By ANDREW BAILEY
BG Independent News Correspondent
After attending a Black Lives Matter protest on June 5 in his hometown of Napoleon, BGSU student Donovan “Van” Gaffney was inspired to start a movement of his own.
This came after a friend of his asked on Twitter what she, as a white woman, could do to be an ally to the Black community amidst global protests over police brutality, Gaffney said. He then expressed his plan to start a Black Lives Matter chapter in Bowling Green.
But he soon realized that he wanted his movement to be more encompassing than he originally thought.
“At the protest I went to in Napoleon, I saw Latinos and Hispanics talking about the racism in our community and I thought, well, this is bigger than us. They need to have a voice too, and other people as well,” Gaffney said. “And there’s a lot of people in Bowling Green that just deserve to be who they are.”
Gaffney decided he wanted to fight for everyone and give all marginalized minority groups a safe place. He decided to start a social justice movement.
“After thinking about it, I decided that the organization had to be bigger and broader than focusing on one form of discrimination. Racism and discrimination against Black people is the focus of the country right now, but there is much more discrimination that other people face every day,” Gaffney wrote in a June 13 post on his personal blog, “Blogging Van’s Life. “I want the group to focus on discrimination against women, Asians, Middle Easterns [sic], Hispanics, Latinix [sic] and the LGBT+ community. I want it to be more of a social justice group that covers people affected in our community.”
With the foundation laid, Gaffney started recruiting others to help him form the group. He only has five members currently committed to his organization, but he has been hard at work spreading the word through Twitter, his blog and speaking to student organizations like the BGSU Young Democratic Socialists of America. He considers the Black Lives Matter Protest on May 31 in Bowling Green as the starting point for his movement’s growth.
“That’s where it really began. It’s where I really started talking to people and they responded positively,” Gaffney said.
However, he has experienced bumps in the road. The coronavirus pandemic coupled with many students going home for the summer has made it difficult for Gaffney to recruit members. And he wants those who join his movement to be as serious as he is about activism and striving for change in their community, he said.
“I’m really looking for people who want to take this next step. There’s people that talk their talk on social media, so I want them to walk their walk with me,” he said. “Signing and sharing petitions on social media is good, it really is, but I want people to join and be willing to get out there and do the groundwork.”
Despite these early struggles, he has plans for recruitment when students begin returning to campus in August and begin the fall semester, he said.
“I want to get union tables to show people what we’re all about, talk to faculty members and hold open meetings for people to share their stories and their struggles so that we can help them and the community,” he said. “We’ll also plan fundraisers and I’d like to collaborate with different student organizations like the Black Student Union, Latino Student Union, Vision and many others.”
Gaffney is entering his fourth year at BGSU with a double major in political science and ethnic studies and plans to graduate in the spring. But once he graduates, he’ll continue his involvement and wants to start an off-campus branch.
“When I first had this in mind, I knew I wasn’t going to be there long. But I wanted to still further this cause, so after graduation I’ll expand it off-campus too,” he said. “I’m not planning on leaving BG anytime soon, so I’ll be hard at work after I graduate, too.”
Gaffney has high hopes for social justice in Bowling Green and is ready to start making a difference.
“I’m ready to see how many people will join along the way and we’ll see how big this gets. We’re out here and we want to make a difference in Bowling Green,” Gaffney said. “And something I tell myself is something I want everyone else to know too: if you want to see a change, you’ve got to be the change.”
For those who are interested in joining or learning more about Gaffney’s social justice movement, he encourages people to reach out to him through email, at gdonova@bgsu.edu, and Twitter @DonovanRGaffney.
