On the Ground

Summary

“On The Ground” would serve as a public record or social history of the work that has been done on the ground (or ground-adjacent) at UW. People can access and learn from a directory of interviews, ranging topics from the cultural history that may have been erased over the years in bite-size form (examples can be seen in Instagram accounts like @soyouwannatalkabout, @theslacktivists, @18millionrising, @southasians4blacklives), to informative articles on current movements in and around the UW community and Greater Seattle Area. The project’s form would be a publication platform (similar to NPR, The-Talks, and other media journal companies) entirely run by students, encompassing photography, personal anecdotes, interviews, and informative articles, culminating in a potential full-fledged publication of collected interviews. We also plan to make the media platform ADA compliant so that disabled members of our community can access our stories and participate as well. In the future, we hope to be able to translate the platform’s content into multiple locally used languages. A team of interviewers will feature stories on Black, Indigenous, or minority undergraduates, graduates, and faculty on campus, who will share their experiences with the system and their frontline work in the movement for justice. We have the benefit of having a wide range of intellectual students and staff that can chronicle our political history in a current and long-term perspective, especially in different aspects of the UW community, such as the UWPD, healthcare and medicine at the UWMC, and so on. Special features of Seattle activists can expand our journal’s scope to the communities surrounding UW as well. Radical change can also be seen in the form of joy and self care; columns celebrating Black, Indigenous or artists of color in music, visual art, or other platforms as well as creating accessible segments on how Black and Indigenous individuals take care of themselves and how other people of colors and allies can as well is crucial for maintaining community morale especially when educating themselves and participating in such difficult dialogue. We hope to collaborate with RSOs on campus such as UW BLM, Black Student Union, African Student Association, First Nations at UW, and other minority organizations on campus that carry a similar vision of community upliftment and activism. GOALS: Goal 3 – “Health and Well-Being”: Our project promotes health and well-being as a platform with an opportunity for readers and activists to share their stories and struggles with the healthcare system and quality of life. This may also become a space for people to discover new ways to look after their mental health while practicing non-optical allyship, learning to support themselves in accessible ways as they support each other. Goal 5 – “Gender Equality”: The On the Ground project also supports the goal of gender equality by creating an intersectional avenue for Black, Indigenous, or womxn of color to share their stories and empower others as well through the internet. Goal 10 – “Reduced Inequalities”: This project would help in reducing inequalities by promoting the stories of underrepresented populations and the empowerment of their work and histories as cultural, racial, and ethnic minorities by providing the community an avenue to see others like them working for change.

Background

"Allyship that only serves at the surface level to platform the ‘ally’, it makes a statement but doesn’t go beneath the surface and is not aimed at breaking away from the systems of power that oppress.” – Latham Thomas With the Black Lives Matter movement’s resurgence and the COVID-19 pandemic, the glaring infrastructural disparities in healthcare, law enforcement, and the environment are fueling a necessary conversation on righting society’s injustices. As a womxn of color myself, being an ally to Black and Indigenous people is as important now as it ever was, and practicing proper non-optical allyship is necessary to uplift and amplify the voices that deserve to be heard. Allyship is about taking action to effect real, tangible change. Scholars have articulated actions that allies can take, such as using their voices and advantaged positions to educate fellow advantaged group members who may not be aware that they are unfairly benefiting from a system steeped in inequality. Allies can also engage in actions that illuminate, challenge, and change institutional policies that perpetuate pervasive inequality. We, as students, recognize the value of activism by BIPOC and allies on our campus, especially amongst undergraduates, grad students and faculty. We hope that in creating an online anthology that details the work being done on the ground or ground-adjacent we can memorialize the work done so far, the work that continues to be done, and what we can do in the future. References: Reason, R. D., & Broido, E. M. (2005). Issues and strategies for social justice allies (and the student affairs professionals who hope to encourage them). New Directions for Student Services, 2005(110), 81–89.doi:10.1002/ss.167

Impact measured

Measurable milestones include: Increase in readership over time, increase in outreach and support to activists or current initiatives we may be highlighting on campus – all of these are operationalized in the ‘Evaluation’ portion of our proposal. We can evaluate the project goals through feedback surveys to readers to see what the community has gained and/or would like to see more in order to focus on areas of improvement. In addition, looking at exposure in a quantifiable manner (i.e: number of readers, shares, comments, etc.) is a practical way to measure how the UW community responds to the project. Being able to see the interest and response of readers can address the representation of how one feels, especially when being curated in support of the BIPOC community. In addition, increased support towards our interviewees and their initiatives (whether in the form of donations, volunteer support, increased awareness on social media) can be a way of measuring the change in involvement on the ground in the UW community.

Budget

Award amount requested: 2973

1. $223; Web Development; cost for website url as well as maintenance cost
2. $250; Web Design; compensation for designer and developer (CSS/HTML coding)
3. $1000; Interview Team; compensation for journalists conducting interviews and investigative work
4. $750; Editors; compensation for editors to refine interview, website, and article content
5. $250; Social Media/Marketing Manager; compensation for content curator and promotional outreach management
6. $500; Honorarium; compensation for greater Seattle activists/guests to support their initiatives and in taking the time to interview with us