Education Lifestyle

On a Personal Note: London Newton

London Newton. Photo by Camille Nevarez-Hernandez

By Emma Castleberry

London Newton has a lot of titles, including president of the Student Government Association (SGA) at UNCA, but she isn’t all that wild about labeling and the hierarchy it represents. “I say I’m a community organizer first because, while I have loved being student body president, I hope that in the future Student Government can take on a more horizontal approach rather than top down,” says the junior political science major with double minors in mass communication and legal studies.

As SGA president, she helped organize Student Rights Week, which gave students the opportunity to learn about their rights as tenants, activists, voters and taxpayers. But London’s community involvement, while substantial on-campus, extends far beyond the university community and into the city of Asheville. She started the Asheville for Justice mutual aid network this past summer, and along with a group of peers raised more than $20,000 to provide security for BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color), medical attention, meals for houseless individuals, and training in deescalation and overall protest safety. She was an organizer for the Black Liberation Celebration march that took place on July 4 in downtown Asheville and also assisted with a medic station at Asheville’s Black Lives Matter protests. “I’m most proud of the marches we did this summer,” London says. “They were a catalyst to a significant amount of personal growth for me and grew the coalition of people behind the Black Lives Matter movement.”

This personal growth for London has included saying “no” more often and setting boundaries. “This summer my priorities really shifted from leadership in anti-racism work to wanting to love myself and those around me better as an act of anti-racism,” she says. “My whole life I’ve been told that I have amazing leadership skills and have been placed in positions where I have power over my peers or access to decision making others don’t. I no longer want to participate in these systems despite the positive praise that I have received. I want to empower others to be part of the decision making that impacts them, and learn more about people and their needs.”

She says these small acts of self-care are revolutionary in themselves—a fact made more evident by the criminalization of the Black Lives Matter marches. “Under white supremacy, the mere act of loving myself as a Black queer woman and others radically is a criminalized act because it means I am not following the status quo,” she says. “Knowing that my self love is an act of anti-racism not only brings me joy, but makes me want to do it more.” When she’s not mobilizing within her community, London loves to cook vegetarian food for her friends and girlfriend. “My way of showing affection is feeding people, so anytime I’m not working that is likely what I’m up to,” she says.

Kate Johnson, director of the Key Center for Community Engaged Learning, worked with London while she served as resident assistant for the LEAD Living and Learning Community. Johnson nominated London for the Community Impact Student Award from North Carolina Campus Compact, which London won. “London is intelligent, outspoken and fearless,” says Johnson. “She works tirelessly to advocate for amplifying and prioritizing the voices of UNC Asheville’s Black and brown students and to inspire more social awareness and responsible action among the student body. London’s gregarious nature draws people to her and there isn’t a soul on campus who hasn’t been touched by her leadership.”

During her senior year, Newton will continue doing mutual aid work with Asheville for Justice and hopes to build on that momentum after graduation. Some progress she hopes to see in the coming years includes the construction of a building exclusively for Black and brown community members on the UNC Asheville campus and a real, actionable reparations program enacted by the city. “Both the city of Asheville and UNC Asheville, as a place of higher education, have been part of the subjugation of Black people,” she says. “Higher education institutions have some of the greatest responsibility for community support because of how these institutions have been used to carry out white supremacy, elitism and class divide, especially in BIPOC communities. I hope that the city and UNC Asheville take stock of all the harm they have done to the BIPOC community, make that public, come up with a plan for reparations and follow through.”

Learn more at NCCampusCompact.org and BlackLivesMatter.com.

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