Mississippi: Students for a Democratic Society chapter forms at Ole Miss
Oxford, MS – On February 21, around a dozen students and youth gathered at the Pavilion at the University of Mississippi to discuss setting up a Students for a Democratic Society chapter.
This meeting comes after two days of organizing from students and SDS officers who traveled from Louisiana and Minnesota in order to help establish new SDS chapters. These SDS members set up a table, covered it in flyers, sign-up sheets, and printed resolutions, and draped a banner over it that read: “Keep ICE off campus! Stand up to Trump! Sanctuary campus now!”
The table was the talk of the campus. A constant flow of students and even faculty approached the table both days. Some students took pictures with the banners; many asked if there was a petition to sign.
One professor and the members of the local Turning Point (TPUSA) eventually came to harass the SDS table. At the provocations about ICE from the professor, students surged up to the table to argue with her on SDS' behalf. One young man from TPUSA barked at Chrisley Carpio, a National SDS officer, and Mae Guidry of LUNO SDS in New Orleans, to “be quiet” and said the SDS was “full of crazy women.” One student came up to him and got into his face, telling Carpio and Guidry she was there to “make sure nothing happened.”
In less than eight hours of tabling, over 60 students signed the interest sheets.
“Building strong organizations that are committed to direct action is what we need in this moment,” said Mae Guidry of LUNO SDS. “We came to Ole Miss to garner interest in bringing SDS here because we understand how Trump's attacks can directly impact the South and to strengthen a national student movement. It's important to have staunch organizers ready to respond to reactionary university administrators like those at Ole Miss as they continue to roll back the rights and protections of students under the cover of the Trump administration.”
At both the table and in the SDS meeting, students told the tale of Lauren Stokes, a professor who was fired for her social media reaction to Charlie Kirk's death on her private Instagram. She is now suing the chancellor of the University of Mississippi, and the new SDS students expressed a desire to hold protests in her defense at the hearings. Another idea floated at the meeting was a continuous protest presence denouncing any arrival of ICE agents.
“There's definitely a clear, reactionary presence on campus, and those students feel like they can do whatever they want. They felt comfortable enough to host JD Vance to speak on campus, and this is not a sentiment across most of the university. We want to make that clear to our administration,” said Lauren Fuller, a student at the University of Mississippi.