yea On Thursday I did think a lot about Steve Duarte he was my good friend during the SUny Binghamton years yea he was important to organizing at SUny Binghamton since the time I arrived in fall 1997 to start graduate studies in sociology like I said was not planning to organize on EOP at SUny Binghamton I already had done it in LA metro. But I choose to organize on EOP yea environment on fall 1997 made it appealing to do it where as I feel I had come in post 2000 terrain it would have been different. Steves ideas connect LA to SUny Binghamton for me nobody else could connect like that for me in SUny binghamton. ideas and vision of Steve Duarte important and will be part of 1 of 25 organizing projects I am doing in 2015. yea thinking about steve and SUny Binghamton a lot this week. yea I remember everything in Fall 1997 I was learning the university I decided to live on campus in a dorm now called Susquehanna I wanted to learn the campus so I figured a dorm would be good. Yea 1997-1998 in a sense was the last year of the old SUny Binghamton yea things changed in fall 1998 campus pub closed down in summer 1998. SO that was something I had to get used things changing fall 1998 changed, fall 2000 changed, fall 2004 the changes were even more clear and then visiting suny Binghamton fall 2008 was a changer too. Thorughout it all I was consistent with my organizing yea Steve Duartes ideas I felt in Fall 1997 would work for me and it did every semester trick was to be ready every semester every semester for changes. Yea a disgace the way EOP treated him. Egos run wild in US universities. yea one of memories that always stick with me yea an EOp counselor claiming Steve was running a boot camp yea BEP. I still have the article I reread tonight crazy the stuff there. yea it was deeply personal for EOP people that hated steve I was often attacked by my association with Steve. yea memorable I went to ithaca in spring semester 2000 and EOP director Nick Wharton was so angry with me I thought he was going to attack me. I meant he said vicious things about me claiming I had no right to be involved. yea I had made a big push on EOP organizing in fall 1999 I was everywhere on campus yea it produced results and with each semester I was pushing more and more aggressive. yea the blowup with EOP director Nick Wharton really showed at how people took me serious. I feel the good thing I did was to learn about old SUny Binghamton values and culture that was key to my organizing. yea understanding steve and his ideas was another asset I had. yea it was a full scale war and I became a big target for EOP director Nick Wharton. Being a gang community organizer normal stuff I did not even think much of it. yea fall 1999 would be the semester that I launched a total offensive on issues I believed in. It would continue on until my last day at SUny Binghamton. I feel my best stuff with Steve was with when he was with discover center and alliance with a graduate student Neda that understood him as well as any graduate student. She was so good that she could write stuff on Steves organizing. She was a movement person she was GSO president in 1995-1996. She came back to Binghamton in fall 2002 and my luck we were tas together for PPL class. yea the alliance with Steve/neda and undergrads that liked my organizing yea I built a well organized grass roots operation that lasted as long i was at SUny Binghamton. yea Neda is underrated she was brilliant in pIC student could touch her in understand movement building yea her grasp of Steves ideas on student centered classroom was amazing. yea 2 classes I taught was built on alliance with Steve and Neda and yea student centered classroom. yea lot to reflect back upon. But yea steves vision for SUny Binghamton was more than Just EOP it was multidimensional. Steve connects LA and SUny Binghamton for me. This is what this project is all about. More on this later yea the SUny Binghamton years was a great time for me on grass roots organizing and yea the ideas of Steve worked so good for me.
Posted on: Fri, 16 Jan 2015 10:41:10 +0000
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