my job

Earlier this month I read in-person for the first time in a very long time. I wrote about my job as a teacher at City College of San Francisco. I read alongside other teachers, poets, and workers under the banner of worker power and solidarity.

City College of San Francisco has been under attack. When I wrote and read this piece, HUNDREDS of faculty were being faced with layoffs and a host of classes in departments that mean the most to us were dangling precariously in the balance if they were not wiped out altogether. After countless hours of organizing and bargaining a tremendous win was gained and all pink slips have been rescinded. We will continue to fight to preserve a free, community-based learning place at CCSF.

'my job'

my job is to fight for a future where my students don't have to be heartbroken by minimum wage. where capitalism stops stealing our dreams and reselling us our own ideas with tax.

i want my students to have a future where wage theft is talked about like a horror story around a campfire, whiterabbitwhiterabbit.

i want a future where my students don't have to work to eat. Don't have to be the best at something to be treated humanely.

my job is to find language and give words for our most intimate experiences of ourselves.

my job is to see the future--to see it clearly and breathe life into it. so, i see my students graduating. i see them smiling and pulling their tassels one side to another. i see them holding their babies on their hips. i see their mother's holding their diplomas.

i see them blocking traffic and business as usual in defense of each other. i see them having the right words at the right moment.

sometimes i just see them doing nothing and this is a luxury and delight i hold them in for as long as i can.

every teacher i have loved, loved me back at eye-level. poured into me with a soft but heavy hand. saw me. saw me growing and saw me fist fighting a system bigger than all of us. saw me resting and writing. and made me possible. made my fight possible.

i am made from the magic of teachers who saw me in the future and who refused to see a future without me.

my job is to carry forward this lineage. to reach back and pull forward a song. to let the words fly out of my mouth and to revel in the sounds of all the voices joining in around me.