Recap from Last Year

Hope everyone had a great summer. Welcome Back to EC. SDS's intro meeting (people can decide when to meet regularly after that) will be on 9/8 Monday 7pm at the Frick Center. At the meeting we'll talk about the Funk the War party on 9/12 (Friday night).

Recap from last year:

From partying to protesting, EC SDS helped transform the politics on Elmhurst College's campus last year. Beginning in the year we stood in solidarity with the Jena 6, a group of high school students who were charged with attempted murder after a schoolyard fight after a series of racially motivated attacks and intimidations hurled on the black students of Jena, LA. We rallied a student group coalition, holding one of the only marches in Elmhurst's history downtown, in addition we organized a wide student coalition to sell tshirts supporting the Jena 6 *However the police must have thought our plan was to rob Chipotle or something since they sent over a dozen police to "protect" the protest.

Around the issue of the war, we both attended an anti-war demonstration, showed the video Sir, No Sir! on campus documenting GI resistance to the military brass, and held a free concert in support of the Morton West High School students who were expelled for a peaceful sit in during their lunch hour, which helped create enough of a controversy where they were reinstated after about two weeks of protests infront of the school.

We ended the year with one of our better party's, Freedom Festival. We brought a number of awesome bands to Freedom Festival, a three day event that included guest speakers, free food and spoken word. The final day of the Freedom Festival, we got in the local news for taking around a dozen students downtown to participate in the Immigrant's Rights May Day march. This year's Freedom Festival promises to be twice as big as we have a week reserved and now have the experience of organizing a festival behind us.

Come out to our first meeting on 9/8 7pm and keep in touch to find out where we are gonna hold our party on 9/12.

EC Tent State

Come get involved! Email chicagosds@gmail.com or stop by a meeting!

Tent State University at Elmhurst College will provide a tangible space for community and communication building. For three days we will occupy the open quad at Elmhurst College and transform it into an experiment in democracy. The goal will be to unite our various organizations and our busy lives for three days to demand a change in our nation’s priorities. Instead of a stale attempt to recreate the “political process” of our government, we want to provide an inviting atmosphere for people to come together and discuss what is on their minds and how we can cooperatively achieve our goals for society.

Every organization on campus is invited to join in building this collective project of democracy. We aim to have free music every night along with providing food, entertainment and opportunities for meaningful personal and social engagement. Each participating campus organization will be asked to express its own perspective on today’s society through hosting at least one event sometime during EC Tent State. Speakers and scholars will be invited to challenge our positions and start productive dialogues on how we can move towards changing society as students and after graduation.

Some of the quad during EC Tent State will be reserved for an “Art City” to celebrate our creative work. Artists of all mediums will be asked to contribute and display work, and will be asked to lead workshops to share their talents, skills, and explain their own displayed contributions. In addition, our hope is that EC Tent State will inspire new works dealing with exploding the perceived student apathy and engaging in relevant personal and social struggles for a better world.

Tent State University began on the east coast at Rutger’s University as an immediate protest by students against steep budget cuts for education by New Jersey in 2002. Instead of staging a typical protest however, the students occupied their quad for a week, erecting an alternative university, complete with areas for classes, recreation, assemblies and music. Hundreds of students participated and the event is now an annual space to build towards positive social change at Rutgers, and has expanded to dozens of campuses across the globe.

On Friday April 25, EC Tent State will begin by staging an event on our quad against our nation’s misguided priorities that values occupying other nations over education and healthcare. Students and youth from across the Chicago metropolitan are being organized to walkout in protest and are invited to come to EC Tent State to help create a space where we can collectively envision and build a democratic society. Every night from April 25-27 there will also be a free concert on the quad to help bring together our student and youth community.

Saturday and Sunday, EC Tent State will continue, with participating organizations offering workshops and classes about relevant topics to metro Chicago, from immigrant experiences, to the demolition of public housing, to the encroachment of giant chains on local businesses. The goal however is not to have an explicitly political event, most of the events held over the weekend will aim only at authenticity and meaningful exchange, only becoming political because the content of every day life is political.

EC Tent State will be a student run event, and an experiment in the town-hall style democracy of our history textbooks. Daily Tent State assemblies will be held to air concerns and input will be transformed into action by Tent State’s participants. Come help out, meetings are in the Bluejay Roost Wednesdays at 9pm and the cafeteria Thursday’s around 12.