Reflection of Organizing Director, D’atra “Dee Dee” Jackson, trip to Selma, AL
On Thursday, March 5th, four young organizers and myself drove from North Carolina to Selma, AL to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the 1965 Selma to Birmingham, AL march. The March in 1965 featured the most recognizable names of the Civil Rights Movement; John Lewis, Bayard Rustin, Diane Nash, Stokeley Carmichael, and of course Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Uplifting the organizing of Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the people of Alabama and other southern states.
I wasnt sure what to expect from the weekend. Born and raise in Philadelphia, both parents from Philadelphia, but my maternal grandparents being from Wilson, North Carolina. I’ve been alienated from the southern impact, experience and definition running through my melanin, hair and veins. What I received from Selma, AL was inspiration, vision and connection to my southern roots. It was also a representation of how much work is left to be done. When people are continuously demanding their right to vote, their right to an education, their right to work for a livable wage, their right to live equally and to pursuit happiness the way they see fit, we have much work to do. This weekend highlighted the current necessary work to do. Organizers creating alternative structures, as the current ones only work for the most elite. Capitalism only works for the elite, so we create cooperative businesses to combat it and focus around community, instead of individualism. The current education system only works for the elite, so we operate our own Freedom Schools to develop the curriculum of true history, growth of community and identifying systemic violence. Our options of food and produce do not work for us, so we create cooperative grocery stores and community gardens to provide a better relationship to our intake and provide accessibility to quality and healthy foods. Selma brought these solutions together to an audience of thinkers, organizers, families, poor people, caregivers, workers and visionaries. Acknowledging the past, present and future without tip-toeing around the barriers.
I urge all student organizers and organizations to mimic this. Our strokes of resistance have not been wide enough to paint the picture of freedom and liberation. Our desire has been warranted and wired by monetary values of those writing the checks. Our youthful, loud voices depleted by inferiority complexes. i urge all student organizers and organizations to do more. Historically, students have been the front face and backbone of change in this country. It means more than writing a letter to the editor, or joining a march or lobbying your local government or being on your student government. It means participating in a constant cycle of unlearning, where each 360 degrees you make, you take someone with you. It means sacrificing your privilege of safety. It means disowning your white supremacist, stubborn, patriarchal, counter productive, reactionary friends and making space for real comrades. It means revolutionizing the definition of student organizing. Selma was not meant to live forever, yet it produced something that will. That is what we need.