Hello SAF community! My name is Nicole Murashima and I feel unbelievably fortunate to be a part of the 2024 Into the Fields intern cohort! I am a rising senior undergraduate student at UNC Chapel Hill with a major in Hispanic Literature and Global Studies, as well as a minor in Environmental Sciences and Studies. This summer I have been placed with the Hispanic Federation, where I will do a range of work to support and work alongside the Hispanic community in Mount Olive, NC.
I was born in California but I have lived in Chapel Hill, North Carolina for the past 12 years. I had the privilege of growing up in a family that supported me and inspired me to do anything I could make of this precious opportunity of life. For me, education has always signified freedom and power as it opens so many spaces by way of knowledge. SAF’s mission of practicing popular education, or mutual community-based learning, really resonates with me in the way it not only democratizes knowledge, but also societal power. This is a space I want to be a part of. The majors and minors that I study in college have no other appeal to me than the fact that I am utterly passionate about them! I am unsure of what my future holds but I know that I am staying true to what I like to learn about and what I think is right.
I absolutely love learning, and my experience at UNC so far has been really transformational and led me to an interest in spheres of Latin American studies, institutionalized oppression, and human rights. I wanted to be a part of SAF’s efforts because I have always been a proponent of grassroots, bottom-up, efforts to fortify local communities. Farmworker justice is so important to me because not only are farmworkers the very foundations of the entirety of society, but fighting for justice in this sphere sets the foundations for social liberation everywhere.
My goal this summer is to feel like a member of the community within the Hispanic Federation, but also within the greater Mount Olive region with the people we work with. I anticipate it to be challenging in the way that things may seem super unfamiliar at first, but I have an amazing support system of my family, friends, intern partner, and the rest of the ITF cohort to have my back if I get stuck. I am the most excited about this being an environment where I am on the front lines of community-based initiatives and planting the seeds of social change! In many of my classes, we learn about the broken systems, but this is one way to put those thoughts into practice for remediation. I am so grateful for all the support of the SAF community, and I cannot wait to see what this summer holds for the rest of the ITF cohort and I!
Written and submitted by Nicole Murashima, Into the Fields 2024