Power Shift 2021

Our world is faced with innumerable social and environmental issues. As youth and student organizers, it is difficult to decide where it is effective, strategic, and possible to focus our efforts. All the while, national organizations aim to support students and local organizations seek to collaborate with students, sometimes in ways that take advantage of student organizations. This session aims to share learnings from Clark Climate Justice, a small college organization, in our experience finding our autonomy amidst the many opportunities for change-making. This workshop will also serve as a place to discuss your experiences seeking autonomy and collaboration in your organizing, as well as share the lessons that you have learned. Through discussion and storytelling, this session aims to 1) share experiences of students who have reckoned with racism, colonialism, extractive capitalism, and patriarchy in their organizing and 2) build resilience and interconnectedness of student organizers by sharing the ways that we have worked against these systems within our organizing. In discussing our experiences navigating good and not-so-good coalition/collaboration and naming why coalition may or may not be ‘good’, this session aims to empower participants to be good coalition partners.