Washington State University (WSU) hosted the Pacific Northwest Collegiate Leadership Conference on September 21st. The university hosted college students from schools across the Pacific Northwest for a day of learning through various speakers and workshops to improve leadership skills among students. The title of the conference was "Fearlessly Authentic" and the keynote speaker was Jamira Burley, an African American activist from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Burley was named a White House Champion for Change, an NBC Black 28 under 28, and a Forbes 30 under 30. With all of these qualifications, Burley was dubbed a leader and came to speak to students about her own path to becoming a leader. She discussed her home life as a child. Both of her parents and 12 of her brothers were sent to jail or prison at least once. She was the first child in her family to graduate from university. Throughout her speech, she claimed that the kids in Philadelphia that she grew up with either went to jail or college. She discussed her time working for the School District of Philadelphia and for the Mayor's Office. In both, her goal was to teach students about gun violence and work to prevent it. She even mentioned that she created a club during high school that was meant to teach students how to handle issues in a nonviolent way and how to intervene when violence was occurring or they felt was about to.
Do not take this the wrong way. In no way do I think that the work that Jamira Burley has done was wrong or bad. I commend her for her work, especially with students. I can not imagine coming from a town with that much of a violence problem. Yet, in the question and answer portion of her speech, there were two real problems. For starters, people were telling her their story instead of asking questions, but that's a personal pet peeve of mine. Secondly, when people asked how to get involved, how to become a leader, and questions of that nature, Burley's natural instinct was to tell them to pick something that was important to them and join an organization that they align with. Membership was not enough either. You needed to join as an accountant, a public relations representative, a volunteer, etc.
While this is good if you are looking into becoming an activist or want to be on the front lines of an issue, not everyone wants to work for a nonprofit or be a lobbyist. Along with this, Burley seems to be telling students that leader and activist are synonymous, which they aren't. Yes, some leaders are activists and some activists are leaders, but this is not always the case. For example, many captains of sports teams are not activists behind the scenes, but this does not mean that they can't be leaders of a team. Not everyone needs to be a part of an activist group in order to be a leader and while this can sometimes be a fuzzy line to tell the difference, it is a difference and the words are not synonyms.
