Lola Brown

she/her/hers
Class of 2023
Political Science, Spanish Minor
ISAIAH MN

I came out of this last semester at Macalester College having worked with a cohort of students and leaders from ISAIAH to learn organizing skills and create public meetings with elected officials on climate change and public safety in Minnesota. Fresh out of that work, I knew I wanted to engage with other college students in the work happening in Minneapolis this year, ideally to create a space similar to what I experienced with my fellow Mac students. Working with the leader of the Young Adult Coalition of ISAIAH, we crafted a structure of weekly “house meetings” surrounded by days of canvassing in Dinkytown. In all, I canvassed over two hundred young people in Minneapolis, made many more hundreds of phone calls, and held dozens of conversations with students about the political landscape of Minneapolis this summer and how to achieve our goals in the fall with their leadership.

Truly, I have learned more about myself through my work this summer than in any previous job. The biggest reason for this is the stark difference between academic life and organizing. Academia comes with built-in prompts, deadlines, and feedback from authority figures. In comparison, organizing is self-driven – even within an organization like ISAIAH, you are responsible for setting your own goals and working to achieve them on your own timeline towards an often nebulous measure of success. These lessons give me a much better understanding of careers in local political organizing, and also work outside of academia in general. I hope to continue organizing work, especially relating to the strategy and political decision making pieces that I learned throughout my fellowship.