The Faulkner County Coalition For Social Justice, with Reinvest in Conway and Hendrix College’s NAACP chapter, hosted a volunteer onboarding event to lay out the basics of activism, action and their respective missions.
The Dec. 4 meeting was held in the Windgate Museum of Fine Art on Hendrix’s campus and facilitated by Stephanie Gray, who is the founder of FCCSJ and lead organizer for Reinvest in Conway.
“We really wanted to make this so people who are really new to organizing or activism, have a good introduction to the work,” Gray said.
Among the topics discussed were intersectionality, internalized oppression, mutual aid, direct action, street medics and the purposes of each group.
Most recently, FCCSJ helped organize a student walkout for students at Conway High School in opposition to the school board’s recent policies such as anti-trans bathroom rules and removals of LGBTQ books.
Later that evening, the Conway High school board held its usual meeting, where three UCA students were arrested. FCCSJ members were there, but not involved with the UCA students.
Attendees of the onboard training voiced concerns over how the protests went down that night, and this was, in part, why the training was organized.
“We host trainings like this at least several times a year,” Gray said. But after the protest, people reached out with concerns and questions.
“One of the things that we got response was — even folks that weren’t at the action or got arrested — asking questions of what do I do if I get arrested? What happens when I interact with the police? So we thought it was also just really good timing,” Gray said.
Reinvest in Conway, a partnered group, was cofounded by Hadiyah Cummings, from Conway, Arkansas, who is currently studying law at Yale University.
Cummings explained the different actions groups can take, such as communications, nonviolent group action, violent direct action, economic action, nonviolent direct action and mutual aid.
Communications involves petitions, social media campaigns and policy proposals. Cummings said these usually require the least amount of risk.
Nonviolent group action encompasses protests and sit-ins or die-ins.
“Even though these things are nonviolent, may think like, oh, what I’m doing is completely legal, because I’m not like hurting anyone … But that’s not always necessarily true. But you could still be breaking a law depending on what you’re doing, especially if there is a police presence,” Cummings said.
Every speaker threaded one idea throughout — consent.
Action can be risky and individuals protesting in marches or other forms of protest need to understand the risks involved, such as arrest.
“This shouldn’t just be like an impromptu decision,” Cummings said.
The groups’ leaders overlap, but they all surround the same goal of advocacy and social change.
“Power is not a monopoly of those that are tyrannical,” Gray said. “We can build power ourselves. And so I think we really have to examine, are we exercising power over people or exercising power with people?”