Right to the City’s 10th Anniversary

Last week was a whirlwind; it was Right to the City’s 10th Anniversary! It was a huge deal at Judson Church, a space with great historical meaning for social movements, and we saw over 200 scholars, activists and supporters come to support us. It was the first time I have helped with an event of that scale and importance, and though my research was on hold for the week, I learnt a ton about the dynamics of urban social justice movements. Here’s a fairly comprehensive list:

1. Volunteers are super important. Getting people to volunteer is super hard.
2. Strategizing every step is the only way to effectively organise anything. The core team, along with the event planner, had a timeline set out for four hours prior to the beginning of the event to make sure every avenue of prep was covered. This streamlined the entire process of set up, managing and wrapping up – and more importantly, allowed us all to have a good time and opportunities to engage with the incredible people at the event.  
3. Food is really important. The head of the organisation, the wonderful Dawn, was adamant that all volunteers and staff eat beforehand to ensure that if we didn’t get a chance to hit the dinner buffet, we wouldn’t be ‘hangry’.
4. Community support is invaluable – emotionally, morally and financially. We had some incredible donations, people who bought enough tickets to cover low-income guests, massive support from sister organisations and other community partners. Their presence and support kept the whole event going, even when the team was exhausted enough from the whole day of prep to drop.
5. Schmoozing is the key to success. I talked to a bunch of people about my research and they offered me tidbits of advice, opinion and most importantly, contacts for case studies. I even met some of the people I had interviewed over the phone in person and got them to follow up on things they said they would but never did (#ngoculture).
6. Having done reading/knowing theory is always handy when older, wiser activists and scholars make urban social justice references and jokes. And to be honest, there is a lot to be learnt from them about general attitudes towards certain positions, academically and professionally, to topics like homeownership and government involvement.
7. Words of support and encouragement do wonders. I was so impressed at the team’s engagement with me, my friends, the volunteers and the younger folks at the event: there were constant words of encouragement, thanks and appreciation. Going back to my earlier note in a post that I was struggling to find younger people engaging with urban social justice and land/housing movements, I was so glad to rule out the possibility that there was some hidden culture of age/knowledge elitism. More importantly, some of the younger people followed up with me/the organisation afterwards asking how to be more involved! If that isn’t success, I don’t know what is!

The reason I emphasize how important this event was is not only because of its significance to Right to the City, but also because I realised the value of such events to social justice movements. It is such a great opportunity, if done right, to understand the underlying culture and attitude towards certain topics and to get to know people who share similar perspectives. As a fairly new researcher in the organisation, this helped me figure out ways to adjust the tone of my writing voice and made me think about new things to focus on. All in all, I think that schmoozy fundraising type events are underrated: they are so great not just for the NGO to gain more visibility and raise money, but for members of the team to get to know more people and learn more about the terrain they fight on. (Once pictures of the event are up, I will link them into the post!)