Tom DePaola and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) demonstrate in front of Paul Ryan’s office on December 5, 2017, to protest a proposed tax on tuition waivers. (Photo courtesy of SEIU Faculty Forward)
Welcome to Interviews for Resistance. We’re now nearly a year into the Trump administration, and activists have scored some important victories in those months. Yet there is always more to be done, and for many people, the question of where to focus and how to help remains. In this series, we talk with organizers, agitators and educators, not only about how to resist, but how to build a better world. Today’s interview is the 98th in the series. Click here for the most recent interview before this one.
Today we bring you a conversation with Tom DePaola, a third-year Ph.D. student graduate worker at the University of Southern California’s Rossier School of Education. DePaola studies urban education policy and academic labor in universities.
Sarah Jaffe: We are talking today because you were one of several people protesting in Paul Ryan’s office [Tuesday] over the tax bill and what it would do to graduate student workers like yourself. First of all, tell us about the action yesterday — what ended up happening? Any reaction from Paul Ryan?
Tom DePaola: We were hoping against hope that Paul Ryan would actually sit down with us and hear our quite reasonable concerns. He didn’t and that was no surprise, but we decided to do everything we could to elevate this issue and make our voices heard anyway. For several of us, that included taking arrests and that was something that we were happy to do.
We came together really quickly and with a lot of support from SEIU [Service Employees International Union]. We felt very protected. They had really fantastic lawyers standing by that were ready to pounce if anything went awry. We had hoped that there would be more time to tell some of our stories using the people’s mic and to get some more said before they started hauling us…