Action Plan from Students at Truman College, Missouri, for Rise Up October
October 1, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
From a reader:
A meeting was hosted by a campus SDS chapter at Truman College in northern Missouri. Fifteen students showed up. After quick introductions, there was a short presentation by a revcom and Rise Up October organizer from another city about the emergency of police murder, the crossroads the struggle to stop police terror faces today, and how Rise Up October can be a turning point to make a leap in the struggle to stop police murder by challenging society about “what side are you on?” and bringing many people off the sidelines and into the streets for #RiseUpOctober. Students discussed the situation and what the stakes are in making a leap in our resistance, or not. At first students talked about getting a dozen or two to NYC. But soon something different came into focus—a vision of #RiseUpOctober becoming a big thing on the whole campus with many students being mobilized for the showdown in NYC October 24. With that orientation, students jumped right into getting organized! They brainstormed ideas, made plans, and delegated responsibility, and came up with this action plan.
I. Creating a list of students, showing their degrees of interest through high, medium, or low. This is on a Google Doc, which can be seen and edited by anyone.
II. Exploring various modes of transportation. We are looking into options such as a university bus, a commercial bus, trains from out of Quincy, IL, and if there is still a possibility of traveling with your group, we would like to explore this option as well. If we end up getting out own commercial bus, we intend on having the bus leave out of STL at the same time as your group so that we may caravan and increase communication between each other during the travels.
III. Next we are pursuing recruitment for the event. We have fashioned a contact e-mail for Truman students specifically to contact to the Stop Mass Incarceration leaflets you provided us with. We are in the process of reaching out to various leaders on our campus such as the university President, and Professors in the efforts to find sponsors for individual students to attend the event.
IV. In addition to these plans, we are creating a lead in week on our campus the week of the event in NYC. Our plans are as follows…
a. Tuesday—Open Forum Discussion on Event, Mass Incarceration, and Police Brutality.
b. Wednesday—850 Man Vigil recognizes and mourning the lives lost to police brutality in the last year. We will be lighting 850 candles at a memorial building on our campus, lit next to our university’s eternal flame. Here we will be raising awareness and accepting donations for the efforts of the trip.
c. Thursday—Classroom Walk Out and on campus Die-In Demonstration.
V. Leave for the trip!!!
We are working on contacting various chapters of SDS through the national conference calls and we are also having members participate in the Rise Up October national calls to help keep momentum and spread ideas. If you have any further questions, comments, or concerns with what we are doing, please let us know. We wish to gain a strong support within our community to bring to Rise Up October and to get involved in this and political activism in general. We cannot wait to see this all come together and be marching by your sides at the protest on NYC.
Volunteers Needed... for revcom.us and Revolution
If you like this article, subscribe, donate to and sustain Revolution newspaper.
