Organizing, protesting, educating, and training at forums, meetings, offices, of attempts at changing things at Macalester, both big and small, long and short term. No matter how successful or not we have been, all of these attempts need to be documented and remembered in order for things to move forward, for new people to be able to point to what has already been done and work from that.
A lot of knowledge about how to organize and change the college is contained within organizations or among members of councouncils, and task forces-someone recognize it? There have been a lot cils and task forces, but often that knowledge passes with each generation. That is how the college can legitimize its five-year plans or “strategic directions” that may completely go against the organizing efforts of students and faculty/staff who have just left the college. Certainly, some of the organizing experiences are maintained and documented within organizations, and passed on to the next generations, but still, many people’s experiences are lost since they were not “leaders” within the organization, or they were just a representative on a committee, or they weren’t involved in any “chartered” organization at all.
Well, I think that it is time that we start engaging in a trans-generational Macalester collective that can initiate an active discussion about the routes and possibilities for progressive, feminist, antiracist, queer, radical, institutionally transforming organizations. By raising this discussion, we could also get an alumni network of people who were involved during their time at Mac, to get involved again by sharing their experiences and stories to current and coming students who could really learn from, appreciate and use them in their organizing.
For example, who remembers when Greg Renden was president of MCSG? What did he do? (That’s a trick question). But then Colin Mothupi, Kwame Phillips, Nick Berning. But what can MCSG really accomplish? How was MCSG even started? By progressive students who wanted a say in campus politics, I think, but who knows other than the people who helped found it in the eighties? And where have we gone since then?
So what we all need to do is to start writing our stories. Keep in mind that this could hopefully be a valuable tool in terms of writing student/activist/organizing history at Macalester, and also in terms of “mapping” the institution organizing the collective knowledge about the governing structure of Macalester.
How do we go about organizing effective change? What paths do we take? Where have people gone before? I do want to stress that this is something that is very important for faculty and staff to contribute to also. Often you have a more consistent, long term gathered knowledge of this place and how it runs, and you have a lot to teach about how things have been tried over and over. You may have an insight into where organizing efforts could be used more effectively.
It is crucial that everybody share their experiences, before another generation passes, and all that knowledge and momentum is lost. So write to me and I will try to gather the information and try to put it together in a Web project that can be a useful tool for organizing. If anybody wants to volunteer to help, I think it would take a couple of volunteers who would like to be involved long-term in this project of generating change at Macalester.
