Tag: Austin

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Turning Point: A New Threat On Campus

Autonomous Student Media: Gestures Towards the Ungovernable

Two weeks ago, the new chapter of Turning Point USA at UT hosted their first meeting. It was interrupted for a while by a fire alarm, forcing the meeting to move outside–where it was easy to see and overhear their conversation. We’ve gathered intelligence about what exactly happened at this meeting, who is involved in TPUSA, and what TPUSA’s emergence on campus means. We encourage you to share this article with your professors, TAs, classmates, and other networks. This is an extremely relevant issue for anybody that is progressive or left-leaning, who could be at risk of being targeted by this group.

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What Starts Here: YCT Shut Down, Survivors Stand Up, and DSA Blocks A Bridge

Autonomous Student Media: Gestures Towards the Ungovernable

We fell behind on our news cycle since we were busy working on the YCT. Here’s a roundup of the past 2 weeks of news–a lot has happened! In this roundup, we’ve got a report on the events following the YCT demonstration, anti-Kavanaugh protests in Austin, the Stand with Survivors rally, and the inaugural Turning Point USA meeting.

CW: Sexual assault, Kavanaugh, rape apologism

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Who Are the YCT?

Autonomous Student Media: Gestures Towards the Ungovernable

Over the past months, we’ve gathered lots of data connecting various parties within the YCT and telling us more about their activities. So far, we have 4 articles published on this site about the YCT. As we approach one week after their now infamous pro-Kavanaugh demonstration on West Mall, we’re putting out this compilation of all of the information on all of the YCT members we currently know of.

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Erasure Poem About the YCT

An Anonymous Submission

Content warning: Institutional indifference, sexual assault

Send any intel about the YCT to us on facebook, twitter, or at our email!

Got a story you need to tell? Do you have thoughts on the YCT counter-protest, experiences, art, or something else you want to put out into the world? You can publish it with us! We can promise anonymity for any content you submit and offer up our platform. Send us your opinion pieces, art, rants, zines, reviews, news, statements, report-backs, or anything else you wanna see put out in the world. Don’t worry about being “coherent,” “professional,” “civil,” or some other bullshit–just come as you are!

We take all kinds of content, with an eye towards marginalized perspectives and news about movements & revolutionary organizations. Submit content to austinautonomedia [@] autistici [dot] org.

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UT Protects YCT Misogynoir & Rape Apologism

Autonomous Student Media: Gestures Towards the Ungovernable

On Wednesday evening, the YCT hosted an event where Michael Quinn Sullivan & Cary Cheshire of the right-wing advocacy group Empower Texans came and spoke to them. Following on the heels of the mass protest against the YCT’s pro-Kavanaugh demonstration on West Mall, figures like Paul Bettencourt pressured the University in ramping up their already extravagant efforts to protect the group. In anticipation of possible protests, police swarmed the area around Waggener hall. On the outside, 5-7 cops stood on guard and patrolled the area. Hidden away by the GDC and SAC, two patrol cars waited. On the inside, the lobby of the building contained another 4 police officers. Finally, the room for the YCT’s even contained approximately 5 police officers.

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The YCT: Not Just Racists, But Rape Apologists Too!

Autonomous Student Media: Gestures Towards the Ungovernable

Yesterday, members of the Young Conservatives of Texas tabled with pro-Kavanaugh & anti-#MeToo signs on West Mall. They were swiftly confronted by a growing crowd of students, who made signs in protest, destroyed YCT signs, and chanted slogans like “we believe survivors!” With women of color taking the initiative, the protests grew increasingly militant and also confronted the administration and the police enabling the YCT rally. Within two hours, the YCT had fled in the face of the massive backlash.

Here’s a preliminary serving of information we dug up on the people who were out there yesterday. We encourage people to use these to wage campaigns and ensure there are repercussions for the actions they took yesterday. Demonstrating in defense of rapists and making campus hostile to survivors should not go unanswered. At the same time, students should prepare for backlash. Already, one student is facing harassment and threats because of a video circulating from yesterday. Students should expect to organize solidarity campaigns against targeted harassment, and begin securing their own information to avoid harassment.

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Open the Windows!

A rant by Saoirse Ní Mhaille

UT Austin hates me and doesn’t want me to breathe in that good stormy air. $25 to open a window. Yes, I could just run outside, but what if I want to enjoy the storm from the safety of my room? What if I’m doing homework and can’t get my laptop wet? What if I want to go to sleep to the sound of the rain? What if I just farted and it really stinks? Hmmm??? What then???

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Sheepz is a Creep: Abusive Artist Rudy James Lunsford

Autonomous Student Media: Gestures Towards the Ungovernable

This is Rudy James Lunsford. He is a predator with a pattern of emotionally & physically abusing women, and has also reportedly raped one woman. He is approaching 30 years old this year, but preys on women as young as 19. By preying on young women in particular, he exploits them so that they will provide and care for him–described as simply wanting “sex, a free meal, and a ride when necessary.” He has been described as living a parasitic lifestyle, lacking “any sense of empathy without reward.” He is a skillful manipulator that knows how to use people, including by claiming that he used to be a bad person but that he’s changed.

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Uncovering Racist Student Networks at UT

Autonomous Student Media: Gestures Towards the Ungovernable

[CW: Racism, anti-semitism, Nazi imagery, homophobia]

Our organization recently received a tip about a facebook group called UT Austin Hot Takes, which had recently been taken over by admins posting and enabling white supremacist content. As we investigated the group and its members, we stumbled onto information that overlapped with an ongoing investigation we had been conducting into some fascists & reactionaries who had showed up in May to disrupt RSF’s People’s Trial of the rapist professor Robert Reese. Below we’ve compiled the information we have gathered. We uncovered a larger network of connections that included outright Neo-Nazis, neo-confederates, and the racists of the Young Conservatives of Texas.

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The 5% Project (It Really Be Ya Own People!)

Students at the #TheFourPercent townhall in 2015

By La’Kayla Celeste. Republished with permission of the author.

I don’t make a habit of reading The Daily Texan, one of the nation’s largest college newspapers and source of great pride at the University of Texas at Austin. I don’t pick up the paper because of the residual bad taste in my mouth from several casually racist encounters I’ve had with the Texan over the 4 years of my undergraduate education. Now, as a second-year graduate student at the University completing a Masters Degree in Women’s and Gender Studies, my main concern is meeting my deadlines. This was the business I was minding when I happened across Volume 118, Issue 131 of the publication while on campus one morning a few weeks ago. It was the image that struck me: a close-up of Daniel Nkoola, Black creative and undergraduate student in Radio-Television-Film, the major I earned one of my bachelor’s degrees in. I picked up the paper, excited to read when something else in the top, right hand corner caught my eye. A graphic proclaimed that this story was the 6th installment in ‘The 5% Project,” a collaboration between The Daily Texan and UT’s chapter of the National Association of Black Journalist. I stared at the notation for a few minutes before snapping a picture on my phone, leaving the paper where I found it.

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