The Invisible Books of Working Class Intellectuals | Sachio Takashima | TEDxHaverford College

Sachio’s TEDx Talk is called “The Invisible Books of Working Class Intellectuals,” and is in honor of his friend Clarissa Rogers (1967-2024) who recently passed away. His talk is about Clarissa’s adventurous life and theories, their collaboration, and finding ways to combine skills of group-meeting facilitation with working-class journalism to help facilitate the books that working-class intellectuals have within them, waiting to be written. Sachio left school in fifth grade, and is self-taught from that point on. He's worked as a janitor/mover his entire adult life, and has taught himself literature and philosophy. Since 2011, he started to blend his activism with learning social geography, became close with a group of geography graduate students at Temple University, and presented at a conference on “self-taught working class geographers." He's worked on building up regional geographies of each place he has lived and worked. He's worked in Haverford College Housekeeping since 2021, and a regional geography of Haverford is in the works. In March of 2023, he was awarded a research fellowship by Haverford College's Institutional Diversity, Equity, and Access office to support his investigation into Servants’ Dormitory, now the Gest Center. He lives in Upper Darby with his beloved family, Danielle, and their five-year-old son Dion. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at www.ted.com/tedx

[@WendyFrame]

Sachi, You inspire! What a moving tribute to Clarissa and to the untold, unseen and unheard gifts of the "every" person.

[@juozasg]

Thank you for this beautiful explanation of Clarissa political project! The goals of the writers group make greater sense now. Self-education is key for retaining and developing knowledge for workers self-liberation.