Want to hear some good news?
I want to tell you about the great organizing happening at Brandeis University.
Why should you care? Too often we worry about the abstraction of national politics. Let's talk about the grassroots power happening right now.
Would you like to hear inspiring stories of young progressive leaders making a change right now? Would you like to meet the next generation of organizers?
Read on.
My name is Sahar Massachi, and I'm a senior at Brandeis University. I'd like to introduce you to the organizing happening on campus.
I'd like you to meet Adam Hughes.
Just yesterday, Adam is a rather tall and giggly Junior, a mixed-heritage child of Caucasian and Mexican ancestry with a taste for a stiff rum. He's a star writer on the on-campus progressive blog, and yesterday, the Brandeis student body elected him to be their representative to the Board of Trustees. First, what he's about:
Brandeis University was created to be more than an educational institution. It was founded in 1948 by noted philanthropists to serve as a haven from the rigidly discriminatory university system of the time, and it was instilled with a mandate to actualize Louis Brandeis' ideals of social justice. The vision was simple and powerful: Brandeis should not merely train the next generation of leaders, it should activate the next generation of global citizens.
This social justice leader won for several reasons, but the strongest was this - the tireless investment in progressive infrastructure built up over the last few years here on campus.
In my freshman year, I co-founded the progressive blog on campus, and soon, Adam joined up. Over the years, we took on a corrupt Student Union, organized a campus revolt over opaque budget cuts, and led a mass vigil to support our campus Muslim community after a hate crime.
But more on that in later post, if you'd like.
We built upthe blog to such a point that it's the hub for activism on campus. We used online organizing techniques to build up an email list of over 1,500 students, faculty, staff, and alumni interested in Social Justice on campus, and set up a communal discussion listserv for all activists on campus.
That infrastructure propelled a progressive champion to victory in the second-most-powerful position in the student union (after the Presidency).
Adam will spend the next two years being one of two student faces at meetings of the Board of Trustees, and he will advocate for Brandeis to be as committed to Social Justice as it can be.
This is how change is made.
Progressives are here at Brandeis University, learning, growing stronger, organizing, networking. I thought I'd let you know.
Something else happening right now:
Right now there's a massive initiative to solely sell cage-free eggs at Brandeis.
Through weeks of tireless organizing, the Real Food campaign has gotten the signatures of 1200 students - that's 1/3 of campus.
Now, they've gotten our Student Union to send out a survey asking students if they want to switch to cage free eggs, and more and more clubs are getting onboard.
Here are your budding progressives, learning leadership, community organizing, and grassroots lobbying - by doing.