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For work on Monday, November 11 I had two main tasks: preparing a stack of SB 75 postcards and reworking an advocacy education document to fit PA.  In addition, I was briefed on what my responsibilities would be on Friday, when I will be volunteering at one of our annual fundraising events.

Preparing the postcards was very simple (and somewhat cathartic, having been inputting information from them on the other end of the process for so long).  I printed the Powerpoint template onto green card stock (which requires emailing the whole office to let them know that I am temporarily coopting the printer with card stock), standing by the printer to make sure printing on card stock doesn’t upset it (which is not an infrequent occurrence), and then cutting up the cards (which print four to a page).  This particular stack of postcards was to be sent to one of my supervisor’s contacts, who had offered to distribute postcards to various groups for us.  As such, I sent her an email requesting the best address to send them to.  She didn’t respond on Monday so I wasn’t able to actually mail them, but at least they have been prepared up to that point.

Reworking the advocacy education document took up more of my time.  The document was a quiz that my supervisor had developed while working in a Vermont-based organization, which outlined the steps of the state legislative process as well as identified key actors in that process.  The first page required one to read through twelve scrambled steps summarizing the legislative process, and unscramble them.  The second page (which would be distributed after the first had been completed) listed the correct order of steps, and asked instead for one to pick from a list of actors who was involved in any given step.  Unsurprisingly, the information presented was similar to what would happen in Pennsylvania – certainly enough so that the same rubric of quiz would work – but also different enough that it was necessary to revise. 

Revising the content was certainly thoughtful, but not ultimately especially time-consuming.  What took more time was attempting to format the document: the original was not especially well-formatted such that I could change it (that is, it looked good; but the formatting steps that had been used to make it look so were not malleable).  As such, I played around with simply creating a new document in which I could work more easily.  After I had completed the new documents (the quiz was originally in a booklet, whereas the new one I created was two separate handouts), I sent them to my supervisor.  There was a brief back-and-forth about content, and once they were finalized I sent her the final versions and she printed them out.

This document was being updated that day particularly because my supervisor was leaving in the afternoon to lead an advocacy training session.  My impression was that the individuals attending were interested persons from local organizations, though I did not ask for clarification before she left.

Working with this document was an interesting reminder of the professionalization of advocacy work.  As an active member of the advocate community, it is not unusual that my supervisor has worked in a number of organizations, and that work she did at one would translate to another.  As I have discussed before, professionalization of advocacy is in many ways necessary, even as it presents some problematic questions about how and why we engage in advocacy.  Advocacy in a complex society requires a degree of specialization; but it is dangerous to lose sight of the moral draw that pulls most people to advocacy work.  Additionally, there is much to be gained from the work of those not already involved in the advocate community: they can offer insight into the system from the view of an outsider, balancing the routinization of specialization. 

Such a balance of experience and outsider contributions is key to reflect on and maintain.  Looking at my own choices, then, have I irreversibly positioned myself as an insider in that system?  Between formal academic education and experience working with advocacy organizations, I bring myself closer and closer to the risk of losing sight of the institutional pathologies that constitute the normative framework of the advocacy community.  Such a concern goes beyond praxis.  My discussion last week touched on praxis as one of the best methods for engaging with real actors while also allowing for the acknowledgment and utilization of theory; but even that begins by positioning myself as an insider.  At this point, then, I think that perhaps the only way to strive for an insider/outsider balance in advocacy – both for myself and the larger community – is to well and truly embrace the feminist practice of world traveling, as well as intentional dialogue among all nature of advocates – wherein insiders must be conscious of their privilege as such.

Finally, in addition to those tasks, I was walked through my responsibilities for this Friday’s fundraiser.  I will be arriving at 3:30 to help set up, and then will be standing behind one of the silent auction tables until it closes.  I will help manage the silent auction results when it ends, assist with check-out, and then clean up.  I will leave discussion of the event at that until after Friday, at which point I will be able to offer a much more detailed and informed discussion of how it went and my reactions to it.