Milwaukee, WI – On Thursday, November 6, students gathered at Spaights Plaza on the UWM campus, demanding that UWM and all other universities, reject Trump’s Compact for Academic Excellence, which includes demands to terminate DEI initiatives, a crackdown on free speech of students and faculty, and calls for repression against student activists.

Led by members of the UW-Milwaukee chapter of Students for a Democratic Society (UWM SDS), the rally was also a response to the ongoing cuts to education, cuts to multicultural and inclusivity programs, and constant student repression and harassment by the UWM administration.

Students, SDS members, campus faculty and community members rallied, demanding an end to the Trump administration’s attacks on education across the country.

First, Nadezhda Young-Binter from Freedom Road Socialist Organization spoke on how Trump’s compact for universities continues his agenda for using his attacks on education as tools for spreading the ruling party’s political agenda, as well as maintaining the interests of the billionaire class while restricting the working class and a diverse student population from accessing greater education.

The next speaker was Robby Knapp, a current UW-Milwaukee SDS member and co-chair of the Milwaukee Fights Back Against Trump Coalition. Knapp called out the UWMPD and the university administration for handing out bogus citations to eight different students during the National SDS Convention march just a few weeks earlier, including himself. Knapp pointed to the continued repression he and other student protesters have been facing for the past two years from campus administration and campus police, and the repression that immigrant communities have faced from ICE.

Trey Bores of UW-Milwaukee SDS emphasized the importance of the DEI initiatives that the Trump administration is cutting. They explained that by taking away funding for cultural and inclusion centers, like those for queer and trans youth, Latino, Muslim, Black and Asian students, the Trump administration and campus administration take away different cultural perspectives, which makes students less knowledgeable about the world. Bores also pointed out that while Milwaukee County is 40% Black, the current campus administration is not doing enough with its unacceptable 6% population of Black students, and with Trump’s attacks on non-white students, that percentage, along with the percentage of international students, would plummet.

UWM SDS has ben fighting consistent attacks on and harassment of its members by the university administration. Students fighting for university acknowledgement of the genocide in Palestine have been suspended, banned from campus, put on disciplinary probation, stalked by administrative officials, and harassed daily by those same officials.

As the Trump administration’s attacks on students continue to grow, students have felt the pressure of this through a loss of educational funding, satellite campuses, research funds, DEI programs, and overall student safety. These losses, combined with an increase in campus police presence and intimidation, strict campus free speech regulations targeting student activism, and deregistering and suspending student organizations, are a call to action for all students on UWM’s campus to call for its administration to end its complicity with Trump’s anti-education and anti-student policies.

#MilwaukeeWI #WI #StudentMovement #SDS #UWMSDS #MFBAT #FRSO

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