This is our manifesto. WE believe that we need to move towards a more just community through direct action. Direct Action is an anarchist term that refers to putting your body or resources directly towards a cause. We are attempting to straddle the lines between direct action and the call for visibility in our project. We desire to raise visibility for the work being done to gain fair and equitable treatment of dining hall workers and cleaning staff on the Claremont campuses. In addition to this we are navigating the dynamics of mobilizing people with different positionalities to help each other in a form of direct action, supporting these individuals in a tangible, physical way. This connects to the pedagogy of the oppressed because we cannot actually directly change the experiences of people who are facing systematic oppression, but we are able to support them in advocating for themselves. Advocating for the dining hall workers is putting Marxist frameworks into action and, even if it can not overthrow capitalism, can temper it. Our method in this project will be similar to Grand Fury which used art as direct action, which sometimes is and sometimes isn’t enough.
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PROJECT GOALS |
With our project we wish to change the atmosphere of apathy surrounding the issue of workers rights with the hope that the knowledge and action from our project will inspire students to specifically support vulnerable workers around the Claremont Colleges. This could look like an action plan for community meals between students and dining hall workers, making the campus aware of worker struggles and when they are meeting to stand in solidarity with them, possibly through engaging with student groups on campus already attempting to support these individuals.
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Our MESSAGE |
Our message is to create an alliance between different groups on campus which allows us to temper the rampant capitalism that feeds off of our constant displeasure and perceived lack. If one of us isn't getting our needs met we have a responsibility to support that person or group of people. We desire for students to understand and see that they can use their positions of privilege and monetary advantages to support dining hall and cleaning staff. To achieve this goal we are using a combination of both visibility/advocacy messages and calls for direct action. We are creating visibility for dining hall/staff workers by humanizing these individuals and spotlighting them. Because these actions are not actions that the three of us can do alone, advocacy, visibility, and education are required in order to mobilize people. Through the process of creating a narrative for the workers, that is legible to the student body, and putting faces behind the movement we hope to inspire individuals to stand in solidarity with these groups who are fighting for their rights as well as inviting them to make monetary donations to these causes. We also hope that by included cut-out momentos in our zine that we can encourage people to be more conscious of their usages and treatment of resources
We plan to manifest this goal through the creation of an online magazine using our various texts, including interviews with the dining hall workers and students on campus, and images that are representative of the ways that 5C students can become engaged in direct actions to support other members of the 5C community. We will utilize our approach using a Marxist aesthetic for the style and composition of the Magazine.
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We will make our zine available through mostly digital avenues, including creating a pdf link for which we can distribute our zine via twitter and facebook in addition to our class weebly site in order to reach a wider audience. Considering that part of our targeted audience are the dining hall workers, and they encompass a wide range of people of different ages and backgrounds, we feel that is important to also make the magazine accessible for them. Therefore, we plan to transcend the magazines digital platform and print copies to distribute to the workers. We want to use this magazine to create community between claremont students, the workers, and faculty/staff. Ultimately, we want the more privileged individual in this institution-including faculty and students-to feel inclined to support and stand in solidarity with the rest of the members of their community. Since our audience is broad, we will take various approaches at reaching our target audience and distributing the magazine including printing it , circulating it through social media, and sharing it in the 5C emails.