{"id":17318,"date":"2022-01-03T08:44:00","date_gmt":"2022-01-03T08:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/160-news\/?p=17318"},"modified":"2026-04-16T21:36:24","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T21:36:24","slug":"hometown-organizer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/2022\/01\/hometown-organizer\/","title":{"rendered":"Hometown Organizer"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cMy studies at Macalester have been crucial to becoming a better, more confident organizer,\u201d Banat says. \u201cThey\u2019ve broadened my understanding of my community and helped me to see the bigger picture.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Before Sami Banat \u201924 (St. Paul) stepped onto Macalester\u2019s campus, he was already a seasoned organizer. \u201cI tell people I was organizing before I knew what organizing was,\u201d he says. In middle school, he led organizations to engage fellow students on issues such as climate justice and queer rights. In high school, he interned on Hillary Clinton\u2019s presidential campaign, and realized that he enjoyed the energy of a campaign office and the opportunity to engage with neighbors and the community. He worked on state and national campaigns and founded the Minnesota High School Democrats.<\/p>\n

As Banat continued his campaign work, though, he became more passionate about working at the local level. As he made decisions about where he wanted to go for college, he decided to stay within the communities he\u2019d been working with for years. \u201cGrowing up in St. Paul, I knew that Macalester was a beacon of high community engagement,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

After beginning his studies at Macalester, he continued advocating for political and social causes. When St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter formed the Community-First Public Safety Commission in 2020 to reenvision emergency response in the city, he appointed Banat as one of the 48 members of the team, which also included Macalester President Suzanne M. Rivera. Banat used this opportunity to mobilize Macalester students around the issue, putting together a panel with Rivera to involve students with the commission\u2019s work. Within the commission, he spearheaded the effort to recommend ending pretextual traffic stops by police\u2014which allow officers to stop a driver for a traffic violation in order to investigate a suspected, unrelated criminal offense\u2014in response to the police shooting of Daunte Wright in April 2021. While these recommendations went beyond the scope of the commission\u2019s original purpose, they were passed into the final report submitted to the Mayor and City Council.<\/p>\n

This year, Banat is working on implementing these policies with the Mayor\u2019s Office. And on campus, he\u2019s digging into newly declared majors in political science and classical Mediterranean and Middle East\u2014he sees a synergy between the two subjects, with classics providing a foundational understanding of political science, as well as helping him engage with his identity in new ways. \u201cMy studies at Macalester have been crucial to becoming a better, more confident organizer,\u201d Banat says. \u201cThey\u2019ve broadened my understanding of my community and helped me to see the bigger picture.\u201d<\/p>\n

For people who want to get involved with local organizing, Banat\u2019s advice is simple: \u201cIt can always seem intimidating, but especially at the local level, just showing up can be incredibly rewarding.\u201d \u2013Rachel Rostad \u201915<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sami Banat \u201924 is part of a St. Paul commission reenvisioning emergency response in the city.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":17320,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community-engagement","mediatype-articles"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"fields":{"article_type":[8],"flickr_photoset_id":"","youtube_id":"","square_thumbnail":false,"press_photos":false,"story_title":"","story_caption":"","rotations":false,"maps":false,"marker_title":"","marker_text":"","geographic_location":false,"feature_embed":"","custom_link_url":"","news_icon_name":"","image_options":false,"main_feature_story":"","custom_image":false,"custom_feature_title":"","custom_feature_caption":"","custom_markup":"","custom_markup_link":"","custom_markup_title":"","custom_markup_caption":"","byline":"","post_thumbnail_style":"default","press_downloads":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17318"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17318\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17322,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17318\/revisions\/17322"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}