With the upcoming inauguration of Donald Trump, tensions are high across the nation. City on a Hill Press sat down for an interview with Tiffany Dena Loftin, a prominent UC Santa Cruz alumna and current organizer, to discuss balancing being proactive and exercising self-care in a time when the world is becoming increasingly harsh and authoritarian.
Loftin, a 2011 UCSC alumna, was appointed to the President’s Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for African Americans by Barack Obama in 2015. Later, in 2018, she served as the National Director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Youth and College Division. After she left the NAACP in 2021, she began teaching as a visiting professor at UCSC. She has a five-year background in national labor union organizing and has been a part of various organizations such as the American Federation of Teachers and the American Federation of Labor-Council of Industrial Organizations.
Editor’s Note: Answers have been edited for clarity and brevity. This was published alongside Ayo Banjo’s conversation of January 20th and Beyond.
Interviewer: How were you as a UCSC student and then later as a leader empowered to organize?
Loftin: I’m really motivated by peoples’ stories. As a labor organizer right now, I work with workers around the world, and I hear their stories daily, and it inspires me to continue to believe in the society that I think we should be living in.
I think every single person should have healthcare for free. I think every woman should be able to choose what they want to do with their bodies. I think jobs should provide people with sick leave and maternity leave and family medical leave and family death leave and that it shouldn’t [only] be 10 days out of the year. I think that people who are incarcerated should not face judgment when they’re applying to new jobs once they get released. I think that undocumented students shouldn’t have to pay out-of-state tuition.
I believe those things and that becomes my motivation for the amount of time and work I put into organizing.
Interviewer: Has your inspiration changed as you’ve grown older?
Loftin: When I first started being an organizer, I wanted to focus so much on winning and trying to win, like real solutions that change people’s lives. And although that is the goal and the most important thing, that’s no longer my motivation. I’ve learned over time that sometimes we don’t win, and I still have to be motivated.
I think my motivation comes from being able to, unapologetically and without fear, believe that a new world and society is possible, which I don’t know if I believed when I was in Santa Cruz. Society can be different, and my motivation is driven by ‘I can’t stop until that vision of society comes into fruition.’
Interviewer: How do you think people can continue to fight while still living their stories and their struggles?
Loftin: I don’t think the two are separate. I think what happens is sometimes people get really overwhelmed thinking that they have to organize and solve their own problems, but they are one and the same.
So we have to ask ourselves the question: What is our story? And if we ask ourselves that question, we should discover what brings us to this work in the first place. From there, we should do the work. The best way that we move people is through our stories.
Interviewer: Trump’s inauguration is also falling on Martin Luther King Day. Do you think this will spark actions at all levels and, if so, in what ways?
Loftin: Oh, I know they are. We have people who are going to gather in Washington D.C. for two marches the day before and the day after, which is why Donald Trump is calling for a rally on Sunday night. He’s trying to outdo the action that’s happening the morning of, where communities and organizations are gathering in D.C. to make their presence known in opposition to the inauguration.
I know that Santa Cruz is having an event Monday evening — an alternative to the inauguration. There are people who are just going to continue to completely boycott the inauguration altogether.
Interviewer: Have you as an organizer noticed if there’s an air of defeat regarding this year’s inauguration as opposed to when Trump won and was inaugurated in 2016?
Loftin: Not that I can tell. I don’t think people are freezing or defeated, I think that people are sad and grieving and feel disrespected. We are resisting and looking for other opportunities, but I think there’s some people who just need rest, and we have to be honest and make space for people to do that. I know people are exhausted — they did a lot of work on the election.
However, I think that there’s a lot of people who are really eager to see how the Democratic Party might recreate a new strategy. We still have four years, but people are doing that work now. They’re starting early, and I think people are prepared to resist and block and defend.
Interviewer: How do you feel communities that have been impacted in the past by Trump and will be impacted after Jan. 20 can practice self-care while still exercising agency?
Loftin: Let me say what the fundamentals are, and this is gonna sound remedial, but it’s serious.
Prioritizing sleep, prioritizing water, and prioritizing in-person community building. We cannot build community online. Online is a tool for us to meet people, but it is not the way we build community. And our community, our self-care, can not only be connected to isolation and individualism. We must do self-care together in a community.
Interviewer: What do you think it means to be “proactive” in an organizational sense?
Loftin: Most peoples’ assumption on a question like that is how do we stay ahead of the game? But I understand that question to say, ‘what is the way that we could be most prepared, to be proactive?’ And the only tested method of being prepared is by preparing in a group with other people.
If we collaborate and work together, I don’t think we have to worry about being attacked, destroyed, canceled, sloppy, not successful, or having low turnout, because we will be prepared.
