Arizona Equals Samuel

With a busy start to the week for anti-LGBTQ+ bills in the legislature, this week’s episode, featuring Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr is coming out a little behind schedule, but it’s well worth the wait. Woven through his story of student organizing is a fascinating conversation about race and gender with a rare pairing of academic depth and personal, emotional relevance. The Arizona Equals Conversation is an interview podcast collecting the stories of LGBTQ+ people living in Arizona. To listen to past episodes of the podcast, or to sign up to be a guest on a future episode of the show, visit equalityarizona.org/stories. Full Episode Transcript Jeanne Woodbury From Equality Arizona, you're listening to the Arizona Equals Conversation. I'm Jeanne Woodbury. I'm the Interim Executive Director at Equality Arizona, and each week on the show I talk with a queer person living in Arizona about their story and their communities. Today's guest, Samuel, is a student at ASU and a relatively recent transplant to Arizona. And that means, like more than a few people I've spoken to on the podcast, he moved here during a challenging moment in the pandemic. It's something that can make it incredibly difficult to find community, but Samuel really hit the ground running when it came to some of the political organizing that they've been involved with at ASU, and I think that's really remarkable. They also share an experience I've talked about with a lot of college students of coming out during college, away from family, and navigating the tension there. But before I go on, let me take a minute to let Samuel introduce himself. Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr Hi, this is Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr. My pronouns are he/him and they/them. Jeanne Woodbury This was also just an incredibly fun conversation for me because we got to talk about gender in a in a way that I think is really rare, and I'm really excited to share that. I think that there's a chance it gets a little academic at points, but overall it really isn't. Before we start the interview, I should say that we've got some great guests lined up over the next few weeks, but we're always looking for new people to talk to, and you don't need to be in politics, and you don't need to be an academic. That's not what the podcast is about, actually. So if you'd like to share your story on a future episode of the show, just send us an email at [email protected]. Or you can sign up on our website at equalityarizona.org/stories. Alright, let's roll the tape. [beep] [clicking] [music] [clicking] [music] Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr The second she found out that I was like involved in like politics, she's just like, yeah, you should definitely be on the podcast. I was just like, okay, okay. Jeanne Woodbury Oh, that's great. Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr Like I don't have that much podcast experience, but I'll do my best. Jeanne Woodbury Yeah, no, most people I talked to have never been on a podcast before. The idea is just to get people's stories, figure out, you know, what's their experience been in Arizona as a queer person living here. And it's fun because sometimes I get to talk to people and they've lived here their whole lives, and so I get to talk about like, oh, how has this neighborhood changed over the past 20 years or whatever? And sometimes there's people who have moved here, you know, a lot of people moved here during the pandemic actually. And so then that's always really interesting to hear about how that went. You were saying you've lived here for two years, right? Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr It’ll be two years by this coming August. Jeanne Woodbury Oh, cool. Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr Yeah, still the new kid on the block. Jeanne Woodbury What did you move here for? Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr I moved here for school. Jeanne Woodbury Oh, okay, cool. Are you at ASU? Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr Mm-hmm. Jeanne Woodbury Okay, and you said you've done some political organizing. Is that student-led organizing? Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr Yeah, that's student-led organizing, although I've started, I personally started to branch out into more general community organizing off campus as well. Jeanne Woodbury Oh, cool. How did you find your way into that? I think, like, I would imagine moving to a new state, getting started at a school, it could be kind of hard to figure out where to plug in. Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr I think I'm actually part of this, not generation, but like cohort of people who, I'm aware that people have been organizing, especially around like Black Lives Matter for like the past almost decade at this point from like Ferguson and then some, but then 2020 really was like a reawakening of that for a lot of politics, like anti-racist politics, feminist politics; a lot of people around my age started to tap more into that, especially with the 2020 election also coinciding with a lot of that. And I personally, however, didn't get that involved in the uprisings, because my family, lots of them are immunocompromised, so I decided it would be best to stay home. But the second I arrived at college, it was then just like, okay, I wanna get involved in explicitly leftist work, so… Jeanne Woodbury Okay, that's really cool. Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr Yeah, I started joining like a couple orgs like Young Democratic Socialists of America, MECHA de ASU, Students for Justice in Palestine. So I guess I really did hit the ground running. Jeanne Woodbury Yeah, you really did. YDSA — it seems like they have a pretty big presence at ASU. Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr Yeah, we do have a fair size presence, especially amongst like general left-wing activism. And although there have been points where in the past especially it was like a little lower, at least during the, like the height of the pandemic, it was very hard to like facilitate anything. Since like, it was all online, but we're definitely more on that like upward trend of like people like coming to events, of course, like masks required, so that people are safe. Jeanne Woodbury Yeah. Did you feel like during that period where everything had to be online, that it got harder because… well, why do you think it got harder for people? Just like not wanting to be on Zoom or wanting something that they couldn't do. Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr Yeah, I think it was harder for a lot of people to be on Zoom because I'm aware that some people have in the past done a lot of organizing work like digitally or online for a variety of reasons. Most of us just generally aren't used to navigating those spaces. So it was a lot harder to… like general like social cues, for example, are a lot hard to read through like a screen versus seeing someone's full body, like, emote and whatever. Jeanne Woodbury Yeah, and I feel like it's harder to get to know people. Like, okay, you can have essentially the same meeting on Zoom, but you don't have the coffee chit chat beforehand and the walking out to the door conversations afterward. You miss out on all this like, bigger picture of it. Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr Yeah. Jeanne Woodbury I don't know, it was interesting. And I think what you were saying about like, being kind of clued into what was happening for a much longer period of time, going back to like, when was Ferguson, like 2014? Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr Ferguson was about 2014, yeah. Jeanne Woodbury Yeah, so that really is like a decade at this point. Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr Yeah, so lots of people, like I personally wasn't involved in politics at that point 'cause I was 11, but. (both laughing) But especially as I got older, I was like aware, like it was like a lot of like in-person group, like people out, not only in the streets, but in their neighborhoods and wherever, like coming together and then like the pandemic kind of like jostled people in, like lots of people indoors. Like obviously you had like essential workers that still had to like, had their lives on the line. But lots of us for some periods of time were generally isolated from the broader community's like physical presence, so. Jeanne Woodbury Yeah. Well, when you were 11, I mean, I figure you… This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit equalityarizona.substack.com