News: Learning How to Struggle

Corporations became powerful through careful organization — and that’s what it will take to bring them to heel.

A group of Cincinnati activists are receiving training through Students Transforming and Resisting Corporations (STARC), learning skills for grassroots organizing, fighting racism and working for economic justice.

Hillery Shay has been at the STARC Summer Institute in San Francisco for more than two months. She’s been working with the Ruckus Society, which teaches direct actions such as hanging protest banners from landmarks and locking yourself to doors and utility poles.

“Exciting stuff like you saw in Seattle,” Shay says.

She hopes to set up a Ruckus-type training camp somewhere in the Midwest.

A student at the University of Cincinnati last quarter, Shay says the activist network isn’t restricted to students.

“People usually look at youth movements and they usually categorize it as students,” she says. “People miss out on the whole radicalness of youth because they’re looking for this one particular thing. People assume that if it doesn’t look like the ’60s, it’s not happening — and I don’t think that’s true.

There’s no age or class or race barrier for me in terms of wanting to work on these issues in terms of who I want to work with.”

The fact that many activists in Cincinnati have jobs and children proves their dedication, according to Shay.

“You look at Cincinnati,” she says. “How many paid organizers are there in Cincinnati? There’s maybe two that I know. These are not people who are off in the never-never land of liberal politics.”

Shay, 22, moved to the Midwest when she was 10 and has lived in Cincinnati on and off for about 10 years.

Her father raised her to believe that people who have more than others are responsible for making sure those with less are taken care of.

After coming out as a lesbian when she was 16, Shay worked with gay rights organizations but decided gay rights isn’t enough.

“I see the reasons why I’m oppressed,” she says. “It’s kind of linked inextricably with everyone else’s. If I’m gonna fight my battle, I’m fighting other peoples’ battles, too.”

When she returns to Cincinnati, she would like to work on issues involving the police and power structures.

“Right now that’s what the city’s paying attention to as well, so it makes it easier to work on,” Shay says. “I see it as a microcosm of what’s going on in the world right now.”

She compares racial profiling by police to racial profiling resulting from the war on terrorism.

“For the benefit of who? Upper middle-class white people,” Shay says.

Laura Close, a field coordinator with STARC, says Cincinnati has lots of work ahead for activists.

“It seems to me there continues to be an outrageous amount of power on the part of the police force despite widespread protest,” she says.

STARC teaches skills that will help activists with issues of police violence but also with larger problems, including corporate dominance, Close says.

“We are building the capacity of a youth movement,” she says. “We focus on impact and building people power. We’re in it together and we’re looking for ways to create that sense of unity.”

STARC’s summer conference this weekend at Middle Tennessee State University focuses on community, analysis and skill building. The training comes at the right time for Cincinnati activists, according to Kim Burden.

“There has been a dearth of leadership in this city,” she says. “There have been a lot of young activists coming into being in the last year and a half.”

Burden, who attended STARC’s summer conference last year in California, says activism requires more than deciding who and what to fight. Planning is needed to accomplish the goals and build a strategic campaign.

The tools she learned at the conference and at other workshops are important for activists to know, in order to help them reframe their debates and not just be reactionary, Burden says. Young activists often want to fight everything when they see a wrong committed. But, they have to formulate a strategy, she says.

“The powers that be are always going to be repressive,” Burden says. “They’re always going to be working against the best interest of the planet and the people.”

The key is deciding how to fight, and the first step is disseminating the information activists need, she says. With the right tools, working for change is a much smoother process.

“It’s kind of like building a really nice house,” Burden says. “It needs a really strong foundation.”

There are enough people of conscience to work on various campaigns without having to try to recruit them toward only one cause.

“In a city like Cincinnati, people think they have to be vying for the activists,” Burden says. “I have a lot of faith in the citizens of this city. People certainly do care about the issues.”

This article appears in Aug 7-13, 2002.