I’ve been passionate about union service since I started being involved in it. I might not have had all the right things to do when I was first elected as a delegate, but I have always wanted to be more involved. Before the pandemic, I was getting more and more involved in things. One of the things that I had been enjoying a lot was being an observer at the local board meetings. As soon as those are back, I will be continuing to be an observer because it’s such a great way to see my union at work. And of course, I’m also pretty involved now in the Union Working group and all the action that they have been taking.
But I am always looking for more ways to be involved in union service. And the thing within union service that I am most passionate about is union education. I want the members of the union to understand what is going on and to not feel as powerless as some of them do. Some members feel like the union is a separate entity and they have no voice, which is very far from the truth. This union is run by the members. We do have staff, but they work for us. We are in charge of the path that the union takes.
I was talking with some of my friends who are also passionate about union service, and my friend Amir and I started talking about doing some type of livestream event to answer questions that members might have. We started running with that idea and after about a week of brainstorming, we had a real plan for what we wanted to do. And while we weren’t looking to make this political or just about our slate, we knew we needed our slate’s help with a few things so we brought the plan to some of the leaders. They understood that we were looking to make a non-partisan event and really encouraged us to go with it. So we did.
And a week ago, we had our first livestream event! We are calling these You Are The Union because that is the big idea we want anyone watching to take away from these events.
We want members to be able to join the livestream and ask questions, give feedback, and have a clear understanding of what is going on. While we know we can’t answer every question that members might ask, we know we can explain to them why we might not have the answer or what is in the works. For example, I know some people have had questions about healthcare eligibility since we aren’t working right now. We don’t have the answer to that, but we can tell people that the healthcare trustees (who are in charge of our healthcare plan) are meeting and discussing this. And when they can say what the plan will be, they will tell us. We just want to make sure that people who watch our livestream don’t feel confused about what is going on if they ask us about it.
Our first livestream had some really great things about it. We had a good turnout, especially considering we didn’t have as much time to promote it as we would have liked to (this was partially my fault as we were trying to get things set up before promoting it). The questions we were asked were good and nobody was being negative or accusing anyone of things. And we were able to cover a wide variety of topics. We did have some technical glitches that caused us to not be able to run the livestream the way we were hoping and made it start late, but people understood why this happened and they were patient with us.
Amir was hosting it along with 2 guests, and I was working the behind the scenes stuff with managing the questions that came in and making sure everyone was able to access the livestream after the glitch. I was kept pretty busy doing that, but I was so glad I could help. I’m not sure if I want to be on-camera for these, just because I don’t feel like I have enough information to comfortably host. But that is now a goal of mine and something that is pushing me to continue to educate myself so I can feel like I could be a good host in the future.
This is not just a one-off event. We are already planning our next ones and we are hoping to be able to have them on a regular basis. We are still working on improving upon the first one, so hopefully, we continue to just get better and more efficient. We may start focusing our livestreams on specific topics, while still allowing any questions about other topics. But from the feedback we got, having a bit of a focus would be helpful for the audience. And having topics is also helping us plan, so I’m glad we were told that it could be a good thing.
If we weren’t in isolation during this pandemic, I don’t know if we would have created this livestream. I want to think that we would have, but I think being forced to have virtual meetings as a regular part of life really made us see what we could do. Even when we could have in-person meetings again, I think this is going to stay as a livestream as it allows so many people around the country to join in. And it gives us a bit more flexibility with getting guests because people don’t need to be local to do it.
It’s been a while since I’ve helped to create something I’m this excited about. And it’s a great feeling. I am doing this to continue my union service and help other members, but selfishly it has also helped me find a bit of purpose in a weird time and I’m so grateful for that.
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Another Successful Livestream (or Fixing Issues And Working On A System)
Another Amazing You Are The Union Livestream (or Learning So Much About Being A Better Ally)
Union Working Town Hall (or Getting Close To The End Of Election Season)
Final Union Working Meeting For 2017 (or A Commercial Roundtable)
Sharing My Union With A Friend (or Continuing To Be Inspired And Involved)
Finding New Ways To Be Creative (or Almost As Good As Acting)
