yea I did think about EOP student organizing at SUny Binghamton it was my trademark organizing at Binghamton. yea as I said earlier they had 45 year anniversary EOP luncheon. I thought about SUny binghamton years today a lot yea organizing with Steve Duarte and EOP students. I will always will remember 1999-2000 yea that was when EOP became polarized. I started SUny Binghamton in fall 1997 as a sociology grad student. By the start of Fall 1999 I became one of the most active organizers/activists on campus. Things were changing on campus and I new SUny Binghamton president Defluer want to remake the university in her model and was not interested in liberal arts or activist university. SO I was prepared to push with EOP student organizing in September 1999. Problem was that I had so much obligations Finally Sociology department gave me funding I was TA for 1999-2000 well yea that took time and I was elected as Vice President of Sociology graduate student Union(SGSU) well that turned out to be more challenging in terms of time than I expected Tresurer had other things she was interested in and elected President was busy with his dissertation and later resign that school year. SO I essentially had to run the entire SGSU operation by myself. Yea it was not what I had in mind but luckily a group of sociology grad students help me out. I came up with a game plan to push EOP student organizing with Sociology as a base and I came up with an idea where sociology would be a base for EOP organizing. It worked good and yea 1999-2000 would be a very active year at SUny Binghamton. yea EOP organizing worked so good from Save the EOP, to EOP ad hoc committee and a network of EOP students I came up with through organizing with JUMPNATION people in 1999 and yea Nicole Spain really helped me a lot. I reached all my goals on EOP organizing but yea key was creating EOP organizing network people would be on the ground floor pushing it when I was not there and had obligations as Sociology TA and running SGSU. it worked so good that I am using this in a gang community area in South Central la on western and normandie this fall. Yea i did think about 1999-2000 EOp organizing today it was one of the best organizing I ever did at Binghamton but the key was getting prepared for it and getting the support of EOP students all across campus was key. Whatever the reason they trusted me with everything yea I made a good decision to learn from freshman every year at Binghamton and go to student meetings every week in fall 1999 often went to 25 student group meetings a week often going to obscure group meetings I always like the idea of doing an underground operation and to fool people yea being a gang community organizer you do things that nobody at a University is going to be doing. yea a lot of memories today of SUny Binghamton yea seeing alumni there that i remember so well made me look back at this. yea what I did in 1999-2000 is important today in LA inner city I am using similar tactics but in a different setting yea quite a jump from college students to people with little or no education but the issues are similar. yea SUny Binghamton a lot to look back upon and yea the time period with EOP organizing with Steve Duarte and EOP students important to grass roots organizing today.
Posted on: Sun, 19 Oct 2014 07:54:46 +0000