In the wake of widespread protests following the Nov. 8 presidential election, posters were hung around campus Monday morning promoting a new nationwide initiative called “Students for a Just America.”
The initiative, which was founded at the University of Houston by Jacob Foreman last week, has now spread to more than 20 college and university campuses across the nation. At the University, Monique LeBlanc organized the initiative.
“Community organizing has always really been the foundation of the progressive movement,” Foreman said. “If you look at community organizers like Saul Alinsky, movements like the Civil Rights Movement, the workers’ rights movements in Chicago and New York … they’ve all been based around community organizing.”
In 1960, Students for a Democratic Society was founded at the University of Michigan. This student-led activist group was the driving force for many student movements throughout the ’60s and ’70s, he said.
“The issue now, though, is that presence doesn’t really exist,” Foreman said. “There isn’t as much of an effective community organizing network on the left at all, but especially not with students.”
This mentality is what prompted Foreman to create “Students for a Just America.”
The initiative’s first step of hanging flyers began Sunday night on campuses around the nation. The flyers included information about the organization, a QR code to its Facebook page and a controversial quote from President-elect Donald Trump. The action was met with mixed reactions based on which the University, Foreman said.
“It really kinda depends on the university,” Foreman said. “Here at [University of Houston], there are a few posters still up … but the majority that I put up were gone. I know the majority that were put up at [University of Oklahoma] were gone and pretty much all of them [that] were put up at [University of Missouri] were gone.”
At the University, a majority of the flyers were also taken down by Monday morning, LeBlanc said. On the other hand, at schools like Harvard University and New York University, the flyers have continued to stay posted, which Foreman said he expected.
As Trump has not yet taken office, the goal of the initiative, and its first movement with the anti-Trump flyers, is to get as many people involved as possible so that when Trump assumes the position and beings creating policy, a broad, impactful network is already established, Foreman said.
Students for Trump, a student-led organization at more than 100 universities across the nation created in an effort to get young people to vote for Trump, is one organization on campus not in favor of the “Students for a Just America” initiative.
Students for Trump was the organization behind bringing Milo Yiannopoulos to the University back in September.
“This isn’t just for LSU, either, this is for comments for the whole protests across the nation as well,” said David Walters, the ambassador for the University’s chapter of Students for Trump. “The people that are whining and they’re crying and they’re worried about ‘Oh what’s going to happen to us?’ … not shit’s going to happen to you.”
As for the future of “Students for a Just America,” Foreman hopes to create a more established network.
“Right now, we’re trying really not to focus on protests,” Foreman said. “I don’t feel like adding our voice to protests would necessarily be beneficial to the protests or our organization, so that’s why right now we’re really trying to focus on getting new people involved and really just kind of hammering down on what is our mission, how are we going to be structured, all that sort of stuff.”

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Ryan McCarble

Several "Students for a Just America" fliers are posted outside of Lockett Hall on Nov. 14, 2016.