Jan. 18 teach-in highlights activism in the Trump era

UC Santa Cruz faculty, alumni, and community partners are collaborating to offer a public teach-in as part of a nationwide day of democratic education and action on Jan. 18.
 
Teach! Organize! Resist! is a series of nine workshops and panels designed to build alliances for social justice in anticipation of the presidency of Donald Trump. The all-day teach-in will address topics including economic inequality, LGBTQ resistance, how to talk about climate-change science, how to combat Islamophobia, what to do at a protest, and how students, immigrants, and workers can engage in democracy.

The day starts at 10:30 a.m. at Graduate Student Commons and Humanities 2, room 259; it culminates with an evening forum from 4–6 p.m. at the Music Recital Hall. The teach-in is free and open to the public. A detailed schedule is online.

For organizers, including Sociology Professor Veronica Terriquez, Teach! Organize! Resist! represents an opportunity to reimagine what is possible.

“A critical mass of people are ready to take action,” said Terriquez, who will lead a session about the role students can play in enacting social and political change. Panelists will include two UCSC alumni: Shaila Ramos (B.A., Latin American and Latino studies, ‘15), a youth organizer at Californians for Justice, and Erica Leyva (B.A., Legal Studies, ‘16), an organizer at the Services, Immigrant Rights, and Education Network (SIREN) in San Jose.

“Everyday people have transformed the way we think about politics in California,” said Terriquez, who has 20 years of involvement with grassroots movements in the state.

Teach-in organizer Sylvanna Falcón, a professor of Latin American and Latino studies, said the day of education and action will be empowering. “This moment has called for people to come together in community in an unprecedented way, and to remember that we are not powerless when we work together,” said Falcón.

The UC Santa Cruz event is a response to a call for action issued by UCLA Professor Ananya Roy. Numerous faculty have contributed to Teach! Organize! Resist!, including Lisa Rofel and Chelsea Blackmore in Anthropology, Falcón in Latin American and Latino studies, Hillary Angelo in Sociology, instructor Chris Gray of Crown College, and UCSC graduate students Jess Whatcott of Politics and Kati Barahona–Lopez of Sociology.    

For more information and updated events, visit the Teach! Organize! Resist! website and Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/J18UCSC.