This past week, public transit riders, bus drivers, union members and organizers came together to picket outside of the Buhl Building in support of SMART bus drivers. As onlookers walked past the display of disruption and power, they heard ATU members chanting, “Time to pay our riders more,” “A new contract cannot wait,” and “What kind of power? Union power!”

Hey DJJ-niks! My name is Stevie Kollin and I use they/them pronouns. You may have seen me before as DJJ’s brief but beloved intern or as the nihilistic punk teenager, Zohar in our most recent Purim spiel. However, I am honored to re-introduce myself as the new Community Organizer for Detroit Jews for Justice!

A bit about myself - 

I grew up in the burbs of Metro Detroit heavily involved with the Jewish Community, a source of comfort and hope in a world that kept trying to teach me injustice was inevitable. Growing up in a world of rampant gun violence, a Trump presidency, pandemics, occupations, genocides, and national uprisings, I have fought to hold onto the efficacy of the collective and our power to create systemic change in a world built upon structures of domination. Being a Gen Z organizer meant being vigilant to any loud noises in my high school and leaving college for a year to fight in the streets when COVID-19 closed our classrooms. My background as an organizer comes from a sense of critical skepticism embedded in the hope and the calls of my community: B’tzelem Elohim, Tikkun Olam, Tzedek Tzedek Tirdof, a reminder of the obligation and power we hold to build collective liberation out of systems of oppression. 

For me this looked like organizing around gun violence prevention as part of the 2017 student uprising, March For Our Lives, bringing together the student body in multiple school walkouts to demand a safer future. In the middle of my freshman year at Haverford College, Covid-19 shut the world down. I moved home, lost a lot of faith in the world, and regained it step by step as part of Detroit Will Breathe, the Detroit Black Lives Matter movement. After months of drumming through the streets of Detroit, canvassing to end Project Greenlight, and rambunctiously caravanning around representatives' homes, I returned to a still mostly shut-down university I barely recognized anymore. This led me to move to Bryn Mawr College and become a part of the collective for sexual assault prevention; producing a collection of artwork from survivors, creating educational programs, and organizing campus-wide campaigns dedicated to awareness and prevention.