One Clap Speech and Debate

Camp One Clap 2, Episode 4: Izzy Garcia's Activist's Guide to the Clapocalypse, Part 1 - Platforms in Platform

• Lyle Wiley / Izzy Garcia • Season 6 • Episode 4

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6:4 - Camp One Clap 2024: Day 4

For notes and details about the episode, check out the website here:
https://www.oneclapspeechanddebate.com/post/camp-one-clap-2-episode-4-izzy-garcia-s-activist-s-guide-to-the-clapocalypse-part-1-platforms-i

Ever wondered how you can turn your fears into a powerful voice for change?  Cheyenne South Assistant Coach Izzy Garcia is here to share unique insights into the role of advocacy within our Speech community. Izzy discusses the significant strides towards inclusion, diversity, and equity within the NSDA. From beginnings of this policy with the creation of coaching caucuses to the impactful annual equity statements conducted by NSDA, Izzy explores how the evolution of platform events like Informative Speaking and Program Oral Interp have expanded opportunities for activism in part one of his new series at Camp One Clap!

If you’d like to join the discussion here at One Clap Speech and Debate, shoot me an email at lylewiley@gmail.com or reach out here on the website.

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Your voice matters!

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Lyle Wiley:

Well, hey, campers, you've stumbled upon day four of Camp One Clap 2, the Clapocalypse. I'm your camp director and host of the One Clap Speech and Debate podcast, lyle Wiley. I hope everyone is ready to stand up to your fears and speak with authority, your passions and perspective this year in speech and debate. Quick reminder check the One Clap Socials for today's social media challenge. Yesterday we had a whole lot of fun posts with songs and albums that I'm totally going to check out for my own Clapocalypse playlist. Thanks to everyone who's been participating in the social media challenges. There's a new one, so check it out.

Lyle Wiley:

Today we're lucky to have coach Izzy Garcia back with a new series for camp. Let's learn a little bit more about Izzy. First, cheyenne South assistant coach Izzy Garcia cares about delivering the best Camp One Clap experience and wants to provide perspective and thoughts about advocacy and speech and debate. National qualifier in original oratory, performer in duo drama, poi and poetry, a newly turned coach, izzy is determined to not only keep you safe in the clapocalypse, but he also wants to ignite thinking in the masses about all things speech and debate. Advocacy. Education and advocacy in the world of speech and debate is paramount and izzy is here to help. It's time for Izzy's Activist's Guide to the Clapocalypse, part 1, platforms in Platform.

Izzy Garcia:

Hello, my name is Izzy Garcia. If you remember me, I was that very poorly motivational, always educational camp counselor from Camp One Clap. Last year Mr Wiley brought me back to help you guys survive the CLAPocalypse. This year I wanted to do something a little different. Now more than ever in our world, we see speech and debate as a focal point for advocacy and change in our schools and in our societies. Most people have always taken speech and debate as a fun weekend with friends eating cheap pizza and performing to our best abilities. Last year I talked in-depth on how to prepare for those performances. This year I want to talk about why we do these performances. Welcome to Izzy's Activist Guide to the Clapocalypse. That's right. I'm taking my short segment here during the Clapocalypse to talk to you about the importance of our voices in this event and how we can take that into the future. Don't worry, there will still be a very educational episode on Poi this year that you don't want to miss out on. But right now we're going to start our journey talking about platforms and platform See, I said the title.

Izzy Garcia:

During the informative final round at the NSDA National Tournament this year, we saw a variety of powerful messages that tackled a range of topics the importance of play, the current state of air quality in our world but the one that stuck out to me was drag the importance and history around female impersonation. While this trans individual explained the history of drag and where it is today, there was a moment in the speech where she addressed that the current states of drag critique and, more importantly, the downright banning of drag altogether targets individuals who are trans as well. It was honestly one of the most powerful speeches of the night, one that was personal to the speaker and hit a lot of folks in the heart that were sitting in the audience. The only thing that was on my mind in the moment was noting how young this individual was and how important their voice was at that moment. This is the power of speech and debate. Right now, speech and debate in its current form allows for activism in a way that is unique to other forms of activism. During this episode, we're going to talk about the shift of inclusion, diversity and equity in the NSDA, talk about the shift of advocacy in both OO and informative, before finally leaving with some general reminders on how to be a good advocate in the platform world. Let's talk about generally the culture shift that we saw when it comes to equity in the speech and debate sphere.

Izzy Garcia:

As NSDA, through the early 2010s, gained more and more traction, there was the issue of where do marginalized communities fit in the world of speech and debate? When looking back at the complete timeline listed on the NSDA website, we see that in 2014, Dr Tommy Lindsey was the first to push an iteration of the Coaches Caucuses, establishing the first African American caucus in order to address issues that African American coaches and their performers were facing in the organization. During the 2016 and 2017 school year, the board of directors at NSDA came up with a five-year plan to bring more students into the event. They were going to achieve this by supporting more schools striving for inclusive participation and earning loyalty amongst the community. In order to make the space bigger and more inclusive, this five-year plan was introduced. Around the same time, more diverse coaching caucuses were established. Women, lgbt+, gender nonconforming and Hispanic caucuses were introduced to create spaces for coaches who needed more representation and community with their specific identity in the NSDA. More and more people were wanting more representation in performing and coaching spaces and it seems that the NSDA was more than willing to make sure everyone felt involved. In 2017 and 2018, we saw the NSDA start to be more transparent about the commitments to equity Releasing. Every year since 2017, the NSDA released equity statements and goals that they wanted to achieve for that year. Some of these commitments were celebrating diversity and inclusion and promoting safe spaces for marginalized communities. Each year since, the NSDA has pushed for certain commitments in order to make everyone feel included. This shift of inclusion has not only helped support the behind-the-scenes support at the tournaments, but has also changed the way we perform in general. Now let's shift into how the world of platform has evolved with this culture shift. In the 2016 and 2017 school year, both Informative Speaking and Program Oral Interp were added as main events to the NSDA roster. These two events have fundamentally changed the idea of activism in the world of performance.

Izzy Garcia:

Before we get too further into informative, we had original oratory for a very long time. Oo was the original persuasion event to get an audience assembled around an issue that matters to the speaker. There has been a lot of criticism about OO, mainly stating that OO is the event where we shower real problems with reckless optimism. Essentially, the topics that were introduced in the event prior to Informative's introduction were topics that were frequently talked about or said on the line between talking about an important issue or being purely motivational. About an important issue or being purely motivational I was a very successful oratory speaker and performing in the time where OO was really on that line of motivation. I did also fall victim to the typical motivational speech. My speech was called Picture Perfect, essentially talking about the underdog, the need for perfection and telling people that, despite societal expectations, you should believe in yourself. And yes, I did qualify with that speech. However, I do want to say that oratory was always about persuading, but the method to persuade was always different, district to district, tournament to tournament. We saw a new way a speaker would try to convince an audience to care about their topic. A lot of it would be statements like you should believe in this or we need to take action now with vague plans on how to actually reach those steps.

Izzy Garcia:

The example that I want to bring up here today is a OO finalist in 2014, lexi Harvey. With her OO I'm Too Busy to Make a Title. She talks about the reality and dehumanization around being busy, having too much on your plate and how it could fundamentally lead to personal health issues and, more importantly, societal devastation. I recommend you watching it. She is a great speaker and does have some amazing points, and what I'm about to say is not a critique on her or her speech. She can honestly perform me under the table. However, one of her first solutions to this problem was a concept known as downshifting Don't answer your emails after a certain time, rest, leave your room dirty. This is the shift of letting things go and knowing that the world will change around you Very profound in a work-centric environment. A major point in the call to action was some advice about deep rest and making sure that you're in tune with what is happening around you. In a way, it almost mirrored a lot of the oratories that were exposed to me at the time.

Izzy Garcia:

While there was more impact, for sure, a lot of this speech boiled down to motivation and advocating for oneself. Before I go any further, let me say this one way to do advocacy. I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is we need to look at the difference between evolution of advocacy then and evolution of advocacy now. Something has shifted from this method to what we see now. After the introduction of Informative, we saw call to actions revolutionized in speech and debate. Oo and Informative, especially after Informative's introduction, brought the new normal on how to become more of an advocate in these platforms. Now, the whole reason why I wanted to talk about advocacy in speech and debate was for this reason alone.

Izzy Garcia:

At this year's Nationals, in original oratory, solomay Skimironi, with her speech If it Bleeds, it Leads, conducted her own personal study about the attitudes around trauma in speech and debate, something that I'll be touching on in the second episode. On top of her own personal study, she also called out the NSDA and its members about the traumas that we perform and how it could hurt advocacy. This is a fundamental shift in what we talk about on the national stage. The shift of conversation continued. The entire round. Topics such as bad faith policies, controversy, public humiliation all hit the national stage and made us reflect on what we do with our voices and how we can make this world a little bit more tolerable. This wasn't something that was done overnight. More tolerable this wasn't something that was done overnight as time to move on. Our world has moved on. 2014 was a very different time from where we are here in 2024. Politics have changed, societies have changed. How we performed has changed. Now we have to go into platform with more of an agenda.

Izzy Garcia:

I'm not discouraging you to talk about fairly motivational topics, but what I'm saying is we need to have a little bit more meat on the table. Why are we talking about this topic now? What makes this topic stand out from the rest of the crowd? No longer can we throw general motivational statements or copy-paste someone's speech from years ago. We need more Platform, as an event category is the truest form of speech. It is a written and memorized event that brings attention to something in this world. There was this piece of advice that I got from my former coach a couple years ago. You have the unique position to stand there and talk for roughly 10 minutes about anything you want in the world. Make it count. The point that I want you to take home with you today after listening to this episode is understanding that there is something you need to care about in this world, and if you're doing these events, what you talk about needs to matter to you too. I know this is the most obvious takeaway. I know that you may think you have this cheat code figured out, but there's a reason I'm saying this At this point.

Izzy Garcia:

In my coaching and performing career, I have heard so many speeches that talk about very important issues but didn't do well because there wasn't any heart behind the speech. Sadly, there are people who take these events and do them because they're good speakers and they can get the points associated with it. It is my personal belief that those performers will never find the success of these events because of that. More importantly, they're doing a disservice to the events by performing just for points, just because it's another event to be entered in. Platform is the category that calls out institutions that are oppressive and dehumanizing, and we need the voices that want to talk about these issues and these events.

Izzy Garcia:

So please, if you're considering an OO or an informative speech, take the time to sit with yourself and ensure that you are passionate and willing to take this speech to the national stage. It matters Whoa. I know that was a very different approach to the survival guide, but I think it's time for us to talk about the importance of our voices. We are in this event for a reason, and, while we all have our unique motivations to stay in these events, it should be noted that what we do with our voice matters. I want to thank you for tuning in to the first episode of Izzy's Activist Guide to the Clapocalypse. In a world full of loud voices, yours is important, to make sure to use it Well. Just a casual reminder to water your goldfish today and, as always, stay awesome.

Lyle Wiley:

Hey, thank you so much to Izzy for your thoughts on advocacy and speech and debate. Don't miss Izzy's part two performing advocacy a week from today, so next Sunday. What's going on in the clapocalypse tomorrow? Well, I have another great interview with Cheyenne central coach, whitney Brooks, that you're not going to want to miss. Also, uh, don't forget those social media challenges are live for every day that we have camp this month, and today I'm hoping to get some spooky reading recommendations from everyone. So please keep engaging. It's been great to have all this engagement. Well, we'll see you tomorrow. Campers, if you get a chance, you should totally befriend a bat here in the Clapocalypse. I mean, they're always game to just hang out with the crew. Get it? Yeah, oh yeah. So for Camp One Clap. This is Camp Director Wiley signing off.