Author Archive

I just got out of facilitating a social networking workshop at the USSA Congress, and I promised I’d put up a quick post for overflow questions, comments, and links.

Here it is.

5:34 pm update: Jesse just asked me about how I liveblog. This is how.

8:31 pm update: Here are links to some of the sites folks mentioned in the workshop…

DREAMActivist, for organizing around the DREAM Act.
Wikispaces, a site where people can create wikis for free.
The preview site for Google Wave.

On Thursday I was out and about until two in the morning helping out USSA students with plenary meeting prep, and then I was up again at seven to start getting ready for the plenary itself, so I never had a chance to post a recap of the day’s events.

The plenary itself went for more than seventeen hours starting a little after ten o’clock Friday morning, and it was astounding in all sorts of ways. There’s a lot to say about it, and I’ll put up a full post about yesterday’s events later, but first a quick overview of Thursday.

The day was devoted to workshops and caucus meetings. The workshops covered a lot of ground — from “Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop: How to Prevent Burnout” to “Autonomous Organizing Down Under,” led by the president of the Australian National Union of Students, David Barrow — but a common thread ran through almost all of them.

USSA sees itself first and foremost as an organization of grassroots student organizers. It conducts regular Grass Roots Organizing Weekend (GROW) trainings for its membership, and many of its staff and officers come up through the ranks of its GROW trainers. Its major campaigns are organizing campaigns, and its closest institutional allies share that perspective.

Over and over again at this Congress, USSA’s formal and informal leadership has framed questions in terms of organizing strategy and tactics, pressing their fellow students to plan concretely for how to run and win campaigns around the issues they care about. This is not a group that’s particularly interested in making abstract statements of principle or engaging in acts of symbolic protest for protest’s sake.

I’m off to run a workshop now, but I’m hoping to find some free time later this afternoon to post about yesterday’s plenaries.

Previously:
USSA Congress Begins Today!
USSA Congress 2009, Day One
USSA Congress 2009, Day Two

The second day of the USSA Congress got underway with meetings of the Association’s regions, where delegates planned strategy for the Congress and began the process of choosing regional officers. Next up on the agenda was a “Triple SAC” session — a meeting of the State and Systemwide Student Association Coalition (SSSAC).

State and systemwide student associations have been a major force in American student organizing ever since the voting age was lowered to 18 in the early 1970s, allowing undergraduates to take a direct role in lobbying and electoral organizing for the first time. SSAs have long been a backbone of USSA, serving as a link between the campus and the national organization and providing student activists with experience organizing and politicking beyond the campus. More than fifty students from at least seven SSAs from around the country were present at yesterday’s Triple SAC meeting, where the group agreed on a set of proposals to present to Friday’s plenary and nominated candidates for SSSAC’s chair and vice chair, who serve on the USSA board of directors.

Nominations for USSA’s officers followed at lunch. Sitting vice president Gregory Cendana declared his candidacy for presidency, as has become traditional in the Association, and was unopposed. Also unopposed is vice presidential candidate Lindsay McCluskey, a recent graduate of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and the chair of USSA’s New England region. As an undergrad Lindsay helped found her state’s new SSA and served as student representative to the University of Massachusetts board of trustees.

In the early afternoon USSA’s National Women’s Student Coalition (NWSC) and National People of Color Student Coalition (NPCSC) met in back-to-back sessions, with “ally” meetings held at the same time. USSA’s ally meetings are an opportunity for students who are not members of the Association’s identity-based caucuses, but consider themselves supporters of those caucuses’ work, to meet to discuss issues relating to the caucuses’ missions. I attended both of yesterday’s ally sessions, helping to facilitate the white students’ meeting, and came away impressed as always.

Dinner on Wednesday was a banquet sponsored by Google, who sent a representative to talk about the company’s Google Books service, which is currently awaiting judicial review of a proposed settlement to a lawsuit filed by authors’ and publishers’ groups. Google is looking to dramatically expand online access to books that are in copyright but out of print, but court approval of their proposal is not yet assured.

More caucus sessions followed dinner, including meetings of the National Queer Student Coalition and eight smaller caucuses. Two of five evening workshops discussed the DREAM Act, a bill that would provide a path to legal permanent residency for many undocumented immigrant youth. The DREAM Act was a major USSA legislative priority in 2008-09, and will likely come to a vote in the House and Senate in the coming year.

The Congress agenda for Wednesday wrapped up after midnight, and sessions began again at 9 o’clock this morning. Today sees more workshops and caucus meetings, along with the deadline for submitting proposals for tomorrow’s plenary sessions. The candidates for USSA’s presidency and vice presidency will make speeches and answer questions over lunch.

Previously: USSA Congress 2009, Day One

As I noted in my last post, the 62nd annual USSA Congress kicked off yesterday.

Final registration numbers aren’t in yet, but it’s already clear that the Congress is bigger and more representative of the nation’s students than it’s been in quite a while. There are something like two hundred students here, from all corners of the United States — research universities and community colleges, urban and rural schools alike. It’s a good, robust, dynamic crowd.

The first item on the Congress agenda was an afternoon meeting of the 2008-09 USSA Board of Directors, followed  by a dinner at which the Association’s officers and David Barrow, the president of the Australian National Union of Students, spoke. Barrow gave a strong speech on the need for global student solidarity, which I’ve invited him to publish on this blog.

After dinner the delegates split into five groups for informational sessions on USSA, the Congress, and how to run an organizing campaign back on campus in the fall.

Today begins with regional meetings, and continues with workshops and meetings of the Association’s largest caucuses, which known as affiliates: the State and System Student Association Coalition, the National Women’s Student Coalition, the National People of Color Student Coalition, and the National Queer Student Coalition.

For the last three of these, “allies spaces” in which students who are not part of the affiliates but identify as allies of their organizing will be held while the affiliate meetings are going on. (I’m going to be co-facilitating the allies space of the National People of Color Student Coalition, and I’m really looking forward to it.) Officer nominations are also today, at lunch.

Update: Obviously I can’t be everywhere at once, so if I’ve missed anything, Congress participants should feel free to post about their own experiences in comments.