Featured Fellow: Darria Hudson

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YP4: Tell me a little bit about yourself and how you came to be involved with Young People For.

I am a senior at Fisk University majoring in History and have been focusing my studies on the Civil Rights Movement over the past three years. More specifically I have been focusing my studies on the National Sit-In Movement as well as women’s role and involvement in the Civil Rights Movement. I found out about Young People For through a fellow board member at the Urban Epicenter and I’m also a classmate of 2008 Fellow Daniel Scarver Jr.

YP4: Why did you decide to apply for the YP4 Fellowship? What attracted you to the program?

Between what I learned from the website and what Scarver told me about his experiences, I was hooked; it seemed like the perfect chance to learn and grow more, and more importantly to flesh out my rather vague ideas and streamline them into an actual, workable plan.

YP4: What do you stand for?

First of all, I stand for enlightened and empowered young people.  Second of all, I stand for revolutionary love and for the Beloved Community – a concept set forth by ministers in the Civil Rights Movement. I am actually a campus minster myself and recently started working in the Fisk Memorial Chapel. A lot of the activists I work with and admire are ministers as well and I see equal importance in spiritual responsibility and civic responsibility.

YP4: Tell me about the coalition work you’ve done against the English-only legislation in Tennessee: 

In December, organizers in Nashville came together to combat a "English Only" city charter amendment proposed by city councilman Eric Crafton that would (needlessly) declare English the official language of Nashville and deny non-English speakers necessary services and procedures in their language. The largest group involved in fighting this was called Nashville for All of Us; a coalition of local community organizations, non profits and faith based organizations. The student group that became an offshoot of this was called Students Against English Only, a coalition of student activists from most major universities and colleges in the city as well as some high school students. We all came together to organize students to raise awareness about the legislation, promote the cause, and canvass for votes.

During our campaign I actually had a chance to debate Eric Crafton on Fisk’s radio sation, WFSK about this issue. His argument was that it would be confusing and unnecessary for city council meetings and documents to be conducted in, for instance, Chinese, (or any other foreign language) and that he wanted to encourage non English speakers to learn English. I responded by explaining that it is obvious and clear that English is already official language so legislation isn’t necessary. Also, Nashville is a major refugee hub; we have high populations of Somalian and Eritrean people who came here looking for political asylum and a new home as well as thriving Hispanic, East African, and Middle Eastern  communities. I suggested that instead of spending the $50,000 that it costs to call a spceical election out of season to win the charter amendment, he would do better to reallocate that money to ESL classes in local schools and community centers which would get at the same goal of teaching English to non English speakers, without hindering anyone’s rights or process in settling into a totally new environment.

Now the coalition work is pretty much done – we won the campaign on Jan 22nd!! The Nashville Network for Youth in Civic Engagement was born from our last meeting as a coalition after our victory.

YP4: Tell me about your Blueprint for Social Justice: Nashville Network for Youth in Civic Engagement (NNYCE) Membership outreach plan

After we won the campaign we had a final meeting and everyone in the coalitions agreed that it was great to work together and we would all love to keep this diverse coalition going. I mentioned that I had always wanted to have a network of sort to keep young activists and organizers connected even during non campaign season, and everyone agreed and said they'd all envisioned  something similar also. We also want to build out this network to use as a support system to share our experiences and support and reach out to other young people who are new to the game, who want to be civically engaged  somehow but don’t know where to start. 

Since then, we've been processing our 501c3 app to get official nonprofit status, expanded our group to include a few high school and grad school students, and laid the plan and basis for our structure. I currently chair the board, and am still seeking to expand and further diversify the board. In short, NNYCE's mission is to find young people between the ages of 12 and 30 (for now, we're focusing on high school and college students), find what issues they see, what ways they want to go about changing them, and what motivates them to make progressive change, then cultivate that while connecting them to organizations, both campus and community, that need the new hands and ideas, and give them a home for the great work they'll achieve!

Mark Eatherly is the President of NNYCE, a grad student at Peabody college studying organizational structure and theory, and he has been doing a fantastic job building NNYCE out with us. 

At this moment, we're getting in contact with high schools in our area to start recruiting new members and build our base, and eventually, an after school civic engagement education program.

YP4: What is your broader vision and the impact you’re hoping for with all the work that you do?

A generation of young people who are connected to one another, inspired and motivated to use their individual gifts and talents to create social change and who have the knowledge and access to resources they need to do that. I want youth to really, truly be equipped to understand the challenges they see around them and have a positive, progressive impact.

YP4: What do you consider to be one of your greatest achievements so far?

What I’m most proud of it the impact I’ve had here at Fisk on my classmates, professors and staff. I have a lot of folks who have watched me and the energy I bring to my work and they’ve just come and told me they’ve been inspired to do good work too! I love being able to help them figure out ways to get involved and tell them “you can do it too, I was just crazy enough to actually try it!”

I started organizing on campus around the Jena 6 incident. With my classmates and the help of Fisk’s Race Relations Institute, we raised money and got a bunch of student organizations involved to rent buses and get down to the large rally on Sept 20, 2007. 75 students went and when we got there we were a little disappointed. We saw a lot of energy and anger, but not a lot of sustained movement and so we all vowed to create movement from that energy. I started to look at what students in the Civil Rights Movement, particularly here in Nashville, did to affect change and tried to model our ideas after theirs. People continue to watch me work and be inspired by my commitment to creating positive change on campus and in the city.

YP4: Is there someone you’ve met or worked with that’s really inspired you?

The Reverend James M. Lawson, Jr., who was a leader in the Civil Rights Movement, is a personal mentor to me. After the Montgomery Bus Boycotts Martin Luther King, Jr. asked him to go to Nashville and teach what he’d learned about non violence to the Black communities struggling against segregation in the South. He began training Nashville students in 1957, and continued mentoring and supporting them throughout thr remainder of the Movement.

I’ve had the privilege to actually research him and with him over the past 3 years. He is credited with the re-crafting of nonviolent theory for the American 20th century and beyond. I talk, meet and study with him as often as possible and he’s actually he’s my senior project advisor.

Two other people who have been great mentors to me are Keith Caldwell, the director of The Urban EpiCenter and Deidra Reed who works for the Center for Community Change in Nashville. They have been mentors to me since I became an activist and I really credit them with everything I know and a lot of my most formative experiences as well.

YP4: What is a struggle that you’ve faced or are facing in your work? Do you have advice for people dealing with similar struggles?

Well, I struggled with what I thought was apathy after the hype of Jena 6 dies down. The number of students we’d gotten involved dropped from the 75 who rode with us to Louisiana down to about 8 still committed to our continued work in the few months after the event. I felt like people didn’t care anymore, but what I finally realized is that not everyone can make a full time commitment to activism like I can.

My advice is to not get discouraged when you start out with a lot of people working shoulder to shoulder with you, and as the load gets heavier, you look up and realize you're alone.

We’re peculiar people, us activists, and we can’t blame others when they don’t understand our commitment or can’t make a similar one. Getting angry or placing blame doesn’t get you anywhere –and it certainly doesn’t get the work done - you have to stay strong, and find those few like-minded people who are out there (you may not see them at first because they’re as busy as you!) and mentors who can stick with you and support you. It’s definitely not easy, I mean, I’m still in school and trying to raise money to support myself but the results of my work are very much worth it and you can’t let disappointment stop you from the great things that you will do.

YP4: What are your long term goals and how do you see your work with YP4 aiding in the pursuit to those goals?  

I would say my ultimate long term goal is exposing the inefficacy of violence to people. Too often in our culture we resort to violence - physical, emotional and cultural - to resolve conflict and we don’t realize the deep negative impact violence has on us. I want to educate people on nonviolence as a lifestyle and how they can apply that to all aspects of their lives. I also really want to establish a Freedom School in Nashville or any major southern city.

YP4 has helped me so much in getting to these goals, the education and training I got at the Summit was fantastic! The main thing I love about YP4 is being able to connect and interact with people from diverse backgrounds who are doing diverse kinds of work. Also, working on my Blueprint is helping me to clarify my ideas; I’ve been sharing my Blueprint with the board of NNYCE. It’s been a great tool for putting our ideas on paper and helps me analyze and critique them better.

YP4: How can other fellows get involved or find more information about the work you’re doing?

Hit me up on Facebook! Our group is the Network for Youth and Civic Engagement, or, friend me: Darria Janèy Hudson.

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