Tampa 5 stops in Milwaukee as national tour continues
Milwaukee, WI – More than 30 activists, organizers and supporters gathered at ZAO Church in Milwaukee on the evening of September 25 to listen to the Tampa 5's Chrisley Carpio and Lauren Pineiro talk about the situation in Florida and what led to their current struggle.
In March, Carpio and Pineiro, alongside other University of South Florida Students for a Democratic Society organizers, helped to lead a campus protest against Governor Ron DeSantis's racist, sexist and bigoted attacks on higher education. The protest turned violent when police assaulted and then arrested them. It was not the first time that USF SDS had protested something reactionary from the DeSantis administration.
“Bill after bill, the people of Florida have been fighting back. We are not staying silent. We are taking to the streets. Every bill that is passed, the people of Florida are resisting his racist, transphobic and sexist agenda. And SDS has been a part of that every step of the way,” said Pineiro.
“On every front, DeSantis has been attacking higher education, and our school has been rolling over and letting him do that. He also introduced HB 999 which later was passed as SB 266. It's a bill that bans funding for diversity programs, women's and gender studies, multicultural groups, and even social activist groups like SDS,” Pineiro continued. “We knew the history of the struggle to win all these programs in the first place, and we knew how our campus administration was reacting to the policies, so we knew we had to be a part of the struggle against them!”
Despite the repression they faced that day in March, the organizers knew they could not back down as their situation would be used as an example for other reactionary politicians across the country in dealing with their own protesters.
“We had two paths before us, one where we let them scare us, we keep our mouths shut, ignore the fact that we have rights, and just hope for the charges to go away; or we would tell everyone about what happened to us, we would fight back, we would get organized, we'd get our people out of jail, we'd make sure they couldn't do this to student protesters, and we'd spread the word so that the cops would be brought to justice, and we'd protect our right to protest DeSantis. Which decision do you think we made?” said Chrisley Carpio.
The Emergency Committee to Defend the Tampa 5 was founded in June 2023 and they announced a national tour shortly after. For the tour, the organizers facing this political repression, Carpio and Pineiro among them, would travel around the country to spread the word about their case and build a broad network of support to propel them toward victory in their struggle.
The event in Milwaukee was capped with the announcement of a unanimously-supported solidarity resolution from the executive board of the Wisconsin Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals (WFNHP) Local 5000, a union representing more than 1000 healthcare workers across the state, in addition to a generous $1000 donation. The resolution concluded with a commitment to mobilize members for future actions pertaining to the Tampa 5.