Carlos Jimenez

 As a participant  I remember how eye-opening and grounding the session around “Understanding Power” was for me. We were in the community team taking on the polluters at Keighton Company and how despite having no power in the situation we gave it all we had. Thankfully towards the end of the training we’d learned a thing or two and were much sharper and strategic about our tactics. 

 

I also remember feeling the love and conviction with which Jackie and Steve trained us to be student trainers. (As GROW Trainers with USSA) Getting a deep political grounding through the experiences and analysis of such experienced icons in the movement is more than any of us could have ever asked for.

 

As a GROW trainer I can’t say enough about the importance of the introduction to organizing session and the strategy chart session. Those are ones that students time and time again have said helped them “get-it”. Seeing campus activists feel like they can do more after leaving those sessions has been a constant source of joy and fulfillment.

 

Truth be told I can easily go all-over the place chasing ideas and leads when they seem opportune. Having tools and points of reference through which we can evaluate and properly determine direction and strategy has helped me when I’ve felt very uncertain about my direction in terms of my organizing work.

 

I’ve since had a chance to participate in other amazing trainings and programs, but to this day my Midwest Academy training serves as a frame of reference from which I balance and consider new ideas. After all the three principles of direct action organizing are why I do the work I do, and so I always ask myself if what I am learning/teaching is a) leading towards concrete victories, b)making folks aware of their own power, c) altering the relations of power.

Through my GROW training I’ve learned to not take things too personally, be a better communicator with people from different walks of life, and react to the needs of the folks I’m working with.

At Jobs with Justice we build long-term and multi-issue coalitions. The sessions and suggestions Midwest provided are very helpful to this type of work whether it was at our Student Labor Action Project (SLAP) or now the Young Workers Project.

 

 

Every time I run into trouble or walls, it makes its way back.

 

 

I don’t think I’d be where I am if I had not received the Midwest/GROW training at a young age. As a student back in 2001/2002, we were organizing to improve conditions in our low-income and predominantly Latina/o high school. We were very fortunate to be supported by UCLA students who were connected to USSA and knew about GROW, and remember the first time we went through a strategy chart planning session in a friend’s parent’s garage. That was one of those times I believe set me in my current trajectory.

 

 

Tthere are many things I’ve had the opportunity to be involved with of which I am both proud and humbled.

 

Some of the things I’m most proud of include having the opportunity to meet and train now hundreds of students across the country. I am both a GROW trainer (when called on), and a trainer at Wellstone Action.

 

I think one of the things that I’m most humbled by is being a working-class kid that gets to go across the world and represent my community and the Jobs with Justice network in some of our global work. I didn’t graduate from college or have many fancy titles, but I have received a quality education and understanding of things like globalization, migration, our environment, personal identity, and other critical aspects of our humanity through the work I’ve done and the people I am meeting.

I am also really proud to have worked with Jobs with Justice and the Student Labor Action Project. I remember first learning about it as a student in MEChA, and thinking, “I want to do that job”! I was given the opportunity to do it, and am glad to have had the chance to serve in that capacity.

 

Finally, I think I’m really proud of being part of an organization that was critical to building the first US Social Forum and now working on a bigger and better one. I’m glad I was able to be a bridge for the folks I knew into that necessary process.

 

 

You better be ready, this ain’t no joke. How far you take this depends on how seriously you take the opportunity in front of you.  Also, please ask questions, the trainers are an incredible source of knowledge.

 

Thank you Midwest Academy for being committed to training organizers, and thank you for giving so much to the student movement through partnerships like the one you have with USSA. Your work has been being a critical in equipping an entire generation of organizers to better do our work.