Almost everyone who works or volunteers at Oxfam has had an “epiphany moment.” Ask us about it, and we’ll tell you what inspired us to change our lives, pick up the baton of volunteerism, or put our talents to work helping Oxfam accomplish great things here and abroad.
My story, though, is a little bit different than most. It involves Joe Strummer, the late leader of the iconic British political rock band The Clash.
University of Kansas students Zach Bealer and Christina Henning show off their (temporary!) Oxfam tattoos at a Kansas City climate change event. Photo: Liliana Rodriguez / Oxfam America
I went to college in the late 1990s, at the tail end of the decade of the slacker. Back then, you might have seen a few activists here and there on campus, but mostly we cultivated an aura of general apathy right down to the laces of our Doc Martens. It was okay to care vaguely about stuff like women’s rights or the environment, but it wasn’t necessarily cool to show too much enthusiasm. If you wanted to make a statement, you might scrawl something enigmatic on your t-shirt with magic marker, dye your hair pink, and leave it at that.
At risk of showing my age, I’ll just go ahead and say it: things have changed.
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