. The social infrastructure of the church community and the strength of their relationships is what enabled them to do this work over the long haul.

So we started doing “solidarity.” Saturdays and Sundays that became our activist church. There were biweekly potlucks, just get-togethers where we focused on two things: one, community building, and two, some kind of action. Maybe it was listening to a speaker and learning more about an issue. Maybe it was writing letters and postcards or phone banking so that we could make some actual change. On the backbone of that type of a model — that community and consistency piece — it’s been really successful. Two thousand people showed up in St. Peter on April 5 for our hands off demonstration that was part of the nationwide movement.

St. Peter is a town of 12,000, to put that into context. We now have 2,500 members in our private Facebook group; dozens of active volunteers; a dedicated leadership team that coordinates demonstrations, town halls, congressional office visits and events like pints-and-postcards, a resistance arts festival, a bake sale for a billboard about reproductive rights that went over really well. We table at major community events like Juneteenth, Pride and the Day of the Dead to grow our network and deepen our local partnerships with organizations who have been doing this work on the ground forever.

In our area, we’ve been able to flip city councils, school boards, and build relationships with municipal leaders, which has led to greater commitments to diversity, equity and sustainability. We haven’t won every battle. Our congressional seat still is very difficult, even though we’ve gotten close. We swing wildly in Presidential races. Our State House race is a challenge as well. It’s become a target for a lot of outside money. But because our goal hasn’t been just political outcomes, but building strong relationships and sustained engagement, even our setbacks haven’t felt like failures. They are lessons for the future that we can act on In The Now, because that’s really where our power lies.

I have a great therapist, and she was points out that we actually don’t know what’s going to happen in the future. What we can control, and what we can focus on, is the actions that we take now. So I want you to humor me, and I want you to close your eyes for just a minute and think about what you can do: maybe make calls to your representatives using the FiveCalls app, turn a social media rant into a letter to the editor, bring all your friends to a protest, bake things for a fundraiser. Or maybe, if you’re doing all these things already, maybe it’s taking a break to keep from burning out so you can rejoin the fight in a healthier state of mind.

What I’ve learned over the past eight years is that activism is a mindset and it’s a habit. It’s not a one time event. The things you can do that align with your skills, your natural daily life, work, flow, your natural inclinations — these are the ways that you can grow in your skills and your habits. Everything that you do is a plus. It all matters.

History shows that chaos and inequality aren’t new. What is different now is how widely they’re felt. We can draw strength from people who have been fighting this fight all along, even in this country, especially people from marginalized identities, due to race, gender, class, ability, status. We can respect that strength and that courage and that resilience, and use that as a model.

And remember that doing something always feels better than despair. Just do what you can, when you can, however you can, and make it a habit. That’s how change comes.