Chicago students hold Progressive Student Conference to unite, build the student movement
Chicago, IL – On Saturday, September 13, 60 students and youth from across Chicago met at Chicago Teachers Union Hall for the Progressive Student Conference. This conference brought together young Chicago activists to discuss their strategies for fighting the reactionary Trump agenda.
The conference had three panels: “We Will Not Stop, We Will Not Rest: The Student Antiwar Movement,” “Education is a Right!: Defending Diversity on Campus” and “Students and Youth Fight Trump’s Agenda.” Between panels, Anakbayan at University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), New Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) at UIC, and National SDS each hosted workshops.
Ariana Vega from New SDS at UIC began with a speech highlighting the history of struggle in Chicago, “What we’re doing here is not new to the history of this city. People have always been restless. People have always wanted to fight.”
“’No bombs in the air’ doesn’t just mean we don’t want any bombs in Gaza; no bombs in the air also means we don’t want any boats off the coasts of Venezuela being bombed, no bombs in the air also means we don’t want our engineering programs investing in things like the creation of bombs and weaponry that is used to kill people in the Global South,” said Adam Khailani from Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) Chicago on the student anti-war movement.
When panelists were asked what advice they would give to students starting their progressive activist journey, Megan Wikosky from Anakbayan at UIC urged, “You don’t have to know the answer to every single question and how to be the perfect revolutionary activist, there is no quote-unquote perfect revolutionary activist. The systems we’re fighting, imperialism, anti-militarism, etcetera, these forces do not wait for us, we have to race them to the finish line, we have to be first against that fight.”
Xzavier Jones from New SDS at UIC explained the importance of educating people when organizing to defend diversity on college campuses, “Telling people ‘This is what’s happening, these parts of your school are getting defunded, these parts of your school will not have money anymore, they will no longer have these certain majors’. Letting people know that this is happening and telling them what they can do and how they can help if they want these things to stay around.”
“I think in this climate of fear, worry and agitation, we often ask ourselves the question: who keeps us safe? And I believe the truth in the statement that it is we who keeps us safe. It is the community that keeps us safe, it is the power of the people that keeps us safe,” said Matt Martirez from Kabataan Alliance on organizing during the Trump administration.
Erin Boyle from New SDS at UIC ended the conference with a speech on the nationwide student movement: “I think our generation knows that we can’t just live our lives for ourselves and just hope that someone saves us from the direction our society is going in. Instead, we need to realize that the only way forward is by taking care of each other and realizing that it is our collective struggle, it is our collective will to win all that we can, that is going to get us through this moment and onward.”
Boyle promoted the National SDS Convention coming up on October 11 and 12 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The convention will have speakers from Anakbayan, Notodul, SJP, and more. Carlos Montes, co-founder of the Brown Berets, will also be speaking.
You can register here for the national convention.
Join the student movement!
We encourage any students not involved in the movement to join! If you would like to start an SDS chapter at your university, sign up at www.newsds.org
Let’s continue to organize the youth and build the student movement against Trump!