Today marks one week that my work with Right to the City has started. The amount of new information that I have processed in this short span of time is astounding, thrilling, and rewarding. Even though I have only been assigned one task so far, the work required to familiarize myself with its context and its lexicon of vocabulary (so many acronyms!) has kept me busy.
My responsibility for now is to attend weekly GNDN meetings on behalf of a RTTC organizer who is currently on leave. The GNDN—Green New Deal Network—is a coalition of grassroots organizations across the country taking actions to shift local, state, and federal policies from extractive to regenerative ones, on the level of both the environment and people. Since I do not make any decisions on behalf of the organization, my primary duties right now are to listen, take notes of major events, updates and deadlines, with special attention paid to political assessments, conflicts, and/or disagreements that take place at the table of the meeting. Trying to keep up with the names of representatives from different organizations and specific, organizing-related terms was a real test to my typing speed.
Over the past week, I noticed that I was at times anxious about my inexperience in the field of organizing, and how that might have been perceived by my colleagues at RTTC (despite the fact that they have shown nothing but kindness). I’m very used to being able to draw from a repertoire of knowledge and information in the classroom so that I am never completely lost, but this was often not the case when I sat in on these meetings. The troublesome relationship between theory and practice (especially in the field of social sciences) is certainly something to keep thinking about as I continue my work with RTTC. I think that the only way forward is being completely candid about the many privileges I came into this internship with, and being as humble as one would when acquiring an entirely new skill set (because it is). This also includes overcoming the fear of asking questions. For this, I’m grateful to Anamika and Matt at RTTC for being approachable and encouraging; they make asking questions a lot less daunting. The good news is, I could already comprehend more things at my second meeting compared to the first; the learning curve may be steep, but patience and hard work can pay off. I think it’s safe to predict that my confidence will improve in the coming weeks as I become more fluent in the language of organizing.
On a side note, I’m extremely impressed with the extent to which Right to the City “lives its politics.” It is evident within the few meetings I’ve had with my colleagues that they care for each other and take mental health seriously. No matter the agenda for that day, there is always time for brief check-ins with one another at the beginning of meetings. Given some of my past internships, this was shocking at first, but something I’ve come to deeply appreciate.
Certainly sounds like things are off to a good start! And definitely reasonable to be anxious about your inexperience. I think that we all feel that whenever we start a new role. Those sound like some really interesting meetings to sit-in on. If you’re looking for more background reading on green new deal, etc. you might want to check out Thea Riofrancos (http://www.theariofrancos.com/). She gave an interesting talk at the UDL this past spring and writes a lot about extractivism, the green new deal, and the interesting complicating issues that come up as we shift resources.