Can I Sign Rhode Island Profit Sharing Agreement Template

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BESENIA RODRIGUEZ: Hi, everybody. Welcome. So as folks get settled in, we know that it takes some time to kind of get started, get your bearings, eat some food. So the panelists, before we began with introductions and with the session, have a few questions that we're hoping you can reflect on. And if you need a pen, there are also pens on the chair. So I'll read them, in case there's anybody that can't see from where you are. What forms of activism have you been a part of or would you like to be a part of? How do you define activism? What is a change you would make in an institution you're a part of, and how could you make that change? And finally, whether you do or do not perform activism, or engage in making change, what are some barriers for you for engaging more fully? So maybe five to seven minutes-- if you can balance your plate and a pen-- thinking through and writing down some thoughts to those questions. PEGGY CHANG: Before we do that, I wanted to very just quickly say my name is Peggy Chang. Welcome, so lovely to see so many of you here today for this roundtable discussion. Actually, we're in our fourth day. There are about 60 seniors presenting in a roundtable or at the poster session tomorrow afternoon in the Leung Gallery. My dear colleague, Dean Besenia Rodriguez, Senior Associate Dean for Curriculum at Brown, will be moderating this panel. And without further ado. BESENIA RODRIGUEZ: So just a few minutes to kind of jot down some thoughts that come to mind with response to the questions. Welcome, and thank you so much for joining us. As Dean Peggy Chang said, this is the fourth day of "Theories in Action." The title of this section, as titled by our panelists, is "Strategies for Agitation, Subversion, and Change-Making in the Face of Institutional Power." Welcome. As you probably saw from this first exercise, we're really hoping to foster dialogue not just amongst the four panelists, but also across the room today. So my name is Besenia Rodriguez, as Dean Chang mentioned. I work in the Dean of the College office. And thank you for joining us today. So "Theories in Action" has been envisioned as an exchange and a conference in a different kind of way. The goal is to provide an opportunity for seniors to engage in dialogue with one another across different disciplines and different kinds of projects, and to engage with various publics. So we're hoping that while they're going to share some of their own narratives, that will also engage you all in the process of reflection and dialogue. So we're going to return to the questions that you've been reflecting on and also allow some space for broader conversation. But essentially, the format for our session is I'm going to introduce the four panelists, and each of them will spend about 8 to 10 minutes talking about the work that they've been engaged in. And then I'm going to ask maybe a few questions. But then we're actually going to shift back to inviting the audience to talk amongst yourselves, and we're going to have another opportunity for-- talk to your neighbor, pair share. And then bring it back to the broader audience and have an opportunity for you to share some of the conversation that you all had in smaller groups, and then also to ask questions of our panelists. So I'm going to first introduce all of them, and then we'll get started. Liliana Sampedro, who's to your far right, is a senior studying Ethnic Studies in sociology. And her hometown is Eugene, Oregon. Kai Salem is a graduating senior who uses state energy policy to fight for climate justice at Brown. She's an Engaged Scholar in the Environmental Studies concentration, blending her extracurricular activist work with her academic research in environmental policy. In Rhode Island, she represents the Rhode Island Student Climate Coalition on the Environmental Council of Rhode Island and the Energize Rhode Island Coalition for carbon pricing. When taking a break from fighting against climate change, Kai enjoys working with local musicians at WBRU and cooking vegetarian food. Kai's talk is entitled "With Whom do you Ally?" So next, we're going to hear from Erin West, who's a first semester senior concentrating in Development Studies and Gender and Sexuality studies. Her work at Brown both in and outside of the classroom centers around sexual violence and other forms of interpersonal harm. Erin's talk is entitled "The Savior State and the Violence in the US Humanitarian immigration Law." And last but not least, Natalie Lerner is a first semester senior concentrating in Ethnic Studies and Latin American and Caribbean Studies. Among her interests are health equity, immigration justice, anti-gentrification efforts and Jewish organizing. She grew up in Portland, Oregon. And much of her work both academically and outside of the classroom is focused on making Portland a more just and equitable place. While this particular project that she's going to talk about today started in Oregon, Natalie also believes that everyone everywhere should have basic information about how to keep themselves and others as safe as possible in the presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, which is the focus of her talk today entitled "Watching, Being Watched: A Brief Guide to Observing, Documenting, and Challenging Immigration and Customs Enforcement." And if you didn't grab a little handout on the way in, feel free to grab one. So without further ado, we're going to start with Liliana Sampedro-- Do you want the clicker? LILIANA SAMPEDRO: Sure. BESENIA RODRIGUEZ: --whose talk is entitled "Lessons from Student Organizing: Understanding the Stakes, Overcoming Challenges, and Mapping Hostilities." Liliana. LILIANA SAMPEDRO: So this talk kind of emerged out of my experiences organizing at Brown during the first two years, particularly with the Brown Immigrant Rights Coalition, with the Brown Student Labor Alliance, and Justice as a Student of Color on campus. So just to get some background-- this is some of the actions and events I helped organize on campus. And yeah, I already said that. I thought one thing that might be useful also-- one thing that might be useful, and that was to define agitation as part of our title. And I think a lot of times, agitation has a really negative connotation. But I've learned that in organizing spaces, I can refer to a process that helps someone gain clarity on their value or when someone's emotions start working towards their values. So these are definitions I'm adopting from some labor organizations that I worked with and some organizing trainings that I've gone through. Another one is issue. So I'm going to define issue, just because I've noticed that a lot of organizers on campus tend to forget to either articulate or identify what the issue is. So an issue is an important and specific solution to a problem with a clear target, so important at first to-- again, it has to be significant to people, to everyday people. It has to have a concrete and material benefit to those people. Having a specific solution is really important so that you can measure progress, hold people accountable, and monitor that, I guess. Here, issues are generally part of a partial solution to larger problems. So for instance, raising the minimum wage is an issue towards the larger issue of poverty, for instance. And then a clear target. A target in organizing basically refers to someone who can give you what you want. So just reviewing some of the mistakes I know I've made that I just generally see. So I don't know if any of you all have seen this diagram, and this graph, or this picture image. But I think it's super helpful in understanding some very easy mistakes, I want to say, that organizers tend to make. So just to read what it says. Step one, students to present demands to administration. Administration ignores or dismisses them. Step two, students escalate pressure through organizing campaigns. Step three, administration offers to set up a committee to look into the issue and put out recommendations. Organizers declare victory and start work on committee. Step four, committee drags its feet until summer break. Administration lets committee die or ignores final report. So just to-- oh, hmm, I don't know why, OK-- so these are just some very broad, by no means extensive, mistakes that I've seen and I've made. So within that, I think a big thing is this idea of unsustainability. And with that, inadequately training the next set of student leaders who are going to take up the position or the work that you're doing, as well as just forgetting to document what happens or how a campaign is carried out, as well as ignoring the past organizing strategies that students have taken on campus. A lot of these relate to one another. So unsustainability is really related to burnout and the idea that a lot of labor, or a lot of work, is unequally distributed among a particular group, often on women of color, of people of color, [INAUDIBLE].. And also part of burnout relating to the idea that we're not allowed to have fun while we're organizing, or that we're not allowed to be not serious, and being afraid to bring in our creativity and our energy to a particular action or protest. Here's another one I kind of want to point out is when students prioritize representation over politics-- I don't know why it's not up there-- so referring to the idea that being part of-- in my experience, I've been part of organizing spaces that are meant for students of color but that have no specific social justice orientation to them, or no clear politics, related to things like class or other things. And that has led to a lot of problems down the line. There's also this assumption that if I organize with students of color, that all those people will have the same politics as I do or that their overall strategy will be the same as mine, which is not always the case. Or yeah, the other part of prioritizing representation has to do with in making demands and making demands that are unspecific, for instance, so if I want to demand that a particular department hire faculty of color, and then they hire somebody who technically fits that demand. So in one of the departments I am concentrating in, they hired a woman who is coming from an international-- is from a different part of the world-- and is not somebody who I would say is going to actively interrupt the depressive things with the department. And do there's a tendency for those-- for bodies to, I guess, adapt to some of our demands in that way. So some of the challenges -- kind of mentioned a little bit already-- but so these are some three things that I've identified occurring institutionally to help prevent or delay student organizing from happening to adapt student organizing and appropriate organizing. So I guess within prevention-- yeah, these are very specific things in which the administrators refuse to meet with students, for instance, like, again, forming committees, arguing that they don't possess the power or the capacity to enact change, interestingly enough, making up praises or recognition without actually instituting change. And another thing is also just like making students and their demands sound unreasonable. With adaptation, some things I've noticed is that the university will, for instance, implement short term or long term action plans. And I'm not saying that action plans aren't producing meaningful change in any way, but that certain bodies have used those action plans to delay or to prevent further change from happening. And then the other thing within this is also just like in creating-- in those action plans, for instance, like mirroring language that we're using or mirroring language of diversity inclusivity, as well as increasing so-called transparency, but refusing to actually change structurally. Appropriation refers to the idea that retrospectively, that students' contributions are erased, or ignored, are undermined. And there's a tendency, also, to position the university as someone who has always been advocating for change, who upholds values of social change, as well as reframing the issues. So for instance, in the Boston walkout, reframing the issue as an issue of equality systems versus actually racial justice or other sort of means. So just some of the types of actions that I sort of-- like, also not extensively put together-- but these are some of the things that as students we have access to and can do. And so a lot of these can be combined or thought of in new ways, new creative ways. For instance, one year, with students, they realized-- instead of a sit-in, we pulled a study-in at the library administration office. And that eventually led to the successful end to our campaign. Because they conceded to our demands. Yeah, and then just to end, these are just some readings and some organizing tools that I've found helpful. And yeah, I don't have enough time to go into them right now. So look them up. I encourage you all to look them up on your own time and understand what they're trying to get out. So these include a values triangle, like [INAUDIBLE],, which can look a lot of different ways-- a tactic star and also an escalation chart. So that's all. Thank you. BESENIA RODRIGUEZ: Liana, do you mind-- I'm just going to ask you to be able to read the titles, just in case people are sitting in a way they can't hear them. Or if you would like, I could read them too. LILIANA SAMPEDRO: The readings, you mean? BESENIA RODRIGUEZ: Yeah, the readings-- the titles. LILIANA SAMPEDRO: Yeah, so the readings are, "This Bridge Called my Back," "The Revolution will not be Funded," "The Revolution Starts at Home," "Pedagogy of the Oppressed." And then the last one's just a list of chants that I find helpful over the years. [APPLAUSE] KAI SALEM: OK, thanks so much, Liliana. I'm going to speak up here, because my notes are on this computer. Thanks, Liana. Thank you all for being here. My name is Kai Salem. I'm a senior in environmental studies. Today, I'll be presenting my senior honors thesis in environmental studies, based on sociology theory. It's called "With Whom do you Ally? Advocacy Coalitions and Policy Change in Rhode Island Energy Policy." Also, quick shout out to my advisor, Timmons Roberts in the Environmental Studies department, and my community partner, Cat Burnham and Priscilla Delacruz at People's Power and Light, who helped a lot with this entire project. So I'll start with myself. That's me on the left there outside of the State House. I've been working on Rhode Island climate policy for four years. I started as a freshman with the Resilient Rhode Island Act, advocating for the climate targets that were set in the Resilient Rhode Island Act. I've continued on. This is me outside the State House at the People's Climate Mobilization that the Rhode Island Student Climate Coalition organized last April. So Rhode Island has a lot of ambitious climate goals. But we are not on track to meet any of them. The first one is one I just mentioned, the Resilient Rhode Island Act. This act, which was passed in June 2014 with the help of a lot of Brown students, set targets for greenhouse gas emissions reductions up and through 2050-- so 80% below 1990 levels by 2050. Although we are on track to meet the 2020 goal, we're already behind on 2035, 2050. State agencies who are leading the fight for climate mitigation or are supposed to be leading the climate mitigation goals have themselves said that it will be very difficult to meet these goals. The second goal that I would like to identify is the 1,000 megawatts renewable energy goal, that our governor, Governor Raimondo, announced in March 2017. I think March is wrong-- or 2016. And once she announced this, the 1,000 megawatts of new renewable energy installations in Rhode Island-- that's more than 10 times what we had when she announced in March 2017. So that's a very ambitious ramp-up. So far climate activists in the state have heard no plan from the State on how we're actually going to meet that goal. And state agencies haven't updated climate activists at all on how that goal is going. The third goal is Governor Raimondo's executive order that committed the State to the Paris Climate Agreement. This executive order committed Rhode Island to trying to pursue the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement, including the goal of a just global temperature limit of warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius. This is a just warming limit, because it's only if we stay under 1.5 degrees of warming that the most marginalized, most vulnerable populations across the world will be able to be safe from climate change. So given all this, my question was, how do coalitions of environmental advocates create or fail to create policy change in Rhode Island? After spending four years in the environmental advocacy community, I've noticed a lot of advocates trying really hard, doing amazing work. And yet, the actual policy change is stagnant and slow and not nearly as fast we need it to be to meet our climate goals, as well as just keeping warming under the amount we need to. So I use a policy theory called advocacy coalition framework to analyze energy policy and climate policy in Rhode Island. The advocacy coalition framework is centered on a policy subsystem, which is how it conceptualizes the policy process, which is the accumulated interaction of policy actors. Policy actors are people like the ones in this photograph. That's Governor Raimondo in the center. She's signing a renewable energy bill at the solar farm in North Kingstown last August. We also have some representatives in the picture-- Representative Aaron Regunberg, Representative Lauren Carson, Deb Ruggiero, Senator Susan Sosnowski. They are some of the environmental champions in our State House. We also have Carol Grant and Janet Quoit, who run the Office of Energy Resources and Department of Environmental Management respectively. So these are some types of policy actors. These are all ones who are in positions of power, who are in the government. There are also policy actors who are journalists, researchers on climate, climate activists who might just be a regular citizen but want to get involved in the process-- hold signs at a policy meeting. There are also environmental organizations, like Acadia Center, Sierra Club, and residential rate payer organizations, like George Wiley Center. So in my research, I collected data from dozens of interviews of policy actors; my own four years of participate observation in these processes; document analyses; including stakeholder comments, meeting notes, legislation, and state agency reports. As I mentioned, I used the advocacy coalition framework to identify coalitions of advocates, identify some of the beliefs that are driving them, as well as the resources that each of these coalitions have to pursue their beliefs, and some of the external factors that influence the policy subsystem. I then compared, across four different case studies of Rhode Island energy policy, to identify some of the trends in what makes energy policy and good climate policy actually happen in Rhode Island. So these four case studies were-- first, the Energy Efficiency Program Planning Process. I identified three major coalitions, groups of advocates, in this process. These were the environmental advocates and state agencies, large industrial energy users in the state who are just purely advocating for lower energy costs, even at the expense of energy efficiency, low income energy programs, and renewable energy. The utility also has its own interests. That's National Grid. It's trying to make a profit. We have the Executive Climate Change Coordinating Council. That's the group of state agency heads that has been entrusted to pursue our climate mitigation goals, actually get us to those ambitious goals. The state agency heads and the climate activists in this council often square off. It's the state agency heads who have all the power to decide on climate mitigation. But climate activists keep coming to these meetings, in stakeholder comment keep saying, you are not doing enough. We are not on track to meet our goals, what are you going to do? We have Power Sector Transformation Grid Modernization Initiative. This is a big stakeholder process that occurred throughout 2017, in which people in the process, stakeholders, said, we have a lot of renewable energy coming on board in order to meet our climate mitigation goals. We have electric vehicles. How are we going to fix the electrical grid so that it can handle those changes? In this again, the environmental advocates were their own coalition. The utility was its own coalition. And renewable energy developers and clean energy technology companies had their own interests that they were searching for. And finally, the Renewable Energy Siting Stakeholder Process-- we have a lot of renewable energy that we need to put in Rhode Island in order to meet our goals. Where are we going to put it? Big controversy in the state this year. Environmental advocates, renewable energy developers, and cities and towns who want their own open space, want their own land, facing off. So these are all the actors, institutions, and agitators in the environmental policy subsystem in Rhode Island. The institutions, I would say, are the places with the legal authority to decide what happens. These are the General Assembly-- so that's our House and Senate-- they have a lot of power in Rhode Island-- the Governor's Office. Governor Raimondo-- she has the power to submit executive orders. Although, compared to other states, she has much less power than most governors. State agencies-- the Public Utilities Commission, Office of Energy Resources. These organizations can plan and make regulations, which is a significant amount of power in its own right. The agitators-- we've discussed some of these. Climate environmental activists-- I was writing from their perspective of course. But all of these other institutions and organizations are trying to change the process in their own way. What strategies do actors utilize? The advocacy coalition framework posits that actors utilize different resources to get their belief system-- get their policy opinions across. These include legal authority and practical authority. This tends to be on the side of the state agencies, as I mentioned. Practical authority also often rests on National Grid, because of their immense amount of influence as the only utility in the state. Information-- these are people like energy experts, consultants. The power of information has a huge amount of weight when the topics are so technical as electrical grid modernization. Skillful leadership-- my research showed the importance of skillful leadership, especially by advocates, like Meg Kerr of Audubon Society, and getting environmental advocates together and amplifying their voice. Support and mobilization-- environmental advocates and organizations do have the power to mobilize a bunch of supporters. Clean Water Action, for example, has 20,000 members in Rhode Island. Those voices do have import at the State House. Public opinion-- again, environmental advocates could be leveraging this. Group's like Wiley Center or the Energy Council of Rhode Island, which is the large industry users, also try to leverage public opinion by doing things like submitting op eds, scare pieces, about energy prices going up. Financial resources, renewable energy developers, and large industry representatives tend to have a lot of financial resources compared to these other organizations. Roadblocks along their way-- these are the things that prevent actors from getting what they want out of the policy process. This includes things like miscommunication. Just yesterday, the stakeholders in the Renewable Energy Siting process learned that one of the open space advocates had gone behind the backs of all the renewable energy advocates to submit a different bill in the State House that was anti-renewable energy. This splits apart the environmental advocates and demonstrates a lack of communication and a lack of skillful leadership that is hurting the position of the environmental advocacy community in Rhode Island. Competition between coalitions, of course, hurts different coalitions-- chances at getting their policy changes through. Things like legal constraints-- one of my big findings from this, I think, was how in order to meet our climate mitigation goals, those climate mitigation goals actually have to be binding. There's really no way to hold our State officials, our governor, anyone else to the targets that they have set if they're not binding. Finally-- and this is a big problem for environmental advocates-- path dependency and status quo. State officials are basically going to do what they've always done. The utility, unless someone forces it to change, is going to continue to do what it's already always done, which is buy more fossil fuels, invest in more infrastructure, and try to sell those fossil fuels and infrastructure to more people. We need the utility to be investing in electric vehicles, selling less fossil fuels, building less infrastructure. For that, we have to fight against path dependency and status quo. I concluded with a lot of policy recommendations-- three major policy recommendations. This is a quick picture of students in the Rhode Island Student Climate Coalition rallying at the State House in 2014. So policy recommendations-- number one, we have to elect progressive candidates. In Rhode Island, the General Assembly has the most power of any organization, led by a very powerful speaker of the house. Rhode Island is also the least polarized and thus the most moderate state in the country. It's Democrats are extremely far right. It's Republicans are pretty far left. That means it's very hard to pass the kind of ambitious policy that we need to see action on these climate mitigation goals. There's a big election coming up this year. So if anyone's interested, go work on elections. Second, we need to develop legally-binding climate goals. I mentioned this a little bit earlier. There is a bill in the State House right now-- it's called the Global Warming Solutions Act-- that would make those Resilient Rhode Island Climate Mitigation targets binding and would help climate activists a lot in trying to get State agencies to follow through on their promises. Finally, we need to identify and support advocates with strong leadership skills. I have seen, from the work of Meg Kerr and others, the importance of having strong leadership skills to bring together coalitions and empower the individual members of coalitions. Identifying those leaders and supporting them and making sure that there are empowered to continue their work will help the environmental movement going forward. That's it. [APPLAUSE] ERIN WEST: Hello, I'm also going to stand up here so I can reference my slides more easily. I'm also not blessed with off off-the-cuff speaking skills. So bear with me through a more scripted presentation. So hi, my name is Erin. I'm presenting today on my in-progress senior thesis titled "The Savior State and the Violence of US Humanitarian Immigration Law." Broadly, my research develops a critique of the US immigration system through a close reading of submitted applications for immigration relief under three categories for humanitarian protection-- asylum, battered spouse protections, and human trafficking. Ultimately, my thesis aims to highlight the inherent contradiction in the US Customs and Immigration services purported humanitarian aims and immigration applicants' actual experience of the US immigration system as a violent apparatus of state power. I want to offer a brief content warning on my work. I don't think the material I'm going to present is challenging in and of itself. But in my presentation, I do reference experiences of racism, xenophobia, and sexual violence. OK, I love structure. So I formatted this presentation around the four questions that we are all answering today. The first of which is, who are the actors? So in my case, the primary institution of power is USCIS. And the agitators are immigrants to the US themselves as well as their allies. Fundamentally, my work begins from a place of understanding the US immigration system as an apparatus of violent state power. I understand the primary function of USCIS to be a regulatory institution, which upholds an illegitimate border, founded on settler-colonial ideology and which permits only select immigrants to cross that border, barring thousands of others from freedom of movement, accessing economic resources, reuniting with family members, and other opportunities on US soil. From this standpoint, my work is invested in a form of critique that is automatically skeptical of USCIS, even when it purports-- and especially when it purports-- to rescue, protect, or save non-citizens from the threat of violence. This is a picture of a protest that I attended in Providence last September, 2017, over Trump's threats to end the DACA program, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival. This protest followed others in Providence, including a march in January of 2017 over Trump's proposed ban on Muslims entering the country as well as his caps on refugee allowances. At each of these events, hundreds of people decried the violence of Trump's restrictive immigration policies, including their inherent racism and xenophobia. Beyond these policies, however, activists emphasize the violence of the immigration system more broadly. Tati Hall-- it's a bit small, but hopefully you can read it. Tati Hall, a student organizer in the Providence Student Union stated on the Capitol steps that day, I'm here to tell you that I'm not any more worthy of permanent protection than my parents are, than migrant workers are, regardless if you overstay your visa, if you cross the border. And Hall was presenting themselves as a DACA student. Here, Hall highlights the way in which the US immigration system upholds its harsh restrictions on who is allowed to cross the border by creating stratified valuations of worthiness. Hall hopes that, one day, all people who cross the border will be permitted to stay. What are their demands? So within my work, I'm interested in how humanitarian immigration law, although popularly celebrated as having moral aims, can in its own way work to further entrench definitions of who is deemed worthy enough to come to the US, ultimately bolstering a violent system of exclusion. So what is humanitarian immigration law? Of the programs and services that USCIS offers, there is a special category for humanitarian immigration. These programs began in the mid 20th century and have since expanded rapidly. T visas for human trafficking and U visas for non-immigrant victims of crimes, for example, were first established in 2000 and, as of today, permit thousands of visas per year. Humanitarian law claims to assist individuals in need of shelter or aid from disasters, oppression, emergency medical issues, and other urgent circumstances. As you can see here, it includes various protections, not all of which are listed. The three that I deal with in my work include battered spouse petitions, asylum, and human trafficking. In the cases which I examined, immigrants to the US are making claims to protection and rights based on experiences of intimate violence. While of course, these demands should be met by the US immigration system, as I stated before, my research questions why immigration policy, as it stands, compels these applicants to make such demands in the first place. Why, for instance, must a child have to experience extreme abuse and neglect in order to cross the border rather than simply desiring to unite with family members or pursue a better education? USCIS' humanitarian allowances operate in a certain way to de-legitimize these other nonviolence based usually economic claims. My thinking around humanitarian pathways to legal status draws from work in critical humanitarianism which, as an area of study, does not take humanitarian projects at face value but rather critically investigates the systems of power underlying humanitarian ideology and contrasts supposed humanitarian aims with lived experiences of subjects under humanitarian projects. So what strategies are agitators using to get their demands met? My research grew out of an internship I had last summer at Sojourner House, which is a domestic violence shelter and advocacy center in Providence, which also provides legal assistance to clients experiencing intimate harm and seeking immigration relief. I worked as an assistant to the director of their legal department. And most of my work included helping the lawyer edit and file applications for intimate violence-based immigration cases. In working with these cases, I became fascinated with the view they provided into the inner workings of the immigration system. I found myself, so to speak, in the belly of the beast. I observed how the lawyer and her clients cleverly navigated the expectations of USCIS by deliberately highlighting which aspects of their narrative would be most well-received by immigration officials. I became interested in the language and argumentation these cases utilized to fit USCIS' particular definitions of who was abused enough, vulnerable enough, or innocent enough to be granted protection. In reading many cases, I grew to recognize particular scripts around partnership, sexuality, ethnicity, and violence to which applicants were expected to conform. In this framing, my research treats immigration applications that I work with as material representations of state power. I understand the narratives represented in these cases as highly constructed and constrained. In this way, my reading of these cases aims to study up by focusing my object of scrutiny not on undocumented individuals themselves but on the system, which they are compelled to navigate. I'm interested in how a close examination of these cases can illuminate the mechanisms through which the immigration system attempts to sediment definitions of who's deemed worthy enough to cross the border. I won't go too much into the details of my analysis. But to give an example of what it's like, in my asylum chapter, I interrogate how arguments for asylum often demand that applicants denounce the politics of their home countries as backward in comparison to the US. One case I work with involves a woman from a majority Muslim country who bases her case on the argument that, as a battered spouse, she needs to be allowed into the US because she is safer from gender-based violence here. This comparison positions the US as more progressive in terms of gender equality, appealing to narratives of US exceptionalism and cultural superiority, especially in comparison to Muslim countries. Muslim activists and scholars, such as Lila Abu-Lughod, have raised concern over how such narratives ultimately bolster US militarism. In addition, this positioning dangerously sidesteps the violence that Trump's America exerts towards Muslims, immigrants, and women of color. Again, I am in no way blaming this applicant and her lawyer for crafting such an argument. They did so because they knew it would win. And it did. I'm not even necessarily interested in whether the applicant believes it to be true. What I am interested in is why this argument is so appealing to the State. The lawyer at Sojourner told me that asylum cases are extremely difficult to get granted. And that particular one went straight through. OK, what roadblocks are met? So these are some photos I took at Sojourner House. On the left, there are advertisements for social services, like access to health care, heating, alongside a board on the right-- which was on the same wall-- which has info sheets on what to do if ICE arrives at your door. I took these pictures because I was struck by this bifurcated relationship that immigrants have with the US state. At Sojourner House, in the same place where immigrants are appealing to the US state as their protector, they are also being warned against the violence they potentially face at the hands of the same system. So right-- an ICE official knocking at your door is a serious road block in your path to the rights to which you are owed. In completing this work, I also personally encountered my own complications and roadblocks. Admittedly, it feels fraught to criticize any avenue to legal status in this moment when the Trump administration is currently lodging a taxed immigration as a whole. I do not mean for my work to be misinterpreted as advocating for these avenues to be closed. Rather, like the DACA activists demanded last fall in Providence, I hope to challenge us to approach any benevolent action of USCIS with scrutiny, in order to remind ourselves of the inherent violence of the immigration system as a whole and to move towards a world in which the borders are open to all. Thank you. [APPLAUSE] NATALIE LERNER: I'm also going to stand up, but mostly just because I want to move around when I'm talking. So my name is Natalie. And I just want to say thanks, first, to all my fellow panelists. I really appreciate hearing about all your work. Also, if you don't have one of these zines or aren't sitting next to somebody who has one, you're not really going to understand my presentation very well. So I would suggest getting one right now if you don't have one. So I first want to talk about how my presentation fits into this broader narrative that we're creating around resistance to institutional power. Part of why I wanted to do Theories in Action is because I wanted to give everybody in the room something they're thinking about and an action they can take when they walk out. And so I see this as the here's what to do when you leave or here's some information for what you can do, since you're hearing about all of the complicated and challenging institutional power dynamics that we're talking out here today. So how I came to this work, which is ICE watching, is that I took a semester off in the spring of my junior year. And I went home to Portland, Oregon and worked with a variety of different organizations around the issue of immigration particularly. And at the time, I was a protest legal observer. For those of you who don't know what that is, basically, it's somebody who goes to protests when they're asked to document police misconduct. And the program I was a part of was getting a lot of requests for accompaniment to courthouses by folks who were concerned about ICE showing up. And we started sending people. And unfortunately, people started getting picked up by ICE. And we realized that the training you receive to monitor the police is not adequate in order to monitor ICE, because ICE is a federal agency that plays by completely different rules. So I ended up spending a lot of my time crafting this program, researching other programs, working really closely with various communities who were looking for a program like this, various organizations who had infrastructure. And this particular project came out of that. I then came back to Rhode Island and ended up getting connected with an organization called the Alliance to Mobilize Our Resistance, or AMOR. If you don't know what that is, you should look it up. They're a really awesome organization who's doing similar work. And that's where this particular zine came out of, a desire for increased accessibility of this kind of knowledge and increased information around what ICE is doing and how to resist. So if you just want to take a look at this little book here, basically, I am going to be talking about, what does it mean to observe or to watch ICE. What is the point of that? And what can you, as people who are not necessarily part of a program, do? So really, why I want you all to know this is, if you encounter ICE, if you are with somebody else who encounters ICE, to have some understanding of what you can do to best help yourself or people around you. So part of the point of this kind of program is that when ICE targets individuals, either at their house, in a courthouse, in their workplace, et cetera, not only are their actions deeply immoral, but they're also often illegal. And so what that means is that, if there is documentation of what ICE is doing, then often that documentation can be used in either individual or class action lawsuits to assist the people who are being targeted. In addition, in the court of public opinion, often it's really helpful to have documentation of what's going on, because rarely do people who are not either directly affected or working on these issues-- people don't really know what ICE is doing and the way they're operating. And I think, for most people who were not previously aware, watching that process is really jarring and often spurs people to be like, this is really terrible. This is really awful. We should do something. And creating more of that kind of content-- obviously with the permission of the people involved-- is really helpful often in terms of moving public opinion around immigration. So first off, what is your role? If you go to the page that says, What are your responsibilities as an ICE LO or ICE watcher? This is just an overview of what you should do if you're in a situation where you're observing ICE. So one of the key issues is-- I don't know that any of you in this room are lawyers. I'm obviously not a lawyer. I'm a college student. And it's really essential to not act as though you are a lawyer and to not be giving legal advice to anybody in the situation and also to not be a liaison with law enforcement. That said, it's key that you know what your own rights are and you have an understanding of generally what people's rights are when they encounter ICE, given the fact that that information is really essential for people involved. Also you should treat any documentation you take as confidential attorney-client work product. Even though you're not a lawyer, often this kind of information ultimately will be used in legal situations and should not be given to law enforcement obviously. And if you turn to the next page-- the Interactions page and the What to Document page-- this is a brief overview of, if you're in a situation, how to interact with the people you're there with, with law enforcement, et cetera. Also, I want to say-- I always say this when I give these trainings to people. Obviously, different people have different relationships to law enforcement. And the most important thing is to not only keep the person you're there with safe but to keep yourself safe. And so really, trusting your own limits and intuition is super essential. And I wouldn't want you to think I was encouraging you to do otherwise. So this is a brief list of what to document on the next page. For example, if ICE is at somebody's house, do they have a warrant? Technically, ICE needs a judicial warrant to legally enter somebody's house or they need the permission from the person who lives there-- so documenting if that warrant is present. Is ICE dismissing people's medical needs? Is ICE being physically violent with people, et cetera? All of this is really useful in terms of both going forward and also helping people in the moment and being in solidarity with the folks you might be there with. This is a quick Reminders page. I recommend you read that over in your own time, if you take this zine with you. This is also a promo for my own art. Just kidding. And then the next couple of pages are Know your Rights, both with the police and ICE. I'm not going to go over that right now just because of time. But I would really, really recommend that you look that over and also that you read up online around both how you, if you encounter police or ICE, and also other people can be interacting with law enforcement bodies in order to minimize risk to yourself and other people. There's also some important information around things like harboring or interference, because those are often issues that get talked about, I think, often as scare tactics to deter activists from interacting at all with the immigration system. But often, there's a lot of things you can do that aren't directly putting yourself in harm's way. The last page, I actually want to go over, because this is relevant to everybody, which is the Security, Culture, and Technology. So these are just a few things that you should keep in mind generally, as you're going forward if you are doing activists are organizing work. First off, make sure your phone has a passcode. This is all based on case law around police being able to interact with your data and information on your phone. So police cannot open your phone with a passcode. They can open your phone if it doesn't have a passcode or if you have a touch ID. So I know, everybody loves their touch ID. It's very convenient. It's taken me, like, six months to unlearn using it. But you should disable your touch ID, because if you're in a situation in which your phone is taken from you, police can legally look through it. They can force you to put your finger on your phone and open it. Similarly, disable full text messages from appearing on your lock screen. Because again, law enforcement can read anything that's on your lock screen. But they cannot open your phone, if you don't have a touch ID, to read any messages you might have. And finally, I recommend using encrypted messaging apps, if you're talking about-- like, if you are in a situation and you were at a courthouse and you saw something happening and you wanted to tell an organization you were involved with or anybody else, I would recommend using an encrypted messaging app like Signal. Because again, it just improves your own privacy and the privacy of the legal details of whatever is going on. So lastly, I just want to give a shout-out to all the organizations that have made the work that I'm doing in front of you all possible. All of this is because it is things that people have asked for. And it's also things that people are working way harder on than I personally am. So there's a little shout-out in the zine. This is a shout-out on the screen. And yeah, that's it. Thank you all for listening. AUDIENCE: Whoo! [APPLAUSE] BESENIA RODRIGUEZ: So I'm sure you all have questions for our incredible panelists on their work. Before we get to that-- because the panelists wanted to spur your own dialogue across each other, with one another-- we actually want to take a couple of moments to allow you or to invite you to talk with your partner and neighbor about some of the prompts that are written on the slide here. So with their presentations, with their reflections and narratives and research and activism in mind, how do you see institutional power and resistance to it manifesting in your own life? What strategies from the presentations stood out to you? How might you apply any of these strategies to your own activism? What strategies for resisting institutions have you seen be particularly effective in your or other people's work? And did anything in the presentations make you think differently about your earlier responses? So if you wouldn't mind just taking three or four minutes to turn to the person next to you and talk through some of your reflections based on what you just heard, we'll then switch to asking you all to report out, if anybody wants to share you talked about and ask the panelists any questions. So just about three or four minutes on these prompts, please. AUDIENCE: Thank you all so much for your wonderful talks and for doing this together. I think my first question is, because you were all working in slightly different realms, what was it like to hear each other? Did you draw inspiration from each other at all in thinking about your own work? Or when you, say, heard about local government, did it make you think, oh, but that would never work on a campus? I'm just curious about the different contexts you were working in. BESENIA RODRIGUEZ: The state, police, government, campus-- similarities-- differences. Yeah. KAI SALEM: I'll say, I really appreciate everyone else's focus on the activists. I feel like, in my analysis, it was really much more subsystem-wide and almost-- even though I am from the standpoint of an environmental activist-- treating the stakeholders in an unbiased way. But I think that the critical theory that Erin mentioned is a really valuable way to look at things. And in a different analysis or adding onto mine, I would love to use more critical theory, justice theory, in my work. NATALIE LERNER: Yeah. LILIANA SAMPEDRO: I actually think the student organizing is something that's really specific or something that-- parts of it can be adaptable or translatable to other organizing things. But a lot of times, because of the nature of the State or the nature of larger structures, the strategies that you use or the tactics that you're practicing end up being and looking very differently. So for instance, I think, I'll say, in the context of Brown, there's not a lot of interaction with police forces or-- we would, I don't think, at Brown be interacting with ICE. So I don't know. I think there are matters, like, with whatever institutional power that you're interacting with, that the strategies that you're going to use are going to be changing. NATALIE LERNER: Yeah, I think, for me, what I generally just found really helpful was talking to everybody about their project in this way that led to the formation of our title and thinking about-- we're all really thinking about pretty different institutions. But it was more, for me, a reflection on the fact that, no matter the institution, there's always people resisting it. And there always should be resistance, whenever there's institutional power. So I think it's more like something that I'm leaving thinking about. Like, I now have more tools for thinking about that at various levels and feel like-- and that's part of the framing questions, I guess. It's generally useful to be thinking about institutional power at every possible level. ERIN WEST: I agree with most of that. I don't have much new to add. BESENIA RODRIGUEZ: I have a question, if there's none at the moment from the audience, about-- in some ways, Liliana talked about common mistakes that she's seen student activists make and that, maybe, she herself has made. I wonder if the rest of you might talk a little bit about mistakes that you yourselves made in the course of-- whether it was conducting research or engaging in acts of resistance either by yourself or as part of a community and what you learned from those mistakes. NATALIE LERNER: I think part of one was encapsulated in my discussion a little bit. But I think, really, when I was talking about this initial protest legal observer program, I think it was a really big mistake to even think that that could be translated to a situation with ICE. And I think there were a variety of people who were really mis-served by that situation. And I think that's something I think a lot about, that the people who I was interacting with didn't-- nobody really knew how to translate one program to the other. But I think that there were, in some ways, people who were a part of that test period who were arrested by ICE who might have had a slightly different outcome in their case if things had been different on the organizing side. Obviously, not that this makes such a difference, but I do think that that is something that I want to think about-- of how to be better at anticipating what might need to be done and thinking about always increasing communication across the board with everybody. Because I think both of those issues came into play and are things I often reflect on as pretty big mistakes in my own work. ERIN WEST: I don't know if mistake is the framing I would use for my experience during my research. But I do think that I have always felt and still feel fundamentally uncomfortable with my research, which I think a lot of researchers experience. And I think it's actually really productive discomfort, especially in that I'm certainly interacting with a really vulnerable population, which is undocumented folks and their narratives. And I did a lot of careful thinking about my positionality in that way and, thus, constructed my research to be really interested in a scrutiny of the state versus individuals themselves. But I don't think that's a perfect answer. And I also realized that my research isn't easily directly applicable or actionable. My research is more invested in a critical theory analysis of state power, which can certainly underline actions in the future and, I think, does contribute to a useful discourse, but is not, in any way, like, a really useful zine, like what Natalie has. So I just think it's also why I love being part of this roundtable is to see how everyone is coming at similar issues of institutional and state power with various contributions. BESENIA RODRIGUEZ: I'm actually curious about-- it's actually one of the questions that I had planned to ask-- but in some ways, Erin addressed it-- is, how did you navigate your positionality as students in the work that you were doing? LILIANA SAMPEDRO: Let's see-- I'm thinking about some of the limitations or some of the mistakes that I've made in organizing at Brown. Like, I think part of it was a lack of inclusively with respect to-- so I think I put it up there-- respect to membership but also with respect to different goals. So like, I know in some of the student of color organizing, there was a tendency to leave out workers or leave out other folks who were really crucial to the things we were fighting for. Yeah, and I guess, as students, there's also a purpose of why we're here. Like, we're here to get our degree, ideally, right? And there are limitations to organizing with and alongside those other communities, like workers. But I think, a part of me has learned that there's a need to take risks and a need to be able to learn from your mistakes. And even if you don't, even if you know that there are fundamental limitations to organizing with other folks, you have to be willing to make the most of it. Like, one of the union organizers that I'm friends with, [? Jonah Zinn, ?] has talked about, like, why do we organize? Why organize? And he answers that question by saying, we organize to win. And I guess that's something that I think about and-- like, OK, look. There's a larger goal here. And I'm going to try to work towards it as best I can in the position that I have. NATALIE LERNER: I think one of the things that you said in your presentation, Liliana, that really struck me in regard to this question is the issue of sustainability. So I think, for me, often thinking about doing this kind of work in situations where I know it's transitory and really, really needing to think about, who is going to do this work when I'm not here? And how am I training the people who are going to do what I'm doing now? And I think, also, part of that is really democratizing information, which is part of the point of doing this presentation and other kinds of presentations for me. Which is, like, I think here at Brown, we're really trained to be issue experts. And I don't want to be an issue expert on this particular issue. I want everybody to be as much of an expert as possible. And I think, resisting that desire to like hold all of that information, to me, feels like a way of recognizing that that's what I'm trained to do as a student and that is actually not really helpful, particularly when I'm-- I think-- organizing both on and off campus. KAI SALEM: I would follow up with some ways that being a student is really helpful. So in Rhode Island, I think, and working on climate change in general, being young gives you a unique voice. And it's also unexpected. And if I get down to the State House, I have a different voice. And people listen to me in a different way. I've found the environmental advocacy community and advocacy communities, in general, very open. If you keep coming to meetings and you demonstrate yourself, prove yourself, then there's a lot of work that you could be doing. The student schedule, which is also pretty flexible compared to a lot of work schedules, is also really helpful for going to rallies during the day or going to meetings during the day that other activists with full-time jobs might not be able to do. AUDIENCE: So you're all activists in your own right. And I think you all speak to the power that activists can have. And yet, there is a tremendous amount of apathy. People have busy lives, don't necessarily want to get involved. And that grants more power to these larger institutions and money interests. And I'm wondering, given what you've seen about being in these groups, what do you say to people who are like, I can't make a difference-- it's not worth my time to make a difference? What have you learned that you can say to somebody like that? KAI SALEM: Well, this is a pretty normal answer. But I think there's always something that people do care about. With climate and energy activism, people care about their energy and utility bills. And if you talk about how our economic interests-- our electricity bills are going up because of lack of energy efficiency and lack of long-term planning on climate change, there is a way to make people care that way, I think. LILIANA SAMPEDRO: I think that relates to the definition of agitation I mentioned earlier, just that that is a process to help people understand where their stance is or what values they have or what emotions they might be holding in. And helping also to realize larger-- like, the way oppression functions in everyday instances, the way it functions structurally, and also helping understand the connection between those and people's own self interest-- because people do oftentimes vote against or work against their own interests. So it's sort of like a process of revelation and needing to do that. I think-- well, also, I know people who tend to engage in agitation work in everyday conversations. It doesn't need to be something that like, I'm going to sit you down and tell you how it is or-- you know. Yeah, I guess it's something that I think happens over time. And there's also a need to be patient with people who are afraid to speak out, who are marginalized in certain ways, who are more at risk than other people. Yeah, it's definitely a need to be patient in that work too. ERIN WEST: Yeah, I don't know if Natalie has somewhat similar thoughts to me. But I think-- especially in issues around immigration-- it's become increasingly clear, due to Trump's election and various other right-wing conservative leaders around the world being put in power, that when ideas about nationality and who is deemed worthy or who is allowed to cross borders-- when those go unchecked and prejudices about aliens and migrants go unchecked, it affects all of us. And there are ripple effects that lead to-- as we're seeing today-- much more violent and restrictive policies, not just around immigration but various other Conservative political strongholds. And yeah, it's hard to-- if someone says they're not affected, it's hard for me to believe. NATALIE LERNER: I think, also, part of-- this sounds like such a cliche and annoying thing to say. But I think there's a lot of really small ways that people can build things into their lives that feel-- when people are like, I'm too busy-- I have too many things to do-- I can't show up to this thing-- I totally hear that. And I think there's a lot of ways that other folks have described about getting people to a point where they do want to show up a lot. But I also think part of it, for me, is having people understand that the fact that they might have a smartphone is powerful. And there's things that they can do without going out of their way, like, with their technology either via social media-- which is obviously very small activism, but it's still really useful in this digital culture we live in-- or via filming things, like I talked about here, or via just talking to their friends about these things. I think those are low-level things that are not ultimately going to be what shifts power structures. But I do think that that is at least somewhere to start, if people are like, I'm just too busy to do anything at all. BESENIA RODRIGUEZ: So perhaps in closing-- although, I don't want to foreclose conversation if folks have other questions. Can each of you share one thing that either has sustained you or sustained the agitators that you studied and worked with in the face of these tremendous and enormous odds? And the question's a little bit inspired by Liliana's comment about joy, in some ways-- about fun and really thinking through the long game that others of you talked about. So just one thing that has sustained you or that you know has sustained other agitators or change-makers. LILIANA SAMPEDRO: So I'm not sure if I ended up putting it up there. But one of the things I think sustained me is building relationships with other people that are not rooted in transaction or not rooted in-- like, just to build the coalition to make allies. So yeah, making sure that the friendships I have are transformative to use-- I don't know. It tends to be over-used-- but yeah, I guess making sure that you're surrounding yourself with people who care about you and not only the work you produce. And that work can be, like, organizing for them. NATALIE LERNER: Yeah, I would really echo that. I think just being in relationship with people who also are not always the exact same people that are doing all of the work, all the time, all together, I think is really healthy and helpful. And I think, also, recognizing that for various people-- obviously, dependent on positionality and the kind of work they're doing-- this kind of work really takes a toll on folks. And holding space for that in my own self and in other people and recognizing that-- paying attention to the emotional needs of people around me and myself is just as much of the work as going out and going to an action or whatever. KAI SALEM: For me, I think feeling like my work will and can make a difference is very important. And one way to do that is finding the level at which your activism-- you can see the results of your activism. Last year-- last spring, I was interning in DC with the Brown-Washington program. I was interning in the Senate. And that building-- the environmental staffers were just so sad all the time, so frustrated. And I came back to Rhode Island. And there was optimism. Things were moving slowly, but things were happening. There were levers, which we could make change. And in Rhode Island, as a student, I have seen change occur over the past four years. And I think that there aren't enough students involved in local activism in general, getting off campus. There aren't enough students who realize that state policy is extremely accessible, I think. So what sustains me, I guess, is feeling like things are possible at the state level, at this level that I found where I can make change, and it's possible as a student. And I think that more people, in general, should know those opportunities and get off the Hill. ERIN WEST: I pretty much want to, a little bit, reiterate Liliana and Natalie's point about relationship-building. I think relationships are at the core of what was sustaining a lot of the people I was interacting with last summer and sustains me and a lot of people around me. And when there's nothing else to lean on, there's that. BESENIA RODRIGUEZ: Thank you. So congratulations to all of you. And thank you for sharing your insights and your experiences and your hardships and what you've learned with each other and with us. Thanks. [APPLAUSE]