Ty dePass
Ty dePass, CPCS-Community Planning ‘00
A lyric penned Beatle John Lennon reminds us that, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans” (Beautiful Boy, 1980). Life isn’t linear; it doesn’t unfold in a logical or predictable fashion—I submit my life, my 40-year career in social justice, as testimony.
I was born in Harlem and raised in a South Bronx housing development, eldest of seven, and New York to the bone. By the time I graduated from high school in 1967, I had already heard Malcolm speak many times, enlisted in the local war on poverty, and marched with Martin in a major peace demonstration. On October 21, 1967, while most of my cohort from Kingsboro Community College (Brooklyn) were sweating mid-terms, I was in Washington, DC with Allen Ginsberg, Benjamin Spock—the baby doctor, not the guy with the ears—and 70-thousand others gathered to “levitate the Pentagon.” In the midst of all that social upheaval, sitting in classes on English Comp. or Life Drawing seemed particularly self-indulgent so I chose another road, another life: activism for peace and social justice.
Flash forward 25-years to late spring of 1993: I’m with a community-based tenant rights organization in Roxbury—meaning I’m underpaid, over-worked and lacking job-security. I was a seasoned community activist with some 30 years in public policy, community-based research, mass communication, organizational development, and popular education. My reputation was such that, despite the lack of a degree, I had just finished my second year teaching a course on the history and practice of community organization at the local community college. Yet, suddenly, I was out of a job, with few savings and no immediate prospects. In grassroots social change organizations, unexpected-staff-turnover-due-to-funding-shortfall is a common, even frequent, occurrence—so this wasn’t to be my first time, nor my last.
The inspiration for my next move came from an unexpected quarter—Marie Kennedy, one of a group of activist-scholars from the College of Public and Community Service at U. Mass-Boston who had become a veritable fixtures in numerous community struggles. By now an old friend, Marie argued that, instead of plunging back into the job market, I should seriously consider returning to school for that long-delayed academic credential. Intrigued by the college’s emphasis on a social justice curriculum and non-traditional students—workers, single mothers, elders—I entered the Community Planning Concentration at CPCS in the fall of 1993. Prof. Kennedy would serve various as my faculty advisor, mentor and prod.
My experiences in the program captures the unique character of the college. First, I was encouraged to assemble portfolios demonstrating professional competency in a range of skills; I managed to secure half of the 50 competencies required by my area of concentration in this manner. Second, I was offered a staff position on an ambitious action-research project documenting the obstacles and incentives to broader school-community collaboration on responsive social research—temporarily resolving my employment situation. Third, I was offered a selection of courses that alternately stimulated, inspired and enabled me to translate social theory into social practice. Lastly, I was challenged to deepen my conceptual, organizational and communicative skills, becoming more keenly absorbed in exploring the uses of non-traditional educational strategies in community settings.
I completed my BA in six years to graduate with the CPCS class of 2000. For the next three years I was an editor-writer for the NonProfit Quarterly, a national magazine published in Boston. I was also a founding member of the District 7 Roundtables, a monthly grassroots public policy forum now entering its seventh continuous year of operation. Intending to take the next logical career step by finally earning that advanced degree, I entered the graduate sociology program at Boston College in the fall of 2003. Still, as Lennon reminds, life often frustrates logic and seems to abhor scripted sequence.
Academic programs like BC’s emphasize the study of social systems, social theories and social theorists, but I chafed under the instructor-centered, grades-driven approach to learning. I realized that, for me, BC was a poor match in terms of personal learning style, valuation of organic or acquired wisdom, and appreciation for existing life commitments. By contrast social study, at CPCS was invariably linked to social action; CPCS also valued the knowledge and experience I brought with me. Likewise, where most of my CPCS classmates were a racially- and ethnically-diverse group of adult learners—many returning to school after years in the work world—most of my BC courses were peopled by an essentially homogeneous group of students and faculty whose race, class, youth, and lived-experience combined to buffer them from the contradictions, barriers and frustrations of the world I knew and worked in. I eventually withdrew from the program—with renewed clarity and a deeper commitment to non-traditional, community-based research and education.
The District-7 Roundtable has been the focal point of my community practice since March 2000. The theories, skills and methods I bring to this effort were discovered, honed or adapted during my years at CPCS. This all-volunteer initiative—which engages ordinary people in meaningful dialogue and action on a range of pressing community issues—is another milestone along a path often shared with students, faculty and alumna of CPCS, my intellectual and political family.
Ty dePass,
District-7 Roundtable Council,
GW Williams Journalism Fellow (2006)
