Rebekah Smith Interview
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- Could I start with your name and position?
- Yeah.
- Absolutely.
- My name is Rebekah Smith and I'm a circulation Services specialist at
- the library at AU.
- And do I have permission to record
- today's conversation? Yeah.
- Is there anything in particular you want to cover, or don't want
- to cover? Honestly, I haven't really thought
- about it.
- I did a lot of work with social
- media and like communications during the strike.
- So if you'd like to ask about that or talk about that, that would be
- great.
- But no. Otherwise just haven't
- really planned for this.
- Perfect.
- And you can always record a second one too if you want to add
- multiple or Great.
- So today is Monday March 20th, I
- am Gabriela Folsom and I'm here with Rebecca on the quad at
- American University.
- It is 11:30 and we are conducting
- an oral history interview for the Preserving the Picket Line AU
- Staff Union Archive.
- So thank you for joining us here
- today.
- Happy to be here.
- So we'll start with how would you describe your involvement in the
- union or in the strike? Yeah, absolutely.
- So I like to say that basically, I was involved in the union from the
- time that we voted to form a union.
- I came out of a union job shortly before this one.
- I worked for the DC Public Library, and you know I wouldn't
- say my family really prominent like labor people are anything,
- but we've always kind of been a pro-union household.
- We believe in unions.
- And so I was, yeah, I felt, I was
- like, happy.
- I was like, great, like, loving
- union, sign me up.
- So I sign my card- or signed.
- I did the vote.
- We won.
- I signed my card, I was like, cool.
- I'm going to be a union member, done.
- And then I just kind of waited and like, waited, and then I waited
- some more, and then it was spring of 2022.
- And that's when I was sort of like, well, hold up, like we've
- been in negotiations no, for a really long time.
- I [had been] kind of, keeping up with updates, but I hadn't really
- paid attention.
- But that was when they started
- asking, they being the people on the negotiating team, for people
- to start coming to open bargaining, so for other people
- who weren't on that team to start showing up to these sessions.
- So I said, great, like I can do that.
- That sounds good to me.
- Support the union.
- So I started showing up to the sessions and that's how I sort of
- realize, exactly how difficult and challenging and just kind of
- getting nowhere, the process had really been for, for the union
- organizers and for our negotiating team.
- And so that helped me understand like why it was important to keep
- showing up and it was pretty low stakes, I just join a zoom call.
- So I did, and then that turned into kind of like some actions
- over the spring.
- I went to the Kennedy Center
- action and sort of into the summer was when I think I first started
- hearing people talking about going on strike, and that was definitely
- like a big step for me, that wasn't fun.
- I never thought about doing or having to do.
- My union at my old job was like very long established, no one
- really challenged it or anything like that, but it was very helpful
- to kind of spend that time over the spring, like becoming slowly
- more involved and going to these events and sort of seeing
- firsthand, because that helped me understand why it was important
- and sort of why it was the only option left.
- So then I then I voted yes on the strike vote because I understood
- that, and that's how I found myself on strike in August.
- So I like to say I kind of tripped and fell into the Union a little
- bit.
- And walk me through what the week
- of the strike was like for you.
- Yeah, it was exhausting.
- It was like very profound.
- Yeah, it was exhausting, It was
- very profound, it was it was both like exactly as challenging as I
- thought it would be and like way more challenging or maybe
- challenging in ways that were totally different than I expected.
- I had no idea how physically demanding it was going to be to be
- out in like 85 degree weather in the sun.
- No shade, eating hot pizza, which was terrible, for five days in a
- row or how physical like, marching and chanting and screaming really
- were, um, definitely takes a toll.
- But obviously it was also very
- moving, it was really emotional in a lot of ways and like, very
- meaningful for me.
- It really helped me It really
- helped me like realize like how important what we were doing was
- and feel like extra committed to it.
- Yeah.
- So I'd say like a lot of a lot of
- was stuck with me about it just like the physicality of it.
- You're like out there, you're like really putting your like, sweat
- and like tears on the line you're really putting the like, the
- physical and emotional work in to try and achieve this outcome more
- so than kind of anything else we had really done.
- It was also very busy for me because I had at that point
- committed to helping with social media and especially just like
- photography and video of the strike and that was a very ragtag
- affair, not in a bad way, just kind of like strung together.
- So it was also very physical like running around, trying to find
- like photo-ops, trying to think up social media posts and ways of
- communicating about the strike on the fly, just staying on top of
- like, the flood of information we were getting in as well, which was
- a surprise for me.
- I expected to spend a lot of time
- putting information out, but we got this huge flood of information
- and like comments and interactions coming in for us as well.
- That took a lot of hands on time.
- So interesting.
- Was it a lot of like, folks from outside AU, or a lot of like
- community members coming in? It depended on the platform.
- So I primarily was working with Instagram and that was very much
- AU community but not not staff union members, or members of our,
- what's it called? [Members of the unit?] Yeah,
- members of the unit, potential staff union members.
- So, lots of students, student groups, some outside groups as
- well, external groups.
- But just a huge number of students
- especially those who are starting to come on campus that day, the
- incoming class, which, I was very surprised.
- I really- I knew that was kind of the goal, but I didn't realize.
- like, how engaged they would be with us via Instagram.
- We got like information from them.
- I know, it's kind of fun because I
- was sort of be like the first to know a lot of these things.
- So I had obviously the walkout that happened on the last day was
- totally student-organized like in, we didn't organize it in any way,
- but I had kind of gotten rumors, really information from some of
- them, like, "Hey, we're trying to do a thing.
- Hey, this is happening.
- Hey, how would you advise us to do
- this?" tends to get a real outpouring of support from
- students, like, in the form of, like, tangible obviously like
- likes and shares.
- I mean, we got some insane,
- insanely large numbers, talking like in the thousands of the
- interactions and shares and likes, which I've never seen before, or
- since, which is probably good.
- And yeah, and then definitely like
- a little bit of like negative interaction too, which like I've
- never been a professional social media person before so, you know,
- quote unquote professional, right? I'm not an influencer.
- So that wasn't really something.
- I never had to deal with my
- personal life and there wasn't too much, but there's definitely a
- little bit of very intense, like, negative feedback.
- We got especially around after Wednesday with the first day we
- had actually like physically kind of disrupted move-in, so that was
- mostly from like parents and external groups, a little bit from
- students not too much but yeah.
- So yeah, a lot of that external
- and like I said, just a lot of almost overwhelming amount of the
- information coming in, but it was important to stay on top of it
- because that's how we found out like, where Sylvia Burwell was
- hiding, or like what students wanted from us or needed from us.
- I remember at one point someone had accidentally like blocked like
- an ADA exit, or someone who I think had shown up to the strike.
- like, not a staff union member had, like, I think, like yelled at
- a student, which was very much, like, not, okay.
- And they use social media to say, like, hey, like this wasn't cool.
- And we were able to say like, yeah, you're totally right, like
- we want to address this and then brought that back to the strike
- the next day and said, like, hey, like make sure you're not doing
- these things.
- So it was this pretty like,
- essential two-way street of communication which I hadn't,
- which very much surprised me, I hadn't really expected that but
- was cool.
- That's great.
- What was the most memorable part of the strike for you?
- It's probably not like as probably, what was the most
- memorable part of the story for me?
- I- it's not original, I'm sure you'll hear other people say this,
- but for me I think it was the student walkout.
- Like I said, we on the social media team had kind of heard
- rumors.
- We sort of knew they were trying
- to put something together, but because we had to make sure it was
- totally like separate from us, we had to be very hands-off, so we
- didn't know, you know would we get like five or 10 students, would we
- get 20 or 30, are they going to be like, willing to do it because we
- could totally understand them, kind of in the moment, not wanting
- to.
- So, I just remember that Friday.
- Everyone was very tense about going back to the bargaining
- table, which had been kind of announced, kind of unexpectedly on
- Thursday night, honestly, I don't know that we really expected AU to
- even like, be willing to do that.
- So there are a lot of kind of
- conflicting emotions, we were kind of sending these fourteen people
- in.
- People were very, very anxious
- about whether we could afford to stay on strike any longer or if we
- were really going to get anywhere.
- And we were definitely a smaller
- group than we had been on Wednesday or Thursday just for,
- you know, the normal reasons.
- So I think we are all feeling,
- maybe not demoralized, but like pretty tired.
- So this is after four days of this, it's really hot, and we have
- all these emotions going through our heads, so we kind of had to
- pull it together.
- We showed up in front of this
- barricade.
- It was really bizarre because they
- sort of changed all these plans around convocation to really like
- keep us out with like armed police and, like fences, like a threat,
- which is kind of weird when your own employers treating you like a
- threat.
- And so, yeah, I remember being
- there.
- Just being very anxious.
- I hadn't wanted to- obviously I told people who need to know, but
- I hadn't wanted to share like too widely about like what the
- students were planning, so I didn't want to hide people up and
- have them be like disappointed.
- So I think people knew that this
- is kind of in the works but I hadn't shared the like, multiple
- messages and things I got.
- And I didn't want to over blow up.
- So all of that, right? And then, I'm standing like right
- at the very front in front of this barricade like, in front of just
- these random doors into the gym and to the pool area.
- And I'm getting messages from the students like, okay, like this is
- it.
- I got like a video of people
- standing up inside the gym and I was like, oh my gosh, some right
- there.
- And I'm like, I can't, I don't
- want to like, you know, tell anybody.
- And then suddenly, and we're like screaming, and is echoing in the
- tunnel, and then suddenly the doors open and like a student
- comes out and they're like, can't believe what they're seeing and
- then like two students come out and then like 10 students come out
- and I started videoing it and my video by the end of it was four
- minutes long.
- It took them four minutes to exit
- the stadium.
- There were so many people and
- everyone was just like sobbing.
- You can't tell, cause I'm wearing
- sunglasses, but I'm tearing up now, just talking about it.
- And the students were screaming and we were screaming back at
- them, and it was just this like, huge cathartic, like painful but
- like really amazing, like moment, I'll never forget it.
- Our organizers, were like, crying one of them, I called Larry our
- chief negotiator who had had to leave that day.
- They were just over there like sobbing.
- Everyone was crying, yeah, just amazing, I'll never forget that
- moment.
- Let the record reflect that I am
- tearing up as we talk about this.
- You mentioned the social media
- strategy team.
- Would you like to speak [a little]
- more about that? Yeah, absolutely.
- So a lot of the social media was spearheaded by my coworker Lisa,
- in the library who, as an aside, I think will be out later so you can
- interview them as well.
- And so, I think what had happened
- was some of the strike team captains had been kind of running
- the Twitter that was really our only active social media and they
- kind of realized two things pretty quickly right as we voted to
- strike.
- One was that we really needed a
- more robust social media presence.
- And the second was that they
- didn't have time to do it.
- All of my co-workers in my like
- immediate group, were strike captains and I don't like being a
- strike captain or anything that really involved me having to have
- a lot of difficult conversations which, like, I'm working on but I
- don't like it.
- So they kept threatening to make
- me a strike captain and I was like I really want to be involved but I
- like this is not my area of expertise, it's not my forte and
- this is a really important thing to get right.
- So when my coworker Lisa said, hey I'm actually doing the social
- media, can you take some of that off my plate?
- I was like yeah, because if I do this, they can't make me do
- something else.
- So I said, yeah, I'll take on
- Instagram and Tiktok, all of that was kind of less important during
- the strike, and it blew up, yeah, it went wild.
- I think we went from like, two hundred followers to about, like,
- two thousand in about a week over the course of the strike.
- And I think we worked- we worked very hard but I wouldn't say that
- we had like a grand strategy.
- I think we just were able to
- really kind of seize on the energy that was already there because
- students were, like, so interested in what was happening.
- Strikes are kind of cool, in like a weird way, and they were so
- interested in that they weren't here and they didn't know how to
- interact and to help, and so I think they funneled a lot of that
- into Instagram but also, you know, even on Twitter, where many of the
- students aren't like with external organizations and stuff.
- We also got a ton of engagement and went up to about, I think
- about 1,500 followers from about 500 so it was just a huge wave.
- So yeah, I mean that was very absorbing.
- I think I spent about 80% of my time on the picket line, just
- capturing photos and videos, you know, trying to upload things so
- we can have some kind of like live or semi-live footage.
- Again, like responding to like comments and messages as I was
- able.
- And we definitely had some
- strategy.
- We met like a little bit
- beforehand.
- We talked about like, the hashtags
- that would be used.
- We put together like a QR code, a
- business card, which is really handy for people who showed up
- with, like, professional cameras and things.
- So we got a lot of photos in that way which I'm hoping to turn over
- to the archives project.
- So we're talking like several
- gigabytes at least seven or eight gigabytes.
- I mean, a ton of footage.
- I hope I'm saying that right.
- I think it is just hundreds and hundreds of photographs and
- videos.
- It's very well documented, in many
- ways, I think.
- And so, my specific strategy,
- since I knew a lot of people were getting just like general content,
- was really trying to make sure, like, if really important moments
- are happening, if someone is like speaking, can we get like a
- headshot of them? Can we get their speech recorded?
- Can one person do one and one person do the others, were kind of
- capturing the most important things from multiple angles and
- corralling the staff unit members, who, many of whom are not like
- really big on social media which I respect.
- I'm not in my personal life surprisingly, and kind of getting
- them to understand, like, why interaction was so important.
- Why sharing things why tagging us why, you know, sending other stuff
- was so important for the, for the future, for something like this.
- And I think, yeah, I mean, I think it was broadly pretty successful.
- There's definitely things I would have liked to have had more time
- to, to do, and I'm really looking forward to working with the actual
- committee that's being established this semester to kind of get some
- things like codified and make it look smoother for you know, any
- potential next, next go-around.
- Stellar.
- I'm not sure if you were involved at all with the strike [marching?]
- funds, but I just realized that no one has [really] talked about that
- quite yet, and especially, I think we exceeded our goal in the end,
- and I'm curious- did you deal with that at all from the back end?
- Not too much.
- I was responsible, definitely
- getting a lot of the word out about it, again with the other
- people on social media, we made lot of posts about that.
- There was a group, I think, actually, I think, actually Sam
- could probably speak to that, because there is actually a group
- of people who are responsible for working with that and getting it
- distributed.
- But no, I was definitely more just
- involved in publicizing it, and that was like an incredible like
- show [of] support.
- I mean money is, money is not
- always in high supply.
- And just speaking personally like
- as a fairly low paid staff member, like it was really make or break
- for me.
- I don't know that I could have
- really gone on strike, for five days without that, that money to
- back me up.
- Sadly it filled up, it covered
- most of what I would have made if I earned, if I had been working
- because I don't get paid very much.
- So yeah, I'm just really grateful that it was in place and that it
- succeeded so much- so well.
- And I'm also just slightly curious
- about social media, are outside unions contacting us, reaching out
- to us at all, are we, like, engaging a lot with other academic
- labor movements going on around the country or is it mostly...?
- Yeah I see an Instagram like to a certain degree, you know,
- definitely in terms of like engagement like liking and posting
- and following.
- I think that in terms of like more
- like long-term or tangible stuff, that's a great question for either
- David Chi or I don't know who's on the advocacy and Outreach
- committee.
- I think [Mary?] and someone else
- they're going to be these sort of Union representatives are going to
- be more involved with that.
- But we're certainly plugged into
- what's going on and we try to like share some information about that
- and just kind of generally boost engagement with with those groups
- and it's just good to have that perspective or in certainly and
- she know how that perspective and to realize like and hopefully to
- share with the people who follow us that like, we're really part of
- like this much broader, much broader movement within Academia
- and academic staffing, which is pretty cool to see.
- And is there anything else you'd like to talk about that?
- I haven't asked.
- No, I think I'm pretty talked out,
- how I guess I would just say that maybe unlike some people like I am
- not someone who's like excited about going on strike.
- I might be ready to go on strike again but I wouldn't say I'm
- looking forward to it.
- You know, I, my ideal is always
- that we don't have to go on strike to get the things that that we
- need to be good and able to do our jobs.
- But it was like, very personally transformative for me to
- participate in that strike and just to feel that solidarity,
- which I'm still feeling, you know, months and weeks on.
- My co-workers and I are so much closer just because we've gone
- through this together.
- I don't think we could have come
- together to actually file the grievance that we filed without
- having that, like solidarity that we built at the strike and even
- like with other like organizations on campus and things.
- So it personally actually my experience actually motivated me
- to get more involved in like organizing in general.
- So, I actually participated in a fellowship this past fall with an
- organization called Rising organizers to sort of train people
- who are new to organizing and certain like strategies and
- practices, and I've taken on some more training opportunities this
- spring as well.
- So, yeah, I mean, that's just
- something I would never have thought to do as kind of a path.
- I would never really been set on if we hadn't had to go on strike.
- And so it's really interesting for me to see where I go next.
- Thank you so much.
- You are so welcome.
- We really appreciate your contributions going to be
- incredibly helpful.
- Good.
- Just so, you know, next steps will be processing this interview and
- the coming weeks and transcribing, your recording will share copy the
- transcription with you.
- And if you like, you can make
- changes and we're collecting these videos on behalf of the AU Staff
- Union at the collection will be turned over to the AU archive to
- be digitized and made publicly accessible the exception of any
- materials that the union wants to keep and maintain privately.
- So your contribution's been incredibly helpful.
- Thank you so much.
- Yeah, you're so welcome.
- Thank you very much.