Education: My community's experience with social change is influenced by education because we often connect at our educational institution (PCC) and we often come together for support through social change and to gather to navigate social change and our involvement. The social change my community and I engage with the most in relation to the institution of education is dismantling the hidden curriculum and creating accessible community for those of us who are entering college for the first time, returning after a long break or have otherwise had barriers to education due to social location like age, documentation status, gender or ability. My community and I are dedicated to making our educational environment, SE PCC/SE WRC, a non-judgmental, intersectional and diverse community. The inaccessibility to necessary technology is also something my community and I address, many of us share laptops or headphones with one another, inform each other on places to access free computers (PCC library, WRC, public library) and free printing. Conversations about the hidden curriculum is something that happens frequently within the GTC community, as many of us are young adults who had issues with the traditional school system in some capacity.

Social Movements: Social movements influence my community strongly because my community consists of people who keep up to date with social movements around the world, and especially in Portland. Our experience of social change is influenced by social movements because many people in my community are marginalized identities who have been put at risk due to recent resistant social movements. Social movements that have been negatively impacting members of my community are the ICE abductions, anti-abortion and anti-gender affirming care legislation, and especially the rise of aggressive/violent and blatant misogyny, racism and transphobia in America's culture. The social change that's been influenced by these social movements is the collective effort to normalize and create an equitable culture for undocumented immigrants, documented immigrants, transgender people, queer people and people with uterus's, as a community we want our community members with these identities to feel safe and appreciated, now many of these community members are scared or dimming their light/personality out of fear. In Portland my community understands that we have certain protections, but it doesn't change the fact that we are seeing people who share our social locations hurt, murdered or otherwise experience violent oppression, physical or otherwise, all across our supposed Free Country.

Health, Safety & the State: The final biggest influence on my community and our experience of social change is the institution of health, safety and the state. This institution works more as a drive or motivation for my community to work harder as a collective. By this I mean that as a collective we work stronger together to enact social change, for example, creating a culture of equity, awareness of sociological imagination and an awareness of social location and how that shapes one another's individual experiences in social change and in the face of societal oppression. My community has an emphasis on mutual aid and providing one another with affordable health resources, something my community has been very happy about is the Multnomah County Health Service van that visits SE PCC campus three times a month. This was exciting because many people in my community have language barriers that serve as a barrier between them and reaching out for care, so having a service like that come to us was treasured since if someone with a language barrier wanted someone who's first language is english to come with them they could. This was also exciting because many of us are low-income, have transportation barriers, or otherwise have had an issue accessing healthcare services in the past. The social construction of mental illness has had the largest impact on my community and I, many of us have underprivileged social locations, such as age, AFAB, queerness, employment, drug use and more. Many of us have had negative experiences with mental health services, therapists/psychiatrists, and healthcare or state officials. This is because of how common institutionalization is and how common it is for healthcare providers to misdiagnose people or give them a medication that only worsens their symptoms, people in my community come together for mutual aid and mutual support because of this. We rely on one another when one of us is struggling with getting affordable, accurate and proper care because, regardless of individual lived experience or social location, my community is well aware of how marginalized and intersectional identities are and have been treated by the institution. My community is working towards a social change of meeting people where they are at in the context of healthcare and reducing the possibility of institutionalization, we want a widespread culture that uses sociological imagination first when treating people for mental or physical health issues. The social construction of people who use drugs and drug use generally is something that my community struggles with especially, many of us have witnessed loved ones, strangers or ourselves overdose and we are aware of the fellow PCC students who have also passed due to an overdose, we are firsthand witnessing the state, health and safety institution fail us and fail to accurately respond to drug use. It's framed with stigma, and almost solely met with institutionalization through incarceration, rehab or mental health facilities, when many of us understand and have seen that community care has helped people reduce their use or use in a safer way much better than the state has. A social change we are particularly engaged with is using non-stigmatizing language, because language is especially powerful in peoples' attitudes and beliefs when it comes to stigmatized identities, words like junkie, tweaker, or words that otherwise imply drug use defines a person are words I and others explicitly do not use and educate those who do.