Image by Morgan La Casse

This letter to the editor was written in response to a Sept. 23 Minnesota Daily opinion article.

Dear MN Daily community,

We are writing as members of Students for a Democratic Society in response to a recent opinion piece that was written by Amber Atkinson and published in the Minnesota Daily on Sept. 23, titled “Rock Out For Roe: Radical Protest or Reductive Ego Boost?”.

We disagree wholeheartedly with what Atkinson wrote. The article is not so much an opinion as it is just plain wrong.

For starters, it is ignorant of our history as an organization to imply that all we’ve done is put together one concert. SDS is a grassroots, action-oriented student organization. We’ve put together several protests against police brutality and racism and our current campaign for expanded access to reproductive care on campus, and we plan to organize more. In recent examples, the emergency response protest SDS organized when Roe v. Wade was overturned pulled over 10,000 people – students and community members – into the streets to demand justice. This event was covered in a June article in the Minnesota Daily, and we’ve held other protests since.

We also disagree with the idea that SDS is “disorganized and ineffective” or about “inflating our own egos.” As an organization, our focus is on mobilizing students to fight for progressive change. Recently that has been around the issue of women’s and reproductive rights on campus. It’s not for “ego-boosts.” It’s frankly strange that Atkinson – who has never organized with SDS – writes as though they are an expert on how our group functions and what we are about. What few quotes the article uses from an SDS member are actively misrepresented to fit the author’s view.

As for the benefit concert, we did not put it together thinking that we’d magically get Roe v. Wade back. As was in all our flyers and posts about the event, the concert raised funds for OurJustice, an organization that provides funds directly to people seeking abortions. By the end of the night, we met our goal of $2,000 raised, and that is an accomplishment for any grassroots organization to make, and one we are proud to have done.

In writing this, we hope that we’ve helped to make clear what SDS is about as an organization and shown that what was written in Atkinson’s article is far from the truth, and we hope those reading will join us at our next actions to see for themselves. 

Keep up with us on Instagram @umnsds for details and updates on how to be involved in the student movement.

Mira Altobell-Resendez and Siobhan Moore are active members of Students for a Democratic Society at the University of Minnesota.