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Ursula
Chanse (Stanford, '96)
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Western
Shoshone Defense Project
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profile by
Pei-han Peggy Lo
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Ursula Chanse graduated
from Stanford with a degree in Asian American Studies. It
may not seem extraordinary now, but when she graduated, it
was a self-designed major. Ursula laughs when she reminisces
that she might have spent more time organizing so that the
University would offer it as a major than attending those
classes that would fulfill her major. "Organizing for the
major was just as a big part of my studies as attending the
necessary classes," she explained.
Ursula's organizing career
began in her senior year of high school in New York City.
Mainly she worked on issues of environmental justice. One of
her first campaigns was to keep out a medical waste
incinerator in the Bronx. She also participated in the James
Bay Campaign, which worked to keep Hydro-Quebec from
flooding Cree and Inuit land in Quebec to provide power for
the Northeast. Working with other New York residents, she
learned that they had the power to influence the governor's
decision on these matters when he canceled the contract with
Hydro-Quebec. Actively involved in SEAC (Student Environment
Action Coalition), she worked with a lot of white
middle/upper-class college students. At SEAC she learned
about coalition building and saw the positive effects of
their efforts. There were a lot of women in SEAC and their
power to affect change inspired her to continue her work in
college.
Since the fall of '92 and
until '97, Ursula was involved in the Western Shoshone
Defense Project. The Project was involved in a lands right
struggle with the US government and issues of environmental
justice. Their efforts included trying to keep military
testing, nuclear industries and gold mining out of Western
Shoshone Land. She worked for them from school during her
undergraduate years and then went to live in Crescent
Valley, Nevada after graduation to continue working with
Carrie and Marie Dann on the Defense project.
In her sophomore year,
Ursula came together with a group of Stanford students to
work against Proposition 187. They attempted to form a Bay
Area Asian-American Student Coalition to involve other
Asian-Americans students in the issue and to help address
community needs like having information in multiple
languages. For Prop 187 she also worked with the San Jose
youth chapter to work with different students. It was a
different situation because they just wanted to plug the
Stanford students into their agenda but the Stanford
students also had their own objectives and ideas. Organizing
for Prop 187 also involved trying to form a multi-racial
coalition at Stanford, and she joined RAGE (Resistance
Action Grassroots-Organizing Education) at that
time.
A major part of Ursula's
organizing efforts on campus revolved around Asian American
Studies. A large part of this type of organizing was keeping
a close eye on the administration and tracking their every
move. It involved making sure candidates for University
positions will not be detrimental to their efforts, making
sure that the student voice was heard, that the right
questions were being asked, and working with other student
groups, especially the Chicano community. As for the
takeover of the Faculty Senate, it's a blur, and she only
remember the doors being locked and people trying to keep
out the group of people she was with. There was always a
sense of urgency about the issue, sometimes so much that she
couldn't go to class because she felt like she should be
going to meetings and organizing educational events to get
other students involved. Having recognized the history of
efforts of by other Asian American students who fought for
the major, she is really excited now that it is a formal
major.
After leaving the Western
Shoshone Defense Project, Ursula worked for a short time
with a group called We Interrupt This Message. It is a group
that fights media stereotypes and teaches grassroots
organizations to use the media to their advantage. The group
also fights for "correct coverage" on issues and making sure
that the media is not one-sided in their presentation. She
will be working with Californians for Justice on Prop 227
(Unz Initiative) and Prop 226 (anti-workers initiative) on
their electoral field campaign.
Ursula says what motivated
her to walk the path of community organizing was to see
changes happen, to see how people's hard work result in
victories. She was also inspired by the people she's met in
the field who have been doing social justice work for a long
time. Their stories and a sense of necessity has inspired
her to continue doing organizing work. Aside from her
Grandparents in the way they live their lives, and her
sisters who are also involved in organizing, the Dann
sisters are also models for her to follow. Working for
decades to maintain their livelihood and the sovereignty of
Western Shoshone land for their people and the future
generations, Carrie and Marie serve as sources of
inspiration.
As for what is sustaining
her in her organizing work, Ursula cites her friends as a
very crucial support network. With friends who are also
doing organizing work, especially those who are politically
involved in issues, she can have critical discussions about
what's going on. Friends are also there when she needs to
ask or discuss questions she has about organizing or about
issues. They also learn to support each other in their
respective efforts because they all understand the stress
and strain and efforts that go into organizing. Another
important source of support is her sisters, both organizers
in their respective colleges.
For Ursula, the work she
has been doing is and has always been community organizing.
All the projects she worked or is working on involved a
community of people and empowering that community to achieve
their goals and objectives. However, she admits that Western
Shoshone Defense Project didn't seem like a community
organizing effort until recently, when more Shoshone became
involved in the project and began to play a leading role. In
her eyes, the office in Crescent Valley has grown from a
"resistance encampment" to a more community based
organization.
Modest in her work, Ursula
claims that she plays the role of the worker bee in the
various organizations she has been involved with. On the
most part, she deals with the logistics and the background
work of organizing. Paperwork, phone calls, etc., are her
field and she doesn't like being in the spotlight unless she
is forced to be there. She sees her forte in organization
and not presentation.
As for theories in doing
her work, Ursula explains that it's not something people can
learn in a class or from book, and it's something people
learn as they work with different communities and
organizations. A great resource for her is the other
organizers and their stories and their experiences in
organizing. An important part of her efforts is to empower
the communities that she works for. For example, efforts to
have a Western Shoshone Advisory Board was one of her goals
because it is the Shoshone people who will have to live with
the results of the Project's actions so they should make the
decisions. She is excited to work with CFJ as part of their
campaign to learn about their systematic way of organizing
campaigns. They have given her a model to put into practice
and it will be interesting, she speculates, to see the
effectiveness of that type of organizing. She agrees with
the goals of the CFJ to empower low-income communities of
people of color and to give voice to those who don't speak
out, and to demonstrate that using electoral power is taking
power. There are two types of organizing power in her eyes,
the short term reaction to events like propositions, and the
long term goals of empowerment and "discovering" community
leaders and building leadership within the community. She
also recognized the fact that there are other ways of
organizing that is creative and sustaining and cautions not
to limit the definition of community organizing to something
like electoral field campaigns. "Most importantly" she says,
"is to adapt to the communities and issues at
hand."
When asked about why she
chose organizing for her work, she states simply "It's what
I had to do." Having been involved in it for a long time,
she recognizes it as an effective way of making change and
empowering people and communities. It's also a way of
getting more people involved to bring about social change.
Organizing work also strengthens her and empowers her in her
ability as an individual and in a group to effect social
change. There has always been a sense of urgency for her to
do organizing work. She repeats "this is what I had to, what
we have to do."
A strong support network
has also come out of doing organizing work to counteract the
possibilities of burnout. "It is important to know that
you're not alone in your efforts, even if your friends are
working in other organizations" she stresses. Organizing
itself is not an easy task and sometimes even harder when
she was living at the place where she was organizing. "At
times it seems that everything else comes first except for
you" she says. She has seen a lot of life in her work and
she is careful to focus on the positive things to sustain
her. Initially her parents weren't very supportive of what
she chose as her life's work, but eventually they came to
support her in following her passion and her goals. There
are also a lot of insecurities about what is going to be a
happen. Organizing isn't a neat plan like going from college
to medical school and then becoming a doctor. There aren't
as many models to follow in doing this kind of work.
Sometimes in between organizing jobs there is also a need to
see what else she can do. And it's very difficult in
organizing to find a job that you really care about and get
paid well for it or finding a job that will allow you the
time to do organizing work on the side. But she has accepted
to have things and issues come up and just go along with it.
"Relationships are hard especially when you constantly pick
and move" she admits, and "harder if it's with people you
work with because you have to deal with the issues at large
and with issues between the two of you." Despite these
difficulties, she sees the stress that comes with work the
same as in any other field go into, and she says "there will
be problems to be faced, in life and in relationships
regardless of what kind of job you have."
Ursula has few concerns
for community organizing the way that it is formatted now
because there are so many gray areas. For example, she
thinks sometimes paid organizers hold more weight in
decision-making than they ought to. However, sometimes
decisions need to be made in a hurry and there isn't enough
time to get a whole group of people together to debate about
it. Another issue is that Direct Service is taking over in
certain areas and losing the community organizing
components. People just start to follow the agenda DS
organizations lay out and lose sight of the bigger issues
that are the source of these problems. And instead of
working to correct those problems, they perpetuate it. But
at the same time, DS organizations do address the basic
needs of the community. There are some clear problems
though. She is worried about the people who are left out of
the decision-making process and where the decisions are
coming from. Sometimes not the entire community is involved
and some people of their own agendas for doing organizing
work and want to make decisions when it's not their place to
do so. "There needs to be a sense of balance in the decision
making process," she feels. Overall all, she sees each
organization having their own "soap operas" and no
organization will be 100% perfect. The most important issue
is to "build trust with the people you're working with"
Ursula advises, "the problems that come up will never be
clear-cut."
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