My Location

Hi! This section is here for me to introduce myself and talk about what my connection is to this project. My name is Hayley Dawn Craig and I’ m writing this zine for my senior thesis at Vassar College. I’ m a Black queer woman and I use she/her pronouns. I was born and raised in Bowie, Maryland in an upper-middle class family.

I came to Vassar in the fall of 2018. As other Black and POC students know, going to a PWI is rough because you ’ re constantly reminded that you don ’t belong. I experienced strong feelings of alienation and loneliness in my first few years. Being surrounded by whiteness while it also felt like the world was falling apart and trying to do well in school was very draining. Luckily, I found grounding in my community and many of the relationships I built started when I began organizing.

When I first started college I was somewhat informed about mass incarceration from reading

books like the New Jim Crow and watching the 13th documentary, and I thought I wanted to go into Civil Rights law. But I didn ’t know anything about PIC abolition or leftist politics since I hadn ’t been exposed to it yet. My radicalization started halfway through my first year and things really started clicking during my sophomore year. It wasn ’t my classes (except the few I took on abolition) that got me there, and it definitely wasn ’t white “Leftists " at Vassar. It was the friends that I made through the Black Students ' Union (BSU) and the work we did that really challenged the liberal politics I learned from my parents and peers in high school. This shift began when I joined the executive board of BSU as the co-chair of the org ’ s Political Education Committee during the spring of my first year.

My first semester on the committee, we did a lot of work to support two young girls, Julissa and Jamelia, who were brutalized by Poughkeepsie police outside of their school in March of 2019. At the time Julissa and Jameilia were 12 and 15 respectively and they were charged with resisting arrest. The community and our BSU responded with several actions and events until the County Attorney finally dropped the charges in the 39

the summer of 2020. While this was going on I was also beginning to learn about abolition from students in the BSU and in one of my classes called Policing the Planet. I was outraged about what the system was putting these two young Black girls through when they were the ones who had been harmed. The issue here wasn ’t just a few “bad” cops. If you read about the case in the chapter “Defense Campaigns ” it clearly goes beyond the two officers that assaulted them. There were also the officers that refused Jamelia access to a bathroom and sanitary wipes, forcing her to sit in her menstrual blood. There were the detectives that threatened them with jail time in an attempt to coerce them into giving statements in support of the officers. There were the officers that deleted video evidence of the assault off of Jamelia ’ s cell phone. And finally the City of Poughkeepsie mayor (a retired police officer) who failed to take action when the case was brought to his attention. As the chant goes “The whole damn system is guilty as hell!” Building a relationship with the girls and their mom, hearing their stories, and supporting them stuck with me more than any class discussion I’ ve ever had at Vassar. I remember missing classes to attend the girls ’ court dates and thinking how frustrated I was being a student. We prioritize papers, exams and classroom discussions (that often feel performative and/or pointless) over 40

meaningful real world experiences. Education under capitalism and all its cognitive dissonances with regards to theory and practice were a growing frustration for me and many of my other friends.

Then the pandemic hit in 2020 and these tensions felt even more intense. I was tired of school. I was tired of seeing the people I love unhappy and struggling to get by. I was tired of people who were advocating for the reform of capitalism. I was trying to imagine what could be done at a collective level and also figure out what my personal responsibility was being in a privileged position because of my class status. Unlike some of my other friends I didn ’t have to worry about providing for my family and taking care of them while also trying to do school from home. I had to ask myself how I would be in solidarity with, listen to and follow the lead of people with lived experiences of poverty and homelessness.

I would continue reflecting and acting on the question of personal and collective responsibility that summer, in which there were mass protests around the country and the world in the wake of the police murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor and many others. This is when my work with Vassar Political Education and Wealth Redistribution started. Originally our mission was to redistribute wealth to Black community based organizations working against 41

the carceral state through community care. We recruited volunteers and raised over $65,000 for 9 different Black-led organizations in Minnesota and Washington D.C. after holding two redistribution drives.

Those drives taught me about ways that people with resources must show up materially and not in the way of charity, but solidarity. My learning grew as we were starting to shift into the work of mutual aid. This happened when Cleland, a Black trans man from Maryland, reached out to our page because he was short on rent and at risk of losing housing. We used the platform we had built to help him crowdfund and he raised the money in just a day.

On the following page there ’ s a message from Cleland that transformed my understanding of organizing possibilities through the power of mutual aid. Realizing the impact we could have when we collectively make sure that people ’ s needs are met was a huge turning point for me and VPEWR. While it still felt impactful to give to the community orgs that we supported, getting resources directly was also necessary work we wanted to be involved with. We ’ re still engaged in this work today and we plan to continue beyond Vassar.

Cleland is a Black trans man who reached out to us seeking mutual aid. He is the first individual we crowdfunded for, which led us to shift the work we were doing.. Below is a message he shared on his instagram after he raised his rent: