This is a sponsored interview in partnership with Tecovas.
Chris Harris, the associate director of advocacy for the Texas Civil Rights Project, gave us a peek into how he got into his work, what his days are like, and the best way to relax off the clock.
How did you get into this line of work?
“I decided to study politics in school, and, during that time, I read a lot of things, both the things they wanted me to read, and I think a lot of things they probably didn't want me to read. And, honestly, it opened my eyes to some of the experiences that both I and members of my family had had, things that I just accepted as part of society. And I came to see like, oh, that was really wrong and it didn't have to be that way. Maybe we can do it differently.
And so I went out to D.C. right after school and I was working for a think tank, and that was not what I was into. I was skipping work, going to protests and eventually, that caught up to me and I was like, OK, I gotta leave here and do something else. So I came here.
I knew just enough tech stuff to get into the tech world. So I did that, paid my loans off, saved up just a little bit, and then made the leap. I just started doing what I could do. That turned into an organizer job.”
Let's walk a mile in your boots. What does an average day look like for you?
“Well, there's no average day, but that suits me perfectly. I'm somebody who really enjoys a day spent facilitating a workshop and building with people and catching up and hearing stories and chopping it up and shooting the shit with folks. And then I really want to decompress and spend the next day hitting a spreadsheet, dissecting numbers, and discovering things. Some days, I'm taking information and I'm trying to analyze it and trying to find things out and then trying to disseminate that information and get it in the hands of other people so that together we can figure out what to do about it.”
Where do you go to relax or have fun when the work for the day is done?
“I really love basketball, so I try to play basketball about three or four times a week.
Where I usually play is at — don't publish this because I don't want everybody running up there — but it's Hancock. It's like a court hidden inside of that golf course, the Hancock Center.”
