Reclaiming the Roots of Advocacy

An Alaskan Transplant Returning to their Passions

I first began wanting to visit Alaska in 6^th grade after learning about it in geography class. I was fascinated by the idea of people who endured so many extreme and natural “dichotomies”. Dark Winters, Midnight Sun, Negative 40 & sometimes scorching 80-90’s in the summer.

When people ask about where I’m from and more specifically, how I came to be here, I usually ask them if they want the short version or the long one.

The short one is I was born in California and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. I moved to Alaska to work as an AmeriCorps Vista for the Alaskan Aids Assistance Association (4 A’s). They’d flown me up to work for them and I was only meant to stay for one year.

I’ve been here for over 15 years.

Here is the “long version” of the story, focusing specifically on the company I came up here to work for and what led me to being in that position.

The Alaskan Aids Assistance Association is an organization rooted in advocacy & outreach (well within social work’s amorphous definition). 

I had already developed a passion for nonprofit organizations, outreach, and advocacy. During my childhood, my mother worked almost exclusively in the non-profit sector, I can’t even remember any of the few places she worked that weren’t. Sometimes I would get out of school and go directly to her job, since there was no one at home. I had more energy than any of the other people around me, and wanted to be useful, so naturally I began helping out around the office. That quickly turned into volunteering and by the end of high school, the volunteering portion of my resume was pretty substantial.

Perhaps my most significant volunteering occurred at what was then named the Free Clinic of Greater Cleveland. The clinic felt like it was apart of my family since my father had worked there in years past, my mom worked there for years…and I volunteered there for years.

I mainly participated in an outreach program made-up of youth that performed theatrical skits for our peers about important issues and services that the clinic provided. It was called S.T.A.A.R. (Students Teaching Adolescents About Reality). We were dealing with subjects like STD testing, HIV/AIDS, Birth Control access and more.

I’m sure this looked really good to the Four A’s, perhaps giving me an advantage.

Working there I ran a food pantry, wrote a weekly newsletter, helped oversee the needle exchange program, oversaw meals on wheels, and helped organize a weekly meal for our clients. It was quite a lot to manage. I enjoyed the work though and liked being able to work with so many of the clients directly. Sometime around a month and a half of being there was when I lost my first client. It was a brutal reminder of what we were working with—HIV and AIDS killed people. During my time there I would lose many more clients and the emotional stress of that job definitely took a toll on me. Somewhere between being a teenager experiencing their first summer in Alaska, the sheer magnitude of responsibilities and tasks, and the emotional stress of dealing with poverty, death, drugs, and mental illness I got overwhelmed. I have many past regrets, one of which is not properly finishing out the program. Regardless, working there taught me many important lessons and stoked my passion for advocacy.

But how did I get here…at UAF, taking this course?

The decade proceeding the Four A’s, I led a pretty wild and impulsive life. I switched jobs often, was homeless at certain points, and generally led my life following my emotions (which, it would turn out, were quite unregulated to begin with). I was young, quite queer, moderately political, in and out of detrimental situations and full of passion to fulfill my dreams and help change the world into something better. I wanted to find ways to improve things for people of marginalized identities, which included myself. At some point, in an effort to remove myself from the constant struggle and violence of having such a political body, I settled.

In “COVID times”, I was working in the construction industry, mostly living a heteronormative life. I wasn’t unhappy, but I also wasn’t terribly happy about what I was doing. Life had somehow gotten off track and my focus and attention had turned to trying to survive and actively participate in our society. I’d been conforming to a certain standard dictated by a society that has never really been supportive of the communities I identify with.

In 2022 as we were crawling out of the isolation of the pandemic everything started to change. I already felt that my identity interfered with my success as an apprentice, and I struggled with assumptions made about my identity because of “appearances”. I tried to be vocal about my queerness and the openness of the relationship between me and my partner, but it didn’t make a difference to the people it was really intended for. Then in the spring, my attraction and subsequent dating of another person outside of the relationship with my partner really shattered a lot of assumptions that had been made. Assumptions my partner had, assumptions I had, assumptions others had—for a moment there was no safety. I was lost struggling to find my footing amid an identity crisis. It took some time.

My passion for advocacy was rekindled, watching as people further discriminated my already marginalized identity & lifestyle. Roe vs. Wade being overturned poured gasoline on the fire that had emerged. By the fall, when I was unceremoniously fired and dropped from the apprenticeship program, that fire was big enough to consume me. I had to face reality. If what I was doing wasn’t making me happy, what was the point in continuing to do it? So, I took some time to do some real self-reflection and ask myself some serious questions.

This reflection prompted me to try and get back into advocacy work, to do things that aligned with my values—not just sell a product but help enact change.  However, my lived experience would not be enough to get me to my goals. I needed to spend some time learning and developing skills that would help me. I needed to go back to college. So, here I am pursuing an interdisciplinary major that so far is revolving around advocacy and the creative arts and how we might use them to enact change on our world.