The Student News Site of Macalester College

The Mac Weekly

The Student News Site of Macalester College

The Mac Weekly

The Student News Site of Macalester College

The Mac Weekly

Go far with MPIRG

Since graduating from college, I have had the privilege of doing work that I care about and doing it professionally. I was hired as the Regional Field Director for the Raise Up Massachusetts campaign less than a year out of college, in charge of a large part of the largest grassroots ballot initiative in the Commonwealth’s history. We raised the minimum wage in Massachusetts to $11 and provided earned sick time for all workers by collecting 320,000 petition signatures and winning on November’s ballot. I learned those skills gathering 80 petition signatures for on-campus composting, and introducing measures at our Mac-Groveland community caucus. These opportunities would not have been available to me through other orgs, and I don’t know where I’d be today without MPIRG.

MPIRG provided me classroom-based skills trainings at weekly workshops and semester retreats. Here, I learned hard organizing skills— everything from facilitating meetings to campaign planning— that I have since taken to other campus organizations, internships and eventually jobs.

The fact that I became a professional organizer is largely due to work with MPIRG; in fact, the fact that I knew that I could become a professional organizer is due to working with MPIRG, too! The three campus organizers that I had at Macalester helped guide me from a sporadic participant, to an active member, to a two-time environmental task force leader. It was with MPIRG that I was told I was a leader, an organizer and an activist. Being coached and mentored by professional organizers helped build my skills and my confidence as an organizer.

Losing the Macalester chapter of MPIRG would obviously be a loss in and of itself. But it would also be a direct loss to other organizations on campus, to the broader Mac-Groveland Community specifically, and to Minnesotan and national progressive politics generally. But closing the chapter and the classroom, mentorship and hands-on-experience that MPIRG provides would also end the legacy that the organization leaves with the students who graduate.

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