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Taj
James (Anthropology, '95)
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Youth
Making a Change (YMAC)
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profile by
Mike Martinez
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Many people gauge their
career as successful if it pays well, offers excellent
employee benefits, and the atmosphere is predictable.
However, not if you are Taj James. Despite the low pay of
his work at Youth Making a Change (YMAC), Taj believes the
true benefits lie from within: the intrinsic gratification
of his service and seeing the pride in the faces of those he
helps. The atmosphere he works in is not at all relaxed;
each day offers a new twist to the tale of urban community
organizing.
Yet, as Taj reveals to me,
he had always been exposed to community organizing. In fact,
as a sophomore in high school, he helped organize against
his school board in Ventura to stress the detrimental
effects of forced busing and school finance equity. His
parents supported every move he made clearly understanding
that the community organizing that they did in their own
lives had somehow rubbed onto him. Since childhood, they
noticed that he had an interest in social change and was
able to understand the world and its many differences. He
wanted to change the world and he saw this in community
organizing.
When Taj graduated from
Stanford University with Anthropology and African and
African American Studies dual-major degrees in 1995, he had
by now developed his own beliefs regarding identity and
culture and the role of organizations in social change. As a
student, he was involved in No Humans Involved (NHI) and in
joint conjunction with the Children's Defense Fund and the
Black Student Leadership Network (BSLN) he looked at the
contemporary issues affecting education. He cooperated with
other Stanford students to brainstorm on strategies and
possible solutions to challenge the pedagogical system as
well as developed his awareness of campus issues, ability to
plan conferences, and capability to network and
organize.
These experiences, among
many, allowed Taj to actively believe he could challenge
injustice and the inherent oppression of majority groups on
the rest of society. It depends on how students respond to
situations they see, as Taj remembers back to his college
days. Students could have just looked at them and said they
deserved it and just sit back and let them take it. Of
course, Taj retorts saying, there were a lot of things that
I didn't like...I felt that I could change them and that it
truly can be done!
His chance to demonstrate
his innate optimism and proactivity soon came when he was
offered a job working for YMAC. He wholeheartedly accepted,
thinking that it would be an incredible chance to apply his
insight in such a familiar field. Taj soon took up the
challenge of setting up Youth Vote, a survey for youths on
what they feel to be important to them. Issues like youth
employment programs, economic development, and internships
within government departments were high on the wish list of
San Francisco's young adults. No sooner did he finish this
project that he was advocating for a larger youth presence
in local governmental affairs. After much pressure from a
series of community coalitions for two years, the Board of
Supervisors and mayor finally approved the San Francisco
Youth Commission to be added to the city's charter thereby
making it a permanent part of city governance.
These two issues are only
one of many types of social areas that Youth Making A Change
is involved in today. For example, YMAC is concerned with
welfare, housing, transportation, employment, education,
health, and police services affecting young adults all over
the city. These elements of society, Taj believes, are
always changed without neither youth in mind nor attention
given to the negative impacts that these new programs will
have on youth. YMAC therefore conducts research for
proactivism and not reactivism; their ability to set
long-term goals and work towards improving public policies
allows them to foresee a need that warrants fixing before it
causes more harm than good.
YMAC's dual focus of
advocacy and community organization allow it to foresee a
need for community groups to connect and cooperate together.
Taj feels there is a more systematic way to tackle
oppression and right-hand conservatism. In truth, he
believes, community organizations all have the same goal in
mind yet have different ways to go about accomplishing
society receptiveness to minority groups.
In order to win this
fight, Taj replies that, We need to construct a collective
social movement because no one group has the capacity or
manpower to change government alone. Taj asserts the real
strength lies in working as a team because together we can
have the formidable opinion of how society should really be
through constructive coordination, effort, and a common
vision. Together we can achieve solidarity in hopes of
building community instead of dividing the society in which
we live.
He adds that he is very
excited to help plan The Gathering, a nationwide conference
for community organizers and grassroots campaigns, to be
held later next year in New Haven, Connecticut. His hope: to
come one step closer in achieving his lifetime goal of
developing a common vision among community organizers by
sharing, supporting, and bringing together the ideas set
forth in the conference.
The future looks bright
for focused and committed individuals like Taj. As we
concluded our Profile, he paused and gave advice to anyone
wishing to go into community organizing: your ability to
stick to your ideals and vision will make people believe in
you and follow your committed passion to change society.
Don't forget that...its the strongest card you
have.
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