Student Solidarity Union

at

Willamette University

Students bound by common purpose: the overthrowing of the old order and the unrelenting pursuit of justice, peace, and liberation.

The Student Solidarity Union is dedicated to building a more just, caring, liberated, socialist, and fully democratic world.

We believe that workers must organize for control of the means of production to achieve a fair economy and society.

We seek democratic control of institutions, including our University.

We realize that an intersectional understanding of inequity, oppression, and supremacy is vital for a movement that aims to fight for the entire revolutionary class.

We understand that meaningful progress can be attained only through direct action and not appeals to the ruling class.

We know that environmental justice and a sustainable society are essential to humanity and our relationship with the Earth.

We hope that our community will contribute to the international revolution that will overthrow the old order and pursue justice, peace, and liberation in its ruins.

Beneath the pavement, there is a beach to build on.

Education is the foundation of any revolutionary movement. Only through understanding the lessons of revolutions past and present might we come to our own revolution informed and powerful. We seek to understand methods of mutual aid and material liberation, the history of leftist projects throughout the world and our own society, labor history and socialist economics, critical and intersectional theories, and these factors' influence on our own academic and personal pursuits. We know that everyone has something to learn and something to teach.

Mutual aid is the practice of taking responsibility for the care of one’s community. As opposed to charity or philanthropy, mutual aid builds community autonomy rather than relying on a flow of support from a higher class to a lower one. We seek to fulfill this responsibility by making resources available for vulnerable communities in Salem, providing an educational space for Willamette, and caring for ourselves in a turbulent and despondent capitalist society. Indeed, care for each other and ourselves is the cornerstone of any revolutionary society.

Direct action is the process of reimagining and establishing a new world outside ruling class constructs. These efforts are essential for fighting patriarchy, white supremacy, queer-hatred, ableism, the carceral, military, and imperial complexes, capitalism and the State itself, on the local, regional, and international levels. In our own community, we will use direct action to confront both the failings of the University to serve its students and the encroachment of these oppressive forces on our campus.

All student power has its origin in organized students. We will unite students to this end in our campus workplaces, housing, classes, and everywhere there are students to elevate and support. Organizing is our best tool against the ruling class: nothing else can threaten the wealthy and powerful as does the might of collective action. We have every right to be represented with vigor in the leadership of a university that would be nothing without us—its students. We will always endeavor to defend student labor, student interests, student liberation, and student rights.

All of us who are suffering and outraged: we are immense. We are the ocean that will devour everything. When we have the will, that moment justice will be done.

Contact

Instagram: @willamettesolidarity

Discord: discord.gg/HQwBmbg

Email: editor@wussu.org

Reach out to us by email with any accessibility or equity concerns!