Once I started the Gateway to the Minor in Writing course, I discovered that we needed to pick one piece of writing that we felt had not realized its full potential or had not been fully explored. For me, it was difficult to sort through all of the writing I have done throughout my life and try to pick a piece that I wanted to work with for the rest of the semester. After considering a few different pieces, I finally decided to go with a poem that I wrote in my poetry class last semester called “Justice.” This poem was inspired by this photo that showed the scene after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. “Justice” tackles the way that those who fight for justice do not see the effects of their efforts, because they either die at the hands of those who disagree or justice takes so long that activists die of old age or leave a movement. I chose this poem because I believed it had something left in it to explore due to its subject matter. I have always been inspired by people who devote their lives to activism. Being from around Chicago, I constantly saw Jesse Jackson on the news fighting for equal rights and against institutional oppression; for years he seemed to be on the Chicago news station my family watches, WGN, every single night. We made jokes about him being on the news all the time, but once I started to learn about Martin Luther King Jr. in school, my mom told me about how Jesse Jackson had helped with his cause. He’s in that photograph after MLK’s assassination. It’s something I’ve never quite been able to understand—how it is decades later and we’re still back with an exclusionary presidential administration and we seem to be moving backwards, but people are still fighting knowing what the end might be—absolutely no progress—but we all still fight, as I am in my own little insignificant corner of an already liberal college campus? I knew I had to explore this more in my writing. 

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I went through a series of experiments that changed the genre of my poem. In the first experiment, I wrote an op-ed about how only activists could fight for justice surrounding the Kavanaugh hearing. I did not see this turning into a final project, but I liked sharing my opinion. I used this first experiment as inspiration for sharing some of my personal experiences and my view on them in the realm of facilitating.

 

I then moved on to a photo essay where I had the idea of including photos of student activists. This helped me realize I wanted to focus on students, but I knew that it wasn’t perfect for my final project because I felt like my own voice got lost in the project in favor of the activists’ voices. I wanted to provide some photos of other facilitators as well as notable stories, but unfortunately did not receive enough interest to make this a reality—perhaps I can include it on this website one day down the line.

 

Finally, I decided to write a how-to article describing how to facilitate an activist-based student forum. I loved how this combined my passion for activism and my everyday activism, while also having the potential to help other people. 

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I decided to focus my final project to be this guide to leading a forum, a discussion-based student group. I had very little training to be a facilitator for Feminist Forum. I became a facilitator by chance, as the other facilitators were leaving and my friend and I as former participants were asked to facilitate. We did a thirty minute online course about leading social justice discussions, which I didn’t find very helpful because it was not zeroed in on what being a facilitator actually entails. I hoped at least for some in-person training with past facilitators. I hope that this guide can help future facilitators of forums to have the basics to succeed as facilitators, and bridge the gap between the materials that are currently offered for new facilitators. With this, I expect that the readers of this guide will be able to take a lot away from it that they can use in a practical way. I also trust that it plants a seed of leadership and activism, even if someone isn’t interested in being a facilitator themselves. This guide can be interpreted in whatever way someone wishes, and can be applied to any group that requires someone to facilitate discussion, whichever group that may be. 

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Being a facilitator of Feminist Forum did not come without its challenges—working with other activists to try to create a discussion always means that there’s going to be some disagreement about how to achieve something, even when you all have the same goal of helping your peers become more socially aware. I haven’t tried to shy away from that fact, but have instead tried to address it as a way to grow as a facilitator, because I believe that there is no one way to lead a discussion or to more broadly be an activist. I also want to make sure to encompass the full experience of being a leader and not only emphasize the pride you feel when you successfully lead a discussion to excite a new generation of facilitators, but I also want to prepare you the best I can based on my experience. I hope this guide of how to have mostly triumphs and avoid challenges best as you can proves helpful!