DEM SUMMERS: Will Poff-Webster’s Worthy, Positive Work
Posted 9/14/11 by Christine Hurd
The Dems have been busy over the summer: interning, working, volunteering, traveling, and of course, indulging in some leisure time not oft found in Cambridge (leave it to a Harvard student to be busy spending leisure time.) This is part VII of an indefinite series. If you’re a Harvard Dem (or rising pre-frosh with interest), we’d love to hear what you’ve been up to. | E-mail communications@harvarddems.com.
This summer I was a staff member and teacher at a Boston non-profit, the Summer Leadership Program, teaching political activism and social justice to youth ages 14-18. While it was hard to forego the more traditional route of interning for an elected official, I was drawn back to teach at the Summer Leadership Program because I did the program as my first summer job and it’s a big part of my passion for politics.
The Summer Leadership Program (SLP) is one of too few places in the city of Boston where teens from really different backgrounds get together. We had 71 students, two-thirds from Boston’s inner-city neighborhoods and one-third from more affluent areas of the city and suburbs. Amazingly enough the participants actually get paid, which is important because many need to help support their families and all of them learn about the value of a job.
One of the most challenging but rewarding parts of SLP is building a community across race and class lines, and it was my job to teach participants about the social justice issues underpinning the problems we have today. For the first few weeks we focused on racism, classism, sexism, and heterosexism (a more systemic word for homophobia). We did activities like “ten chairs,” which shows how the richest 10% of Americans own 70% of the wealth (one guy in one chair gets to stretch out over seven), while the other 90% of the population has to crowd onto three chairs. The biggest learning tool in SLP is just a conversation where everyone shares their life experiences, where we learned about how racism, sexism and homophobia remain problems today.
In the second part of the summer, I taught a seminar on environmental justice. We talked about the government response to Hurricane Katrina, the asthma epidemic in American cities, climate change (the participants were astounded that anyone could refuse to believe in climate change- in a moment of less-than-objectivity, I told them I thought it was the Republicans’ fault), and gentrification. I tried to show them everything through the focus of political action, highlighting community organizing and political campaigns that have stopped environmental degradation. At one point we walked through my neighborhood of Boston, Jamaica Plain, to show how community activists in the 1970s allied with state Democrats to defeat a proposed 10-lane highway that would’ve cut the neighborhood in two. They won, and successfully used federal highway money to build a long system of parks, playgrounds, bike paths, and the Orange Line subway system. I hope I was able to show my participants that political engagement and activism can lead to better communities!
Because one job is never enough, on the side I continued my term-time job at the Boston Student Advisory Council, an advocacy group of students in the Boston Public Schools. I’m the staff member working on making sure the new Boston Teachers’ Union contract addresses student concerns in education reform. It looks like I’ve already written way too much, so I won’t say more than that, but if you want to know about it just ask!
Of course I’m also really excited to work with you all this year. This summer just reinvigorated my commitment to the Democrats as the best way to bring change for this country. I can’t wait to work with you all soon!
