The summer i graduated college and worked for the Union

I graduated may 7th. Spent the following month applying for jobs and living in denial in our 4 bedroom shity ass condo on matchwood, that i love with all my heart. The week i moved home to live with my mother after 4 years of being independent is also the week i started my 7 week intensive internship as a union organizer. I went into it knowing NOTHING. i still know nothing, but i do know a lot more about myself.

while at APU i had yearned to see a community that loved each other across boarders such as class, race, sexual orientation, etc. but felt that the campus was far from it and even the students who also wanted to foster that only got so far before they were discouraged by either administration or their fellow students. At the union i saw organizers some of whom graduated from yale, some of whom were women, and some of whom came out of a union fight at their own work place and despite the language barrier became union organizers. Not only the interns, but the staff saw everyone. By saw i mean acknowledged their presence and celebrated. For the first time in my experience it did not matter if someone was profane in a staff meeting, if someone was openly queer, or if someone did not have citizenship in this country because we were bound by a common goal...the humanity of workers and the war on capital.

I had my challenges, many in fact. I was exhausted on a daily basis, and left wondering what i was really working towards and who these people were that i worked for. I had a lot of doubt and skepticism, from my own jaded mindset. I was discouraged by my own abilities, and put in uncomfortable situations, but in the end I could not believe I was lucky enough to be a part of such a revolutionary group of young people. I learned a new vocabulary. I learned a new culture. and most importantly I learned that change comes from the people at the bottom...the masses. if this country could see through the great illusion we've been placed under, that the same hand that feeds us is slowly killing us, we would rise up. But the nature of this country's so called "democracy" perpetually keeps its people asleep, inhibiting any revolution from ever taking place, and deeming the revolutionaries as insane. My blindfold is continually lifted, and i am grateful.