Abby Brooks

CESL Program: IMPACT, Community Scholars Program

Major: Social Thought & Political Economy

I’ve been involved with the service-learning office since my first semester of freshman year, which has been such a cool experience. I started in a class called impact, which was a residential academic program based around how do we implement social justice aims in our local communities, and so I was really excited to be able to live next to people who shared those same values as me, and I just found such a good community, and so my professor, Terrell, recommended that I apply for the Community Scholars Program, and I met Deborah, and the rest is history. I love it so much, and I think it’s hard to find a community within the classes you take, and I think in all the service learning classes I’ve taken, my biggest takeaway is that all of the professors put intention into making sure the class gets to know each other and feels comfortable speaking up.

This semester I started working with the Mutual Aid Project here on campus, and we do a lot of different things. The first big one is probably Thingswap, so every other week, we host a thing swap, where people can drop off things that they no longer need or want, and then anyone can come and take what they need, and so it’s about providing material resources to people in the moment, but it’s also about creating a sort of third space and a community space, where people can come and connect, and I think it sprang up after COVID, which is no accident. I think a lot of people at UMass were feeling not connected to the people around them and were craving human connection in a space where we share the same political values and so this was a way where we could meet the material needs of our community and also get to know each other a little bit better. I also started working on a zine series, and so my ethos behind zines is that as young people, we’re usually acted upon, and we’re just simply consumers, and so a zine was a way for me to take control back in my life and be an active producer and write my own story and not listen to what big corporatized media is telling me, and I think that directly relates to the values of the Mutual Aid Project. We believe that we don’t need to wait until we have this crazy global revolution in order to see change, that right now in our localized communities we can start taking steps towards a better world, so a great way of emboldening us and giving us the power to do that is these little projects that remind us that we are producers and that we don’t need to wait for permission from anyone, and we can create whatever we’d like. We’re also working on a time bank, we’re just in the research stage right now, but I am super excited for that, and that’s a real solidarity economy that we’re gonna implement here at UMass, and so I think that’s gonna be really cool, and the best part about that is it’s completely based on a local context, and so it’s not about how are we uprooting capitalism tomorrow. It’s about how we are showing our community that we have each other’s back, and building community and building a base that we can then move from.

I don’t know if I can think of a specific moment, but I love our little check in. At the beginning of every class, we go around the circle and do a little temperature check of how we’re feeling and how the world is treating us that day, and I think that is so important for many reasons. First and foremost, it gives an opportunity for every single person’s voice to be heard, regardless of whether they want to participate in a bigger discussion. It just illustrates the class that we’re all here, and all of our voices matter. I think that’s a phenomenal way that we start off every class. I also think it shows the human side to all of us that we’re not just little academic machines that need to grind and be productive, that some days there are other things going on in our lives, and it’s important to note that and express that to the group and so we can know how to proceed with compassion and care for each other. I also think it’s a really great way to get to know people and the more you get to know people the more comfortable you are to speak up in class and the more apt you are to be emotionally vulnerable and to dig into deeper questions, so I think that’s really cool, and I’m so happy we do that.

I think I really appreciate how introspective the CESL office is. I think a lot of service learning programs out there are very extractive, especially being at a big institution that’s predominantly white, like going into communities and taking stories from them and then using it to our own personal benefit. I think that happens all too often in service learning, and I think that Deborah and Terrell James both did a phenomenal job of pushing back against that and how can we be partners and accomplices and allies and not just volunteers or helpers, and so I think just like as a takeaway really understanding my positionality as a white person entering spaces and how do I not be extractive and how do I recognize the power dynamics that exist and work to undo them.