Bio
Angel Suero is a Puerto-Rican and Dominican first-generation fourth-year undergraduate student at Gallatin. At Gallatin, he is studying Radical Art, the embedded oppression of working-class minorities, dramatic writing, and crafting a concentration that focuses on the intersection of the three of them.
Angel works currently at the Newark Museum and has volunteered for the grassroots organization he is interning at, the Newark Water Coalition, for the past two years. He has taught himself guitar, piano, music, and hip hop beat production, and seeks to get to a space where he can comfortably release publicly acclaimed art. His favorite movie right now is “The Yellow Submarine,” and is currently analyzing Rap Legend Kendrick Lamar’s divisive album Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers.
Mission Statement
During his time working and volunteering with the Newark Water Coalition, Angel seeks to study what it takes to craft a self-sustaining organization upheld strictly by the community and individual aid in Newark, NJ in 2022. What mechanisms, funding sources, and collaborative communities can provide a foundational rule book for the establishment of a well-running mutual aid organization dedicated to amassing local power?
Project Summary
Over the summer of 2022, I Angel Suero committed to working with the Newark Water Coalition to analyze their/our evolution into a non-profit organization. I worked with the organization at three different distribution sites, working to give food and lead-free water to the neighborhoods in which we were present. These distribution sites are Alkaline Xpress, Institute of Intriguing Minds, and St. Stephan’s Church. The research that I conducted and gathered revolved around learning what it takes to develop and maintain a self-sustainable organization within Newark New Jersey. The task took me across the city sitting in different offices under different pretenses playing different roles. I filled countless jugs, talked with numerous new volunteers, old volunteers, community members, and administrative individuals, and attempted to make the most of my time by understanding the inner workings of the organization as best as I could.
It was an incredibly rewarding process because as much as I learned about the coalition I learned about myself. I am an individual who seeks out the emotional well-being of others and oftentimes will seek out deeper connections and those who value the breakdown of capitalism. During my time at the coalition, I ultimately learned that healing a community requires individuals to be consistently healing and processing themselves and their own emotions. The work to heal Newark is an endless process that will not get done in my lifetime, but with a community that seeks to evolve their own well-being and commit to work, not for the sake of monetary gain but rather spiritual and communal gain, things will head in the right direction, which is all that matters.
