Author: jekinsley

I’m excited! I’m sad! I’m overwhelmed! I’m motivated! I’m feeling a lot of emotions as my internship comes to a close, knowing that the people I have been spending so much time working and growing with this summer will soon be dispersed all over the country. The work continues— but so do college schedules— and I am left with the same question I had when we began: where do I go from here?

On paper, the amount of things my reinvestment team and I were able to accomplish this summer is impressive: we were able to host a successful fundraiser and raise almost $2,300 for some amazing organizations (obliterating our initial fundraising goal!); we crafted a resource for students looking to start their own reinvestment campaigns; and we supported community organizations who have been dedicated to reinvestment work in Boston much longer than any of us have been in college (gaining knowledge and building relationships in the process). 

What have I gained from this? An in-depth knowledge of businesses willing to donate to silent auctions in Boston, for sure. But more importantly, a more nuanced view of how social justice work occurs and how it transforms. My first blog post talked about how progress is both concrete and conceptual. Coming out of this summer, I’ve learned more about my role as an organizer, and how to deal with the fact that I am one tiny person interacting with issues that constantly threaten to engulf me. 

Many times this summer I’ve felt as if I am a camera lens, zooming in and out to capture a picture that refuses to focus. As we organized our fundraiser, I was constantly doing work that was up front: calling venues, marking down contacts, and sending out emails for outreach. At the same time, my mind would wander to the ultimate vision we were trying to build by reinvestment: an economy that is regenerative, that nurtures instead of extracts, that uproots preconceived notions that isolate us, and encourages us to look forward. And it was a vague vision! If I sound like I have no idea what I’m talking about, it’s because I don’t. But the entire summer I continued on, doing concrete tasks in hopes of laying the foundation for a larger goal.

So… where do I go from here? How can I continue working towards the larger vision I’ve caught glimpses of this summer, without losing it all in the senior year frenzy? How can I balance zooming in on the important tasks of my life (like homework), and still find time to unfocus and try to capture the conceptual vision of progress. The first step, I think, is to continue building relationships. None of the work this summer would have been impactful for me if I wasn’t surrounded by incredible student organizers, whom I have been so lucky to learn from and to talk through my learnings with. The second step is to continue envisioning the way that life can be different from what it is now. Although society continues to tell me, a student, that I can’t change the way things are, I can! I have agency, I have a personal stake in this cause, and I have the guidance and support from others in the movement. The third step is to stop making step-by-step plans! Transformation is multi-faceted and can’t be organized in a linear way. And it doesn’t always give a good conclusion either.

This whole blog post is a half-formed thought, but I am leaving this internship full and inspired. Where do I go from here? Anywhere. I know I will find ways to enact the future I want to see wherever I end up.

This summer I am interning with Divest Ed, a program of the Better Future Project, a Massachusetts-based nonprofit aimed at addressing the climate crisis and the rapid and responsible transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. Divest Ed specifically focuses on training student organizers in order to resource, vitalize, and broaden the fossil fuel divestment movement. This past year I have been a participant of the 2019 Divest Ed Organizing Fellowship, and will continue to deepen my work on fossil fuel divestment-related projects throughout the summer with other organizing fellows in my internship.

My experience in the 2019 Divest Ed Organizing Fellowship puts me in a particularly interesting position in terms of my summer internship. Unlike most internships, when I started my first day of work, I had already met all of my coworkers and had actually already spent a large amount of time learning, creating, and making decisions together as a team. The summer internship kicked off with a fellowship retreat, in which myself and other organizing fellows from around the country met for five days to get trained and participate in discussions centering our various fossil fuel divestment campaigns. During this time we practiced consensus-based decision making, learned about principled struggle (informed by the works of Adrienne Marie Brown and Charlene Carruthers) and other important topics, and also made life-long friendships along the way. Oh, and we kayaked too!

This retreat made it easy to transition into a workplace dedicated to imagining an eight-week summer project relating to fossil fuel divestment. Myself and the other fellows decided to split our efforts into two important summer projects: national escalation and reinvestment. Each project has a team of interns that are responsible for creating and facilitating a summer project centered around each topic. I chose to participate in the reinvestment team, and will be working to research reinvestment options and creating accessible resources for student organizers who wish to incorporate it within their divestment campaigns. So far it’s only been a week into our project planning, but we are already generating a running list of ideas to learn more about: financial arguments to engage in, local Boston organizations to start learning from, and a ton of resources created from community organizers who have extensive expertise in this area. It’s both overwhelming and thrilling to think of all the information we are going to be engaging with over the next few weeks, and I for one am grateful to have a supportive team by my side to do it with.

When I first dove into activism, I held the idea that progress looks concrete: laws being passed, resolutions being made, cities being re-envisioned and demands being met. I still do hold that vision, but my time with Divest Ed has taught me to look at progress in a new way. Not only does the work we do have concrete implications, but the way we do them continually encourages myself and others to enact the future we are trying to create. The team that I am working with on reinvestment practices horizontal leadership: recognizing the different skills that we all bring to the table and implementing each one to the best of our ability. My “boss” is very much not my superior, and instead a facilitator who is helping support our vision for our project. And my favorite part of our work culture is the genuine love we hold for ourselves and the work that we do. Envisioning a new, regenerative economy is difficult and stressful work, but my coworkers and I continue to approach each other with compassion and honesty, and the vision follows.

I’ve spent the majority of my college career imagining my school’s fossil fuel divestment campaign winning, but I’ve spent very little time imagining what comes after. Through Divest Ed, I’m learning that we must not only envision a sustainable planet, but a sustainable culture that allows for people to form non-extractive relationships with each other and the earth. I’m excited to continue fostering that culture and seeing what it can achieve in the next seven weeks.