Students for a Democratic Society officially became a registered student organization on Feb. 7.
They are a group focused on creating a student movement for ongoing injustices. SDS are nationally coordinated groups across different campuses throughout the United States. They describe themselves as an organization of student activists building a strong student movement defending their right to education to oppose racism, sexism and homophobia on campus.
One of SDS’s largest focuses is getting students connected with grassroots organizing in their cities and surrounding areas and getting connected nationally to build a student movement.
Welding engineering senior Forrest Hamilton is the president of the Ferris SDS chapter.
Hamilton said he saw what Grand Valley State University’s SDS chapter was doing and was impressed and excited to build something like that at Ferris.
“SDS are focused on stopping the wars that the United States continue to propagate throughout the world and the horrible consequences of these wars and what we can do for this,” Hamilton said.
The group plans to start having weekly meetings soon. These meetings will be used to talk about current issues and develop materials for campaigns.
“A lot of our focus is going to be on Palestine and the genocide that is going on against the Palestinian people that is funded and continues to be worsened and worsened by the United States involvement,” Hamilton said.
Hamilton hopes SDS will help change some people’s minds out of the “black hole that is electoralism” and emphasize the importance of working with your community.
“We need to work with people that are right next to us and stop thinking about these leaders as gods and almighty,” Hamilton said, “the American people are getting poorer and poorer and rent is going up and nothing is going to get better unless we start involving ourselves deeply in our communities.”
Jackson Roback is a member of Wayne State’s SDS chapter and helped bring the group to Ferris after hearing about “racist” protests about Gotion in the area from someone on campus.
“There’s a ton of issues that are underrepresented but the masses of people care about,” Roback said, “I’d say SDS stands for and wants students to realize is that there is a popular movement, and they should be the ones to join it.”
Both Hamilton and Roback highly encourage students to join SDS to be a part of the movement, regardless of their political baseline.
For more information about SDS and how to join, contact Forrest Hamilton at hamiltf3@nullferris.edu.