3B — Students Choose Their Issue — Go!

Introduction

Chapter 1 — Overview

A — Social Action's Role in U.S. Experiment in Democracy B — US College Social Action C — Benefits of Social Action for Students Campuses, and Society D — The Vision: Bringing Social Action into the Classroom E — Overcoming Challenges of Teaching Social Action

Chapter 2 — Developing a Social Action Class

A — Academic Course vs Co-Curricular & B — Prerequisites  C — Creating a Social Action Syllabus D — Teaching Style & E — Classroom Norms F — The Students G — Building Campus Allies and Community Partners H —The Role of Place & I —Each Semester vs Every Year (or Other Year) J — Maintaining Momentum

Chapter 3 — Launching Student Campaigns

A — On Your Mark: Preparing Students for the Road Ahead B — Go! Students Choose Their Issue C — Get Set: Setting the Tone D — Change Theory E — Building Power F — Social Action Campus Tour G — Research: Historical Overview, Power Mapping, & Target Analysis H — Group Dynamics I — Strategy & Tactics J — Campaign Kickoff

Chapter 4 — Campaign Planning, Implementation, and Evaluation

A — Timeline & Campaign Plan B — Campaign Implementation: "Series of Actions" Begins C — Campaign Execution & Case Studies D — Campaign Evaluation E — Day of the Final: Campaign Notebook & Group Presentation

Chapter 5 — Where to Go From Here

A — Next Semester B — Mainstreaming Social Action C — Social Action Internship Program D — Pipeline to Jobs & Graduate School E — Status of Current Campaigns F — Impact of Social Action on Former Social Action Students

CHANGE! A Guide to Teaching Social Action

• Chapter 3B Go!: Students Choose Their Issue (p.56-68)

Sociology 164: Social Action Assignments

Discussion

As they are choosing their campaigns, I remind them that choosing a campaign is their choice. The campaign they choose to work on may come from a liberal, conservative, social democrat, or libertarian perspective…or it may have no ideology. I tell them I am not promoting a political ideology; whatever campaign they choose to do is totally up to them. Thus, there is no political indoctrination, as students develop and choose what campaigns to work on, and can change campaigns at any point in the semester.

My role is to teach them about democracy, power, and how to bring about change. Furthermore, my role is to offer guidance about strategy and tactics, and to help students consider the variety of options available, with the students deciding on how to best move forward.

Class 2:  Issue Development Begins

Issue Development occurs in two parts; the first part is that the students choose their groups based on their interest. In Soci. 164: Social Action, the Mural Board was used to track the students' interest of the various campaigns. The students chose from active student campaigns, community campaigns, inactive student campaigns (i.e, previous campaigns but no students currently involved), or their own ideas for a student campaign.

About one-half of the campaigns that the students chose were student-led campaigns. When students worked with the community, I asked the lead organization during the semester to allow the students to lead a campaign action (i.e., a public display of the students' power, which puts pressure on the decision-maker through a march, rally/press conference, lobbying day, street theater, occupying of space, target meeting, etc.). Of course, they were involved with campaign activities, which includedbuilding power by fliering, tabling, giving presentations to other student orgs, doing a power map and target analysis, writing and sending out a press release, etc.

Generally, community organizations are very excited to partner with the class. Sometimes, a lead organizer from the org came into class weekly or bi-monthly to discuss upcoming activities and actions. If the students worked on a campus campaign, they became the lead organizers.

At the beginning of the class, the campaigns from the community and the previous semesters campaigns (which are active), are presented to the students. Below is how the Mural Board looked at the beginning of Day 2 in the Soci. 164: Social Action course:

Below is Chris from Sacred Heart Community Services pitching his organization's campaign

After the community and student campaigns pitch their policy change, the students have the opportunity to meet with the organizers to learn more about the campaigns, and ask specific questions.

Here is a video describing this process:

Dr. Arun Agrawal's course, Transformations: Commoning and Social Action at the University of Michigan, does his Issue Identification process a bit differently. Arun’s process had his students write out over 200 ideas about things they were interested in, narrowed it down to 15 and then narrowed it down to 2 areas of interest (see below photo).

From this point, Arun had these two groups meet, and they developed together an issue, which then developed their demands and a target. Here is Arun at the Notre Dame ‘25 Institute describing his Issue Identification process in more detail:

Class 3: Issue Identification — Midway

Below is what the Mural Board looked like in the Soci. 164: Social Sction course, as students began choosing their campaigns.

Day: 4: Issue Identification — Almost Finished

On Day 4, there is more clarity to the student groups. In Soci. 164: Social Action, there must be three students in a group to "activate it" for the class. Below notice that three groups have achieved this (i.e., 3 green circles, which represents the students first choice).

Students Choose 1-3 Demands and Target (i.e., decision-maker)

After the students get in groups with a general ideas for their campaign, the students work on developing  their draft demands and targets. If they are joining a community group that has its own demands and target, this step is skipped).

It is really important at this point to help clarify what a demand is, and move them from "slogans to demands".

After they brainstorm, I have them post their demands and targets on Mural Board, and then feedback is provided. See below for two student campaigns, and the feedback I provided:

STUDENTS FOR FAIR HOUSING (S4FH)

• Demand 1) Provide funds to support an office of legal representation for everyone who is facing an eviction proceeding.
• My notes to the students: How much will this cost? City will pay for it? Who qualifies? Have you written the legislation?
• Target(s): San Jose Mayor and 10 City Council members
• My note to the students: You will want to choose 6 folks to target

STUDENT AGAINST SEXUAL ASSAULT (SASA)

• Demand 1) Title IX Office recruit and fill all vacant positions and develop a plan to retain staff.
• Demand 2) Demand that the report of complicit employees be released to SJSU students and Public by the end of October.
• Target(s): Peter Lim, Interim Title IX and Gender Equity Officer; President Stephen Perez, San Jose State University
• My note to the students: maybe make this edit to Demand 1: "Title IX Office recruits and fills all vacant positions and develops a plan to retain staff, but excludes people involved with the Scott Shaw case." Also, "Recruit and fill positions, but not with people involved with the Scott Shaw case."

WOMEN AGAINST PERIOD POVERTY (WAPP)

• Demand #1: SJSU provides menstrual hygiene products in all restrooms on campus.
• Demand #2: Provide menstrual hygiene products at no additional cost (about $100K per year).
• Target(s): President Stephen Perez, San Jose State University; Vice President Patrick K. Day, San Jose State University

Resource

Campaign Activities vs Actions Exercise

The below charts can be printed for an in-class exercise with students. Students can be asked to separate them into two piles, one for campaign activities and one for campaign actions. They can then be asked to put the campaign activities into a rough chronological order.

Faculty Advice

Switching Groups

Campaign Case Study

In Spring 2023, a group of students in the Sociology 164: Social Action class chose to continue a previous San José State University student social action campaign. After class on Day 4, Kayla came up to me and said that she was really passionate about working on a previous student campaign entitled Asian American Arts and Action, which was from the Fall of 2021. This student campaign was working to get a monument to the Filipino Farmworkers erected next to the Cesar Chavez monument on campus, since it focused on only Mexican American farmworkers. Cesar had started his organizing in San José near campus after a group of SJSU Sociology students had connected Fred Ross, an Alinsky-trained community organizer, to him in 1952. Cesar visited the SJSU campus regularly in his early organizing and the Chavez family had several young people attend SJSU.

Kayla had read about the Asian American Arts and Action campaign when I passed out the Campaign Binders on Day 2, and as a Filipina, she was drawn to this campaign. However, she was nervous about putting her idea forward to "re-activate" the campaign. In addition to her self-doubt, she also was resigned to the fact that we have just finished Day 4 of the class, and most of the campaigns had already been decided up. I told her that she should DEFINITELY make a pitch to the class at the beginning of Day 5. I also told her that in these days of the class, the groups are quite fluid, and students are encouraged to change groups if they feel more passionate about an issue than another group is working on. She took, my advice, and pitched the idea to re-activate the campaign for a statue. After Kayla's pitch, eight students from other groups, as well as a few undecided folks, joined her, where they created "Students for Filipino Farmerworkers: Justicie for Itliong and Manongs". 

There were nine students leading this campaign were Antonio, Ajamu, Kayla, Jeralyn, Raymond, Fabiola, Lenny, Megan, and Viet.

Course Development Reflection Questions

• Which of the best practices discussed from the text (Ch 2B) and the above video clips might you adopt in your class? What other best practices do you know and might use to help your students choose an issue?
• In Soci. 164: the general policy is that a campaign must be non-violent and it cannot violate the UN Declaration of Human Rights. In your class, what will be your class policy for your class, or will you handle this case by case? Is there a social action campaign that you would not allow your students to choose in your class? (e.g., a constitutional amendment to overturn Brown v. Board of Education proposed by an alt-right group.) This type of campaign has never been proposed by any students, but it is a good thought experiment to carry out to figure out what lines, if any, should be drawn and where to draw them.