By Madi Hinze

Alyssa Pagan is a PSU student, a prominent member of the Portland State University Student Union (PSUSU), and a force to be reckoned with. Within the span of our short conversation, Alyssa talked about her personal background, what’s next for Disarm PSU, and what she thinks it will take for PSU’s president, Wim Wiewel, to listen to student activists such as herself.

It seems that within everything Alyssa said, there was inspiration to be found somewhere. Even at the end when I asked if she had anything else to add, rather than throwing in a promotional plug for the next PSUSU event or having nothing else to say, she left me with a brilliant statement that ends with a call to action for PSU students, specifically women of color.

Through both her words and actions, Alyssa continually proves to be one of the leaders we need on campus.

You’re originally from New Jersey, right? Why’d you move to Portland?

Hurricane Sandy [brought me here]. I was living in an apartment building on the Jersey Shore in 2012 that was almost destroyed by the storm, and I was put up in a FEMA hotel that was a converted Holiday Inn. I was in there for days…when the airports opened back up, I was looking at places that I could go where I had friends that would either put me up or have good leads, and I had been thinking about Portland for a while. I decided to give it a shot, because the idea of staying in New Jersey where so many people’s lives had been destroyed made me feel like I couldn’t possibly stay there while maintaining my emotional health.

Were you going to school in New Jersey or did you start at PSU here?

I started at PSU here, one of my neighbors worked at the university and we got to talking right here in this lobby, and she was asking me where I went to school…and wanted to know about my education and I told her no, I grew up very, very poor, by a single mother, and I didn't have any self esteem as a trans person who was cut down at every turn.

I didn’t think about higher education or any sort of professional life in my future, I felt like that was for other kinds of people, not for me. She told me I needed to think about it and that I only lived a few blocks away from the university and that I should give it a shot — and this is me, giving it a shot.

And what are you majoring in?

Women, Gender, and Sexuality.

In terms of activism, when was the first time you realized activism was something you wanted to do? Like for me, it was going to a Don’t Shoot PDX rally.

Me too!

Yeah! I’d been to LGBTQ rallies in Arizona, but it just wasn’t the same thing, or it didn’t have the same kind of energy.

Yeah, for me it was a Don’t Shoot rally too, and now I’m one of the main organizers in Don’t Shoot.

How did you get involved with PSUSU?

I had been going to study groups with the International Socialist Organization (ISO). Jamie Partridge, one of the organizers who went on to become the godfather for me in my life, I love him and he gives me so much direction and love, told me about a rally to go to the Board of Trustees meeting to protest the then-pending or up-for-argument decision to arm campus security, and that I needed to go. I thought he was right, so I went and quickly realized that the student union was the only group of people on campus who were really moving and pushing back against the power, and I realized that these are the people I needed to work with.

If you could describe PSUSU in three words, what would they be?

Confrontational for justice.

I know that everyone is PSUSU is really close, what have you learned from them that you don’t think you would have otherwise?

I learned that the bonds of shared identity and culture that I had only been privy to in my life, based on necessity, are not the only ones that are worth having. That most of the people in PSUSU are cis or not trans, or white, and I am neither of those things, and most of them are middle-class or come from middle-class families and I don’t…I did not think before joining PSUSU that I would find such closeness with people like that, and I am very pleasantly surprised because they represent to me what actual solidarity looks like and the magical potential of working across difference in the sense of Audre Lorde, who is probably my biggest influence.

What other organizations are you involved with, besides PSUSU and Don’t Shoot?

Jobs with Justice and 15 Now.

Do you try to commit an equal amount of time to all of them, or is there one that you focus on primarily?

Primarily PSUSU.

What’s next for #DisarmPSU?

We are going to be doing a series of informational sessions, we did one recently at the Multicultural Center and we were invited to do more. We also did one at the Students of Color Conference. Our hope for that is to help dispel some of the misconceptions about [PSUSU] that have been perpetrated largely by the administration, which seeks to paint us as out-of-touch radicals and troublemakers who use tactics that are not helpful. We want to flip that.

What do you think it will take for Wim to really listen to student activists, if anything?

It will take students who are upset with him and his decisions to actually get organized and be willing to confront the injustice that he’s perpetrating. I had a professor who told a full classroom of students who were on the fence about whether or not they would actually get active…on the day of the Million Student March…and the professor said that they have been in the room with Wim when he has said that there is no reason to change his policies and his decisions because there’s only a small amount of students, relatively, that are actually voicing their concerns.

So that gives me some insight into knowing what it is that he is thinking, and he will probably not change his mind until more students get organized and resist the oppression he is enacting.

Is there anything else you’d like to say or add?

I am making a concerted effort to center women of color and have them in positions of leadership in this movement. The Black Lives Matter movement that I draw so much of my perspective from is led by women of color, and particularly intersectional feminists, and that praxis is so important and transformative when paired with confrontational tactics to be able to affect the kind of change that we need.