New SDS calls for week of action against Trump’s inauguration Jan. 20-24. “Defeat Trump’s Agenda!”

Fight Back News Service is circulating the following call from New Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).

As the first step of our national campaign to defeat Trump, National SDS is calling for a national week of action during the week of Trump’s inauguration, from November 20th through November 24th. SDS invites other student organizations and groups to protest the week of January 20th. National SDS encourages our chapters to take up campaigns against Trump’s policies and attacks on education and to demand that their campuses shut down Trump’s agenda. We will be rallying to say, “Defeat Trump’s Agenda!”

Donald Trump is pushing a right-wing agenda that will attack students and our right to an education. His appointment of Linda McMahon as the Secretary of Education is his first step to closing the Department of Education in order to privatize education; this means tanking the quality of public schools in order to deprive them of enrolled students, closing them, and then diverting taxpayer dollars instead to for-profit schools run by or invested in by Wall Street billionaires, including Trump’s former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. Grades kindergarten through 12th grade, once free, will now become a luxury and be put up, expensively, for sale.

During Trump’s last presidency, he levied attacks on education and diversity in education, rescinding Deferred Action of Childhood Arrivals (DACA), appointing conservative/right wing justices to the Supreme Court who overturned affirmative action, and more. He fueled bills to ban abortion and he attacked women’s and reproductive rights everywhere. He carried out deportations, the construction of the US-Mexico border wall, and instituted a ban of immigration to and from Muslim-majority countries. This time around, Trump has made new threats to the student movement, particularly the students who stand with Palestine.

This vindicates the continued need to unite our campuses to carry out National SDS’s campaign to defend free speech. University administrators have been ignoring students’ demands to divest from Israeli apartheid and the genocide of the people in Gaza, and student activists have been hit with suspensions, expulsions, and more, and Trump only promises to deepen this repression further. We invite all student groups and students to join us in protesting Trump and defending free speech on campus.

Trump’s plan to close the Department of Education will restrict education access to the working class and Black, Chicano, and Latino students. Closing the Department of Education would end federal grants, student loans, Title 9 protections for women and LGBTQ+ students, special education programs and protections, English for Speakers of Other Languages programs, resources for students with disabilities, and it would end the enforcement of civil rights and Title VI, which allows for the investigation of racist discrimination in schools. Education would become accessible to the rich and white and no one else. Everyone deserves equal access to education, thus we must fight to defend public education.

SDS demands that university administrators DEFY Trump’s attacks on students and education. Universities need to do the right thing by upholding and protecting DEI programs, Ethnic Studies, GWSS departments, LGBTQ+ rights and programs, and increasing enrollment of Black, Chicano and Latino, undocumented students, and Native students. We also demand administrators do not hand over sensitive information about trans or immigrant students. We call on schools to not comply with book bans, bans on students going by the right pronouns or to the right bathrooms, or discipline for parents and teachers who support queer students.

All students have a right to an education that is meaningful and accessible to them, one that meets their academic and cultural needs. No compliance with Trump is the only acceptable option for administrators. If administrations do comply with Trump, SDS’s calls on all of our chapters, non- SDS affiliated student groups, and students at large to defend education and students’ rights by rising up and shutting down campuses across the country.

Fight Trump’s Agenda!

No More Deportations!

Defend Education!

Protect Free Speech & Academic Freedom!

Fight for Women’s and Reproductive Rights!

Defend LGBTQ+ youth!

Stand With Palestine!

#StudentMovement #PeoplesStruggles #Trump #SDS #J20

Source: https://fightbacknews.org/new-sds-calls-for-week-of-action-against-trumps-inauguration-jan-20-24?pk_campaign=rss-feed