{"id":1280,"date":"2016-12-08T14:37:00","date_gmt":"2016-12-08T14:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/offices.vassar.edu\/careers\/?p=1280"},"modified":"2021-05-05T14:39:25","modified_gmt":"2021-05-05T14:39:25","slug":"yasmeen-silva-15-community-organizer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/offices.vassar.edu\/career-education\/news\/2016\/12\/08\/yasmeen-silva-15-community-organizer\/","title":{"rendered":"One Year Out: Yasmeen Silva \u201915, Community Organizer"},"content":{"rendered":"<!-- Inserted by Dropdownizer plugin. Forces video embeds contained in dropdowns to have a size --><style>.dropdownizer__dropdown iframe { width: 100% !important; height: 100% !important; }<\/style>\n<p>Yasmeen Silva \u201915 says the best way to learn how to change the world is to go somewhere \u2013 or in Silva\u2019s case, three places \u2013 and find ways to change small parts of it. Shortly after she graduated from Vassar, Silva joined Change Corps, a national grassroots training organization. Over the next 12 months, she helped a teachers\u2019 union campaign for education reform in Michigan, lobbied for food labeling laws in New York and spearheaded a voter registration initiative in Florida.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1500\" src=\"http:\/\/offices.vassar.edu\/careers\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2021\/05\/yasmeen-silva.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1281\" srcset=\"https:\/\/offices.vassar.edu\/career-education\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2021\/05\/yasmeen-silva.jpg 2000w, https:\/\/offices.vassar.edu\/career-education\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2021\/05\/yasmeen-silva-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/offices.vassar.edu\/career-education\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2021\/05\/yasmeen-silva-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/offices.vassar.edu\/career-education\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2021\/05\/yasmeen-silva-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/offices.vassar.edu\/career-education\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2021\/05\/yasmeen-silva-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/offices.vassar.edu\/career-education\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2021\/05\/yasmeen-silva-200x150.jpg 200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\" \/><figcaption>Yasmeen Silva \u201915, a community organizer with Fight for $15 \/ Photo: Thomas Robert Clarke<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>And just a few weeks after her stint with Change Corps ended, Silva landed a job with the Philadelphia chapter of Fight for $15, a nationwide organization that is working for a hike in the minimum wage and advocating for workers in other ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As a community organizer for Fight for $15, Silva meets with union leaders, community and religious organizations, students and others advocating for better pay and working conditions. \u201cMy old boss from Change Corps heard about the job and contacted me, and I was hired a few days later,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Silva says the results of the presidential election may actually have helped mobilize more people to support the issues Fight for $15 is advocating. \u201cSince Trump was elected, a lot of people have reached out to us; they\u2019ve been very receptive to our message,\u201d she says. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of solidarity. People are asking, \u2018What can we do to help?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Silva, who majored in international studies with a concentration in women\u2019s studies and the Middle East and earned a minor in religion and Arabic, says she joined Change Corps to acquire the skills to combat domestic violence and other issues affecting women. She plans to continue to explore gender dynamics, particularly among displaced populations in the Middle East, in graduate school next year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;\u201cI was looking at graduate schools while I was in college,\u201d Silva says, \u201cbut I decided Change Corps would give me the opportunity to learn community organizing, which was something I hadn\u2019t done outside Vassar.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Silva says she became interested in addressing injustice while participating in Vassar\u2019s Prison Initiative program and while working for an agency in Poughkeepsie that provides services to victims of domestic violence. As a member of the Prison Initiative, Silva took a religion course at Otisville Correctional Facility taught by (now-retired) Prof. Lawrence Mamiya and got to know some of the incarcerated men. \u201cI was raised to believe that only \u2018bad people\u2019 went to prison,\u201d she says, \u201cbut after that class, I began to see that these institutions ought to focus more on rehabilitation rather than punishment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Accompanying women to court during her work with the domestic violence services agency helped Silva understand more fully the issues women face when they attempt to leave their abusers. \u201cWe\u2019ve come a long way from the 1970s and 1980s, but there were times when women were in the courtroom with their abusers, answering questions that were re-victimizing them,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Silva\u2019s first assignment at Change Corps was in Ypsilanti, MI, where she worked for the National Education Association, the nation\u2019s largest teachers union. She worked with students at Eastern University to convince the university president to sign a letter urging the Michigan congressional delegation to support legislation that would expand student aid programs. \u201cThe day I left, the president agreed to sign the letter,\u201d Silva says, \u201cand I was able to teach students some organizational skills so they will be able to continue the work the NEA started.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In New York City, Silva worked for Food and Water Watch, an advocacy and policy group that addresses food safety and clean water issues. She was given the task of organizing community members and contacting state lawmakers and urging them to vote for a bill that would require food companies to provide information on their labels about any genetically modified ingredients in their products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Silva says the assignment had its share of frustrations. \u201dOne of my target legislators refused to even meet with me,\u201d she says. \u201cYou learn quickly that change doesn\u2019t happen overnight.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, another legislator in New York City agreed to support bill. \u201cWe worked with some food-based nonprofit organizations in Harlem, and the assemblyman there, Keith Wright, did agree to be a co-sponsor of the legislation,\u201d she says. \u201cCommunity organizing can make a difference when you form coalitions and work together.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Silva\u2019s final assignment with Change Corps was as an assistant director of the Tampa (FL) Community Voters Project, a non-partisan group that set a goal of registering 30,000 new voters in 2016. \u201cThe poor and people of color have been historically under-represented in Tampa, so we wanted to register as many as we could,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Silva says she and her colleagues encountered some roadblocks as the project began. \u201cThere\u2019s a huge mistrust of the system, and apathy about voting, especially this year because most people we talked to didn\u2019t like either presidential candidate,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Silva tried to counter this apathy about the presidential candidates by pointing out to residents that registering to vote would empower them to influence the outcome of state and local elections. But she said she continued to encounter skepticism from many residents, in part because she could not reveal her own political views. \u201cBecause we were working for a non-partisan organization, we were barred from talking about our political opinions,\u201d she says. \u201cIf you can\u2019t tell people what positions you support or oppose, it\u2019s hard to build trust.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Despite the frustrations and challenges she often faced, Silva says her year at Change Corps was rewarding. \u201cThere\u2019s so much apathy, and that\u2019s discouraging.,\u201d she says. \u201cSo many times, I heard people say, \u2018There\u2019s nothing I can do about the system.\u2019 And funding for these organizations is lacking. I really saw a tilted playing field.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cBut looking back, I\u2019d say I\u2019m optimistic about the role community organizers play,\u201d Silva says. \u201cSeeing so many people dedicating their lives to making life better for so many people was just an amazing experience. \u201c<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>--Larry Hertz<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yasmeen Silva \u201915 says the best way to learn how to change the world is to go somewhere \u2013 or in Silva\u2019s case, three places \u2013 and find ways to change small parts of it. Shortly after she graduated from Vassar, Silva joined Change Corps, a national grassroots training organization. Over the next 12 months, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/offices.vassar.edu\/career-education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/offices.vassar.edu\/career-education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/offices.vassar.edu\/career-education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/offices.vassar.edu\/career-education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/offices.vassar.edu\/career-education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1280"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/offices.vassar.edu\/career-education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1284,"href":"https:\/\/offices.vassar.edu\/career-education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1280\/revisions\/1284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/offices.vassar.edu\/career-education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/offices.vassar.edu\/career-education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/offices.vassar.edu\/career-education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}