Community Service, Service, and Activism

from an email.

I think often times . . activists try to stay away from "service" or "community service" because we emphasize the fact that we work in and WITH the community.

I admit, I do this also. No, what I do is NOT community service. It's activism. Community service is what I did to rack up hours and put on my college application . . not what I did in college or what I do now. What I did in college and what I do now . . I do with a purpose. Community service also has a purpose, just not rooted in the same social justice purpose that I've developed over the years...

However, I think shifting our perspective might help. While most forms of service is not considered activism (ie: a bunch of bougie kids going into a low income community and picking up trash and painting some of the buildings), it can be argued that most forms of activism is a form of service (ie: organizing a low income community to pick up trash and paint their OWN buildings).

Only an incredibly (dare I say) arrogant "activist" will go and say, NO, I'm an ACTIVIST . . I don't do SERVICE. We are community organizers not community SERVICE people.

Now, if we look at it this way . . not all organizing is service either right? While I know a lot of folks may say they organize the community, what are the outcomes?

The outcomes are the service.

You can organize a community . . but if there are no actions or results, what is the service?

While most forms of service could be done by a bunch of bougie white people who don't come from the community, the reason why we consider it activism is because we come FROM the community and we work WITH the community to make these things happen.

On the other hand, we can definitely have activism without service as well. If we just sat around and talked about stupid admissions policies, talked about SI being inaccessible to students in the central valley, talked about how high school students should apply to scholarships, or just talked to middle school students about taking the right courses in high school . . then that's just activism without service.

Therefore, it's important for "activists" to not just sit around and think critically about issues . . or talk the talk about social justice . . we gotta make sure we walk the walk and actually act on some of these issues and figure out some solutions.