We have to do something

Pranav Jani: Welcome to another episode of Together We Rise: Solidarity Stories from Central Ohio. I’m so happy to have today on our show my good friend and comrade, Kristen Guptil-Godfrey.

Kristen Guptill-Godfrey, who uses they/them pronouns, is a revolutionary socialist and organizer currently living in Arizona on unceded Tohono O’odham and Yoeme ancestral and traditional lands. Kristen’s mom was born and raised in Columbus, and although Kristen moved a lot growing up, they consider Columbus home.

They got the opportunity to live in Columbus from 2016 to 2018, and during that time, they became a revolutionary socialist and joined their first political home. Kristen also worked as a social worker and supported queer and trans young people.

They are a member of the Tempest Collective and a PhD student at the University of Arizona. Kristen strives to organize and be part of a growing imperfect Left that’s rooted in solidarity and internationalism to fight back against the authoritarianism and liberal capitulation we’re currently facing. Their local work includes organizing on campus for Palestinian liberation and fighting back against the attacks on DEI.

Do you want to talk a little bit about the work you’re doing right now in Arizona and start us off there?

Kristen Guptill-Godfrey: Yeah, for sure. In Arizona, I have been a part of an amazing group of people who have been building a branch for the Tempest Collective. The Tempest Collective is a revolutionary socialist organization with about eight branches across the country. We have been building that branch in Tucson and developing spaces for people to come together and find community and talk about the things that are happening around us, and then together debating a way forward. I’ve been building that branch over the last two years.

And then, recently on campus at the University of Arizona, I was the director of LGBTQ affairs. Since Trump was elected, the University of Arizona has just completely given in to his racist policies and basically renamed all of the cultural resource centers here. They’re no longer called centers. The LGBTQ Center cannot be called LGBTQ. And then they laid off all the directors, including myself. So, through everything that happened with these attacks on DEI, diversity, equity, and inclusion, some of us created an organization called UA Resist.

It’s a group of faculty, staff, students, and community members who are fighting for a liberatory campus. That includes Palestinian liberation, showing up for international students, and DEI. For example, tonight we’re facilitating an Organizing 101 training for students to come and learn the skills that it takes to develop relationships with people.

Also, Tempest is a part of the No Data Center Coalition. Amazon Web Services and the electric company here are creating a data center to store the cloud. And we know that cloud holds the data of people that then Amazon Web Services uses and sells to ICE.

We successfully won the first round. We convinced the city council to vote against it. It’s been nice to be a part of coalition like that. And, in a couple months, we’re going to start this political education series around data centers, what that means for environmental racism, imperialism, and attacks on indigenous people. It’s been fun to get a win. We don’t really get wins that often, so when you get a win you really gotta celebrate.

PJ: When you say you’re a revolutionary socialist, what do you mean by that?

KG: That’s a good question. I think it means, for me, is that the way out of this is revolution.

That the way out of this is masses of people recognizing, ordinary people recognizing, the power they have in themselves to act with other people. To get out of this mess—whatever it is, whatever we want to call it—this racism, this authoritarianism, this imperialism that we’re facing and that the Global South is facing, the only way out of that is through this revolutionary process. We have to take control of our future.

PJ: Thanks. People nowadays are either skittish about revolution or don’t know what it means when the right creates the meaning. Because revolution gets seen that way, how would you describe it for ordinary people who aren’t familiar with the far Left? What would revolution mean? What kind of change are you looking for?

KG: I think it means a change from the ground up. This doesn’t mean that reforms are not good. Sometimes there’s a battle between, do I fight for this reform or do I say, “Oh, that reform sucks. We’re going to be in the same place in ten years. Why not fight for something bigger?” I think reforms are important for revolution because really the end goal is learning how to trust other people and how to democratically make decisions together.

I can’t provide an answer for what revolution will look like, but I know it will only come if we know how to work together and trust each other in that process and make spaces easy for people to enter.

The only way that process can happen is if we win these reforms together and learn about how they work. Like in winning the no data center fight, the trust that was built between those comrades in those organizing rooms really is what we’re fighting for, those relationships.

Maybe next time, it’s not fighting back against a data center. Maybe it’s fighting back against something bigger. And your politics, they move left as you’re in struggle. As you’re winning various reforms, it makes it easier to tie the connections between data centers and the border, or data centers and Palestine.

It’s not just like revolution is this thing that’s in the future, but it’s the revolutionary insight that you must have that really carries disciplined hope along, like I have to be in this for the long haul, and we have to really create change from the ground up, because this isn’t working for masses of people. Like capitalism, the racism that upholds capitalism is not working for so many people—even when they think it’s working for them.

PJ: So as a revolutionary socialist, if you’re fighting for this no data coalition, if you’re fighting around DEI—and I’m really sorry that you and others lost your jobs— if we’re trying to hold our line on those things, that’s not inherently revolutionary. It’s the process of us ourselves taking charge of things. I wanted to ask you about your work in Columbus. What are some of the memories you have of that time and the things that stand out for you about those experiences here in Columbus?

KG: Oh my gosh, that period was so important for me. I met you during that time. When I moved to Columbus, it was like I had this radicalization period during the Black Lives Matter movement. I don’t know if others listening had the same experience, but you realize that stuff is really messed up, and that there are a few people in charge, and they are running everything. As an alienated person, as an isolated person, you find other things to blame.

I had moved to Columbus from the University of Tennessee. I got my master’s in social work, and I helped organize stuff there. But I didn’t know where to place my anger. I didn’t know who the enemy was, and I didn’t know who to trust. I think this is true for a lot of Black, Brown, and Indigenous folks.

So, I moved to Columbus angry. I saw a flyer in a coffee shop, and I think it said something about socialist politics. And so I went.

I went to the talk, and I thought, “Oh, wow, this is really answering a lot of questions for me.” Anybody can organize. But people need training, people need revolutionary love to be organizers. There needs to be a shared vision, and people need to feel like they’re a part of that vision. So, we would go to coffee shops, and we would talk about all of these issues and we would read things.

I remember reading Party and Class with you, and that was foundational for me. I remember one time we were at the coffee shop, and you just went through all of the [communist] internationals and what that meant for the internationalist Left. I’m like, my mind’s just being blown everywhere.

You were a good mentor because we were reading things together. But we also were in this moment of heightened struggle. I was also going to protests with you. We were actually seeing on the ground what the stuff we were reading meant. It was nice to be doing both of those things with you as a mentor in a socialist organization.

PJ: That’s an honor when you say mentor. But I think at the end of the day, you can’t be in an organization that claims to be grassroots if you’re not meeting new people who get what you’re saying from their own experience and their own knowledge. And for us to pair up like that, those were invigorating meetings for me. It was fantastic to be able to go from those study groups to stuff on the ground and have those discussions in person with people in the middle of a time when things were really intense, in the Black Lives Matter movement. It doesn’t matter how long people have been around the movement—we were all getting educated.

KG: It was exhilarating. It was a moment—when previously you just couldn’t say that the police are bad—and it was like this ideological shift that we really had to figure out and bring people with us. It’s like after the encampment movement on college campuses, just second-guessing Zionism is not weird anymore.

There are these moments in history when organizers really have to take the moment, to meet strangers and to connect their personal experiences to an analysis of what’s happening in a way that they can easily understand and easily grasp onto. Sometimes it’s tough. It’s a lifelong process.

PJ: In Columbus, you were also doing work with trans kids. What was that work like and what did you take from it?

KG: Even before I worked there, I started working in social work in the foster care system. I managed a group home for boys in foster care.

It was at that group home that I noticed that the state was sending me trans girls to put in this home with boys. And so it was in that moment that I recognized that these systems are not set up for queer and trans people.

After I got my master’s, I got to work at an after-school program in Columbus. It was the first time that I got to think about political education with young people. That job was the first time I identified as an educator. Of course, young people need safe spaces to be and find friendship, but it was also political. Assata Shakur had just died and I did Assata’s chant with a group of young people.

I got to talk to queer and trans young people about Assata and what that meant for our own liberation as trans people. When I was at that job, I was also reckoning with my own gender. It was also a personal experience. In reckoning with my gender, I was uplifted by 13-year-olds who told me, “You can do this.” I have a video on my phone and it’s facing downwards to not record the young people, but we did Assata’s chant together.

I still do that to this day when I’m in a room full of young people because it really does influence the space that you’re in.

PJ: In memory of Assata, we should do the chant right now. Maybe go back and forth.

KG: It is our duty to fight for our freedom.

PJ: It is our duty to win.

KG: We must love each other and support one another.

PJ: We have nothing to lose but our chains.

KG: Yeah.

PJ: Yeah.

KG: May she rest in paradise.

PJ: We have been talking about bringing together Black Lives Matter and systemic racism, police violence, questions of gender, and questions of trans kids. In the shift to broader politics, what are some of the things that made you ready for that shift—made you a person who, when things are happening in the world, when these questions come, you didn’t just, say, “Wow, there’s a lot that needs to change,” or, “We ought to do something.”

You took steps toward changing this. “I have to be part of the solution.” What were some of those things that drove you to that?

KG: I think becoming a socialist made me aware of things that I didn’t think of before, like the material analysis of Marxism and the class-consciousness that is so necessary. I was also in Columbus in one of my big kid jobs when I got to really think of myself as an exploited worker, as a social worker. I thought about what was required of me as a worker and being alienated in that workplace. And I remember being in an International Socialist Organization meeting asking that question about how workers are exploited. What does that look like for educators and social workers?

I was putting together those pieces, and then it became clear to me that everything was connected, like the paycheck I had or where I lived or the gentrified neighborhood that my grandma lives in Columbus, where now her house is worth $500,000 and white people are asking to buy her house. That’s all material things we can touch and feel. It made it clear that life doesn’t have to be this way, that, as a worker, as a Black worker, I deserve more. I understood racism. But to really confront racism as it plays out in your everyday life is for you as a working-class person.

PJ: So that resonated with things you already knew but also put them in a new light.

KG: There’s this assumption in mainstream society, and even in the history classes that we’re in, that things just get better.

You know how people say, “I can’t believe you said that word. It’s 2025.” Like things just get better. And people are even now, “How are they going after same-sex marriage? It’s 2025.” And it’s like no, this is a battle, and if we whatever we want to call ourselves, the Left, progressives, if we don’t join together and fight that battle, we lose.

What we’re seeing is this back and forth of winning and losing, and when we lose, we are not organized. We are not talking to each other. We are not bringing new people into the movement. The Marxist analysis of history convinced me that I have to play a role in that history, that I’m just not going to wake up tomorrow and Black liberation will come. I think I read somewhere that there are more Black men in prison now than were enslaved. It’s a real thing you can touch to know that things don’t just get better. We have to fight for the things that we deserve, and they’re not just going to come to us, and we can’t rely on anybody but ourselves and other ordinary people to make that happen.

PJ: You’ve seen not only in Ohio but everywhere, these attacks on trans rights that are actually attacks on trans people. It’s not even been abstract, like you can’t have this right. It’s been like, why do you exist.

KG: Exactly—the demonization of a whole group of people.

PJ: As a cisgender person, I’m in solidarity in the fight against that, but I don’t feel it in the same way that a trans person would feel it. I don’t want to ask an unfair question, but how do you look at this moment? How are you experiencing this moment? You’ve been through a lot of moments, in your life as an activist and as a person where you’ve said this is a really bad time. This is a really hard time. How does this time feel to you?

KG: It feels rough because it feels unorganized.

In different meetings that I’m in, whether it’s a big coalition meeting or whether it’s a small Tempest meeting, it’s hard to even think about strategies and tactics. It’s like a lot of bad things are happening to us, but there’s not necessarily thousands of people going into the streets.

So then as a revolutionary, as someone who knows that we need people in this, we need people to take action, I think that is what honestly scares me the most.

And I think Trump is really good at this. He was good at this his first time around, but putting so much on us so quickly. It’s like you learn about one thing, and then he throws something else at you, so it’s too hard to keep up. And I know people feel that way, but it just feels like we don’t have enough people on our side doing active things every day to fight back.

And that’s not to say that people are not active. People are. And they are really giving their all. But I think it’s when we are unorganized, it is easier for people to be hopeless and move away if they have that privilege, or to just hold their ground and to see where it’s going to go.

Even now, it’s hard to offer someone a vision, and I think that’s what Trump is good at. He gave people a wrong vision, but he did give people a vision and an answer to why they can’t afford groceries. An inaccurate one, but the U.S. is founded on racism and enslavement and genocide, so when you tell somebody, “You don’t live a good life because of immigrants,” it’s easy to understand that.

What is our vision, and how do we share that with other people? It feels different from the Black Lives Matter movement. There were some parts of it that were unorganized, but there just seemed to be this force of people into the streets. People saying, “I’m going to do something about it.” It might be unorganized, and it might be tactically strong with no strategy. But people were doing something. And now it feels like we need that pressure. And we saw some of that for Palestine, but even that has died down, especially in the U.S.

PJ: So there needs to be this revival of this sense of vision, I think that’s a good word. There are a lot of people fighting, and a lot of us have been very busy. But we are missing this sense of collectively are we going to take this on or not?

Even people say fascism is this. That’s fine. People can say whatever word they want. But what are we going to do? That’s the question—and are we going to do it together? It’s about solidarity. Different people are at the front lines of different kinds of attacks, and that’s undeniable. At the same time, we’re in this together. No individual group is going to liberate themselves. What does that look like for you? What does solidarity in practice look like for you? How do we get this diverse group of people, who share a lot but also have differences, together?

I’m not asking you for a formula, but what I’m asking you for, how do we do it? If you have it, you should share it. But what I’m asking is, what have some of your experiences have been of those moments of solidarity, experiencing it and organizing around it?

KG: I think a couple things. I think one is connecting struggles, and two is not just connecting struggles, but also—I’m trying to think of a way to phrase it. For cis people to care about trans folks, for example. Why would a cis person want to show up for trans folks? Let’s say you don’t have any trans family members, you don’t have any trans kids. You’ve just heard about them on the news, and now you’re trying to figure out which way to go. I think the way to do that is to think about your own struggles that you’re facing and then having this material analysis and asking, what will I lose if trans people keep losing rights?

I think we saw this coming when they got rid of Roe v. Wade, right? That is an attack on trans folks and cis women. But it’s tough to see that attack happen without a huge movement to fight back against it. Now we’re seeing the demonization of trans people. This attack on a person’s ability to have an autonomous body where they make decisions for themselves. And that should be the number one thing we’re all fighting for. And that has everything to do with cis men, right? Cis men oftentimes, I think, don’t have autonomy over their bodies in that you get to only be emotional and express a certain type of emotion in a certain setting, if any.

You’re judged for how you express yourself; you’re judged if you don’t express yourself the right way. So that has everything to do with trans rights. That has everything to do with the medical industry and what services that we can be provided with, whether it’s hormones or abortion rights. I think that’s one way in terms of thinking about how this affects me. I could go my whole life not meeting a trans person, let’s say, but what does that trans person’s experience have to do with me? And if I don’t show up for that trans person, my own material rights are going to be taken away.

I’m not going to have abortion rights, or I’m not going to be able to think differently about my masculinity. I think those two things are very connected. Like with the border—not being allowed to move your body where you need to, whether it’s for your family to live or because you want to go somewhere else. That is an issue of autonomy about what you can do for you and your family,

PJ: And then there is the kind of moral and ethical question to just stand up for people next to you.

KG: If people are moved in that way: I have to show up because it’s the right thing to do, I think that’s brilliant. But also, I think there is this insight that, if they lose their rights, they’re coming for me next. I think that is very real, and we have seen that play out in the last 15 or 20 years.

I think another piece of solidarity for me is letting people mess up. I was just listening to Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor giving a talk. And she was like, “What if during the Black Lives Matter movement, we didn’t expect people to already be abolitionists when they came into our meetings?”

What if we invited people to a meeting and a white working-class person comes who is not convinced that cops are bad, and says, “Sometimes my neighbors and I do call the cops because things happen”? And then sometimes what we saw in that moment was maybe cancel politics. Maybe, “Oh we’re not going to invite that person to the next meeting” instead of a holding organizing spaces that can actually be somewhere where you get your questions answered in a loving, comradely way to then move people to understand—like what I just explained for a cis man caring about trans people. That just can’t happen in your own home. That has to be in collectivity with someone else who’s also thinking about it.

Say you’re a teacher and it’s your first time hearing about a gender-neutral restroom in your school. The spaces that organizers create have to be where people can connect those struggles. Then solidarity can be material. But if we are expecting people to say a certain thing, or to be educated on this certain thing, I don’t know where adults are going to get educated on this thing. They’re coming to us, I hope. So when they come into our spaces that should be easily accessible.

They should say something wrong. And then we should meet them with love and care, and get them to abolitionist politics, not expecting someone to show up and completely understand Zionism, and completely understand a one-state solution, and completely understand Palestinian liberation.

How can we be the landing pad for people to recognize the material connections from themselves and a Palestinian in Gaza? We have to be doing that work.

I just heard David McNally say that the spaces that we’re in, they might not be revolutionary spaces, but if they are spaces where people are at, we must be there. And we don’t change our politics, but we create spaces to talk about things with other people and bring our revolutionary politics into that.

I know both you and I are at universities where people have many different ideas. But universities are also made up of poor people, of working-class people, of Black and Brown people, so we must be there. Then we have to offer a different vision of what the university could be like. We have to talk to people who maybe have not thought about a free education. Or about an LGBTQ center that will always be in existence, or no police on campus. We have to be in these spaces where people are to offer these different types of visions, to work with people, and to move each other. We have to be open to being shifted by other people that we’re meeting. I think that’s how the relationship has to work to be a true, honest, comradely relationship.

PJ: There are not thousands of people on the street. Because of all the repression, the movements themselves don’t look as big in that kind of climate. There are a lot of people who are on the fence, who aren’t exactly sure what their next step should be. What kind of thoughts or advice do you have for people on the fence right now who see a lot of atrocities but aren’t sure what they should do?

KG: Really, I think all I can say is you can’t do it alone. And you have to do something. You have to act, but that action only means something, and you’re only provided with safety to act ifs you do it with other people. So that means understanding the community you’re in.

Who’s meeting where? What is the landscape of the city you’re in? Do you have a friend who is just as pissed off as you and you want to read this book about McCarthyism together? I’m sure all of us have a pissed off coworker or a pissed off sibling who’s also thinking about this stuff. It doesn’t have to be a meeting with 50 people. It can be getting with a couple of people and thinking about how things work and why they work the way they work and providing each other that space to ask those questions. If you hear of a protest, if you hear of a march, if you hear of a teach-in, go. And you will hopefully be met with kindness.

The role of an organizer is to ask, “You got a ride?” Or to send you an email with five resources because you had this one question that they remembered from two weeks ago. That’s the role of an organizer, to make it easier for people to think about their place in organizing, their place in this revolution.

There’s a place for everybody. But we have to do something, and we have to do it with other people.

Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”
Featured Image credit: Becker1999 and Pranav Jani; modified by Tempest.