Black Sovereign Nation Calls for Boycott of Austin Public Libraries

Modified from a series of Facebook posts by Black Sovereign Nation. Read below for background on the #NoSanctuaryForBlackFutures Campaign. Visit BSN’s campaign website for more links, info, & ways to plug in.

 
From now until August, Black Sovereign Nation’s No Sanctuary for Black Futures Campaign is calling for a boycott of Austin Public Library. We would like to send the library administration and the City of Austin a strong message that our community takes equity very seriously. The library is an amazing space at which Black youth should feel welcome, celebrated, and supported. Unfortunately, APL does not have policy or training that can engender that type of environment. Our ask is simple! Develop stronger policy so that our kids can return to the libraries, where they belong.

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Texas State vs. Turning Point USA

Submission from AnMarcos

On April 8th the Texas State Student Senate convened to vote on legislation calling for the removal and banning of Turning Point USA from campus.

This came about not simply from clashing viewpoints, but due to the chapter’s history in illegally influencing student government elections, wrongly placing TXST professors on their infamous watchlist, procuring the firing of faculty and adjuncts, carrying metal batons on campus to harass and intimidate, propagandizing to students at the quad via billionaire-funded paid tablers, and use of their many connections to squeeze any who challenge them.
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InfoWars Invasion: Student Propagandists at UT

Autonomous Student Media: Gestures Towards the Ungovernable

Every so often on campus, students have to deal with the annoyance of a visit from InfoWars reporters. This is just part of being a student at UT, since InfoWars is based out of Austin and often seeks to get soundbites and content for sensationalist videos about liberal/leftist college students. While they are often treated as a joke, InfoWars is a dangerous force–especially for those who may try to call them out in person. In 2017, a young girl called them out on camera and was subsequently doxxed and harassed by InfoWars followers. Leftists or anybody who ends up with their face on an InfoWars livestream, whether on campus or at a protest, is at risk of doxxing & harassment from the Infowars mob.

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When They Came For Me

By Rudy Martinez. Republished from Sybil. Read the original polemic against whiteness publication here.

Six months ago, I graduated with a philosophy degree from Texas State University in San Marcos, TX. What was promised to be a day of jubilation for my family, as I am a first-generation Colombian and the first in my family to ever attend an American institute of higher education, was instead welcomed with a reluctant sigh of relief. My parents both escaped a decades-long civil war in Colombia and met in Miami in the early-90s. They would marry in September 1991 and I would be born March 21st, 1992. We grew up in a predominately Latinx working-class neighborhood in Miami called Hialeah. The only thing my mother ever asked of my younger sister and I is that we go to college. Hialeah wasn’t exactly a place that nurtured my intellectual potential, but I managed to attend community college right after high school. Within two years, I had dropped out and decided to hitchhike around the country. After returning from the road, I made new friends and we all moved to Texas: This is how I found Texas State. After waiting a year to qualify for in-state tuition, I became a “Bobcat” in the fall of 2015. As a philosophy student at a “Hispanic Serving” institution, I was excited to synthesize my cultural past with an intellectual future.

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Your DNA is an Abomination

By Rudy Martinez. Republished from Sybil. Initially published in “The University Star,” the student newspaper of Texas State. This piece provoked massive right-wing backlash, resulting in the administration condemning the author and scrubbing the article from the publication. We republish it here for the crucial intervention it makes against white supremacy, and because fuck Texas State and angry whites. Read Rudy’s followup, detailing the backlash after this piece was initially published. Featured image by Alyssa Franks.

“Now I am become white, the destroyer of worlds.”

I hate white people. White people should hate white people. In fact, when I think of all the white people I have ever encountered, whether they’ve been professors, peers, lovers, friends, police officers, etc.—there are perhaps a dozen I would consider “decent.”

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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: CIA Recruitment, Turning Point, & Muslim Solidarity

Autonomous Student Media: Gestures Towards the Ungovernable

Here’s all the news you may not have heard about, but which you should definitely care about. It’s been a fairly uneventful week, but we did see two different racist groups on campus, and one kind show of solidarity.

CIA Recruits Through SSD

Last Thursday, as this statement brought to our attention, the Central Intelligence Agency was on campus. Through a collaboration with Services for Students with Disabilities, the CIA held informational and personal advisory sessions to present “opportunities for students,” and “full-time employment opportunities.” The advisory sessions promised 1-on-1 interactions with a CIA agent for students interested in the CIA’s “national security mission.”

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What Starts Here: Islamophobia, Fascist Crybabies, & Mapache Deported

Autonomous Student Media: Gestures Towards the Ungovernable

This is the first edition of what we hope will be a regular column. Here’s a roundup of the shit that went down recently that we think is relevant (plus some radical reflections on those events). This week features news about Central Texas political prisoner & anti-borders activist Mapache, a climate of Islamophobia and recent attacks in Austin, & a pathetic “Free Alex Jones Rally,” that occurred over the weekend.

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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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