How Youth Organizers Are Fighting for Student Rights

Happy back to school season, Alliance Fam!

Across the Network, as students are heading back into the classroom and gearing up for another year of learning, Alliance organizers are continuing the year-round fight for students’ rights. The Alliance Network’s syllabus for the year consists of protecting free speech, advocating for automatic voter registration and student voter IDs, developing college and high school students to become leaders, and defeating curriculum restrictions in state legislatures. 

Take a look at what some of our network organizations are doing this school year to help protect students and their rights. 

Loud Light

Loud Light has been leading the way in Kansas in protecting schools and student’s free speech and civil rights by fighting back against book bans, anti-LGBTQ policies, so-called “anti-critical race theory” legislation, and school funding cuts. 

Loud Light is also celebrating a recent victory in successfully advocating for the first passage of a local CROWN act ordinance in Lawrence, Kansas that protects students at the university of Kansas from race-based natural hair discrimination. Another victory Loud Light organizers recently secured for Kansas college students was establishing a permanent polling place on the Washburn University campus in Topeka, Kansas!

Follow Loud Light on social media to see how they continue this work throughout the school year.

Minnesota Youth Collective

Organizers with MNYC were key advocates for passing automatic voter registration and pre-registration for 16 and 17 year olds earlier this year. MNYC has also been lobbying in support of standardizing college student voting options. Thanks to their work, all students eligible to vote in Minnesota can register with their college and/or university ID card!

Follow Minnesota Youth Collective on social media to see how they continue this work throughout the school year.

Mississippi Votes

Down in Mississippi, the MSVotes team has been hard at work launching their high school and college fellowships to help develop a new wave of young community leaders across the state. They’ve also been continuously working in schools to ensure students and teachers alike are registered to vote!

Follow Mississippi Votes on social media to see how they continue this work throughout the school year.

Ohio Student Association

This fall, OSA will continue to organize to defeat Senate Bill 83, also known as the Higher Education Destruction Act, which attacks DEI programming and collective bargaining rights for public university employees, and would ban the discussion of “controversial topics” like climate change, race, gender, and sexuality in college classrooms.

This spring, OSA organizers gave testimony, met with legislators, and held two direct actions at the Ohio Statehouse in opposition to SB 83, and were able to successfully stop it from being rammed through in the state budget. This fall, they plan to ramp up organizing efforts to make sure that legislators get the message loud and clear that Ohio’s students will not stand for this bill.

Follow Ohio Student Association on social media to see how they continue the fight against SB 83.

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