Florida Is Worth Fighting For: A Report on YDSA Organizing at Florida International University

By Judith Chavarria

The experience of organizing against DeSantis at Florida International University shows that Marxist ideas and tactics have an integral role to play in the fight against the far right and transphobia.

On April 13th, 2023 the YDSA chapter at Florida International University (FIU), in coalition with United Faculty of Florida (UFF-FIU) and Grad Wages & Rights (GWR), organized a walkout of 400 students and professors, the largest demonstration of our university’s history. Together, in vibrant solidarity, we marched up the steps of Primera Casa, which houses the offices of FIU’s President and Board of Trustees as they implement Ron DeSantis’ political attacks on trans rights, public education, and freedom of expression. Our demand was “no firings, no fear” in the face of escalating far-right encroachments on the rights and livelihoods of students and professors alike. Through this, YDSA meaningfully transformed the consciousness of students and connected them to a political program which could move the struggle forward. The resulting movement was made possible through principled interventions into the heart of Florida’s crises over several weeks by a group of socialist students with a clear theory of change and a strategy to implement it.

Forging a United Front

Right-wing figureheads like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis have used the absence of a radical alternative to consolidate an anti-democratic movement that aims to smash the power of youth and labor with legislation like HB999, which prohibits the teaching of feminist and queer theory and threatens tenured faculty with firings. It was from this context that in early February a queer student group called Pride Student Union (PSU) asked our YDSA chapter to help organize a protest in support of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives and students’ rights. Although the politics of PSU were quite different from that of YDSA, their proposal represented a progressive momentum and we agreed to work together in a loose partnership.

As we moved forward, however, tensions arose around the central issue of political demands – our chapter held that the recent attacks on academic freedom had made the university a site of struggle; PSU hesitated to criticize campus administrators. This reluctance had a material basis. They were funded by the university, and acted as a bureau of the Student Government Association (SGA) as well as an affiliate of FIU’s bureaucracy. Their principles – being an ‘advocacy’ group rather than a ‘political’ one; resisting confrontational tactics; lobbying the state, but treating our university’s administration as sympathetic allies – were directly connected to the interests of their leadership.

The strain between us was magnified by our different approaches to organizing: they sought private meetings between the leaders of YDSA and PSU, while our chapter wanted discussions about movement-building to be open to all. We found each other on opposite sides not only of strategy, but also of the basic question of how much influence rank and file members should have in our movement.

As the contradictions in our coalition became increasingly untenable, the breakdown of the alliance became inevitable. The important tactical question wasn’t so much whether to break away but rather when and how. YDSA took the initiative of leading primary responsibilities for the protest, like planning meetings and march routes, and implemented the united front by putting forward an independent political line with every step: marching together, but carrying different banners. We gave our own speeches, made our own signs, and presented our own demands. This independence allowed us to make the case for a class-struggle movement without isolating ourselves from the struggle itself.

In the aftermath of the protest against DeSantis’ academic policy, Chair of the Board of Trustees Dean Colson responded to the situation by stating that if “the priorities of the Board of Governors have changed, we will react.” Six of the board members were appointed by DeSantis, another five by the Board of Governors. They were unwilling to challenge the legislature because they were afraid to risk their high-paying jobs, and we understood this. The need for targeted counter-pressure from those that make the university run, the students and faculty, was something we’d fruitfully continue to agitate around for the rest of the semester.

These events put us into contact with two important allies: a professor and DSA member who wished to bring organized labor into the struggle for public education, and a politicized grad student who had been brought into YDSA through the schism around demands between YDSA and PSU. While our chapter had been at the forefront of each battle, it was this professor who first put forward the idea of organizing a mass student walkout in solidarity with faculty by the end of the spring semester.

At the same time, we found ourselves shut out by PSU as they began to focus on lobbying off campus. Yet the practical unity we found with a liberal group in the short-term gave YDSA, UFF-FIU, and GWR the courage to forge unity for the long-term, and so we established a coalition based on the willingness to pursue militant tactics and demands on campus: Free FIU, inspired by University of Florida’s Free UF coalition. Together we were able to build a stronger movement, with a wider political impact than any of us could have alone.

Lessons in Movement-Building

Our chapter also put together a number of important projects. First, we began to make interventions within our university’s student government. An apolitical and bureaucratic body to its very core, made up of careerist student representatives uninterested in differentiating themselves from our administration or even from each other, SGA nevertheless offered a large platform which would allow us to openly communicate socialist politics and bring new people into YDSA. 

We ran a candidate for student senate who was openly affiliated with YDSA and ran on an explicitly socialist platform. We also packed SGA meetings with dozens of students to challenge senators into supporting a resolution which condemned Ron DeSantis’s academic policy. It was through these sustained battles that we were able to elect FIU’s first socialist student senator and pressure SGA into passing the resolution. Even more so, it helped clear the way for very real political antagonisms between students and the university’s institutions, from which the success of our walkout would blossom.

Following that was our Trans Day of Visibility clothing drive, inspired by the annual queer clothing drive organized by YDSA members at University of Central Florida as well as Reform & Revolution’s own analysis of mutual-aid. We gathered dozens of clothing donations from supporters across the community, brought together local bands and music acts who volunteered to perform during the event, and created a space in which queer students could feel safe and build solidarity. Yet what made this effort so powerful was that – through our speeches, pamphlets, and discussions – we were able to connect almost 200 people to a set of demands which included a direct call for our university to offer gender-affirming care to trans students and protect funding for social justice offices on campus. This gave political content to the material support and allowed YDSA to make the case to trans and queer youth that we need a rupture with capitalist institutions.

Among all of this, we also managed to hold discussions on topics like ecosocialism, films like Do The Right Thing, and texts like Capitalist Realism. These events helped to link the work we were immediately doing to broader conversations about how socialism informs struggles outside of the campus.

It was through public-facing events that we extended our chapters’ reach, influence and numbers over the semester. Rather than draining our capacity, these ambitious projects energized us and built an unmistakable momentum, allowing us to recruit new members and drawing increasing crowds to YDSA and Free FIU events. Neither electoralism nor mutual-aid are capable of establishing a mass movement on their own, but in support of a broader socialist strategy they’re powerful weapons. As R&R member Whitney Kahn writes in Done Right, Mutual Aid Builds Working-Class Power: “The job of socialists is to engage in these organic forms of working class self-organization, to help people understand the political significance of their own activity, and to anchor this activity firmly within a wider strategy to win a socialist transformation of society.”

Free FIU followed these activities with a coordinated effort between YDSA, UFF-FIU, and GWR which included canvassing, weekly meetings, and regular organizer trainings for those who wanted to prepare their classrooms to walkout. Additionally, YDSA members were able to work closely with UFF-FIU and speak about our walkout in the classrooms of sympathetic professors. The chance to speak to dozens of students at a time would not have been possible without our connection to organized labor. “Which side are you on?” became a decisive rallying cry against the university’s President and Board of Trustees, as did the demand for non-compliance with Ron DeSantis’ academic agenda, which intuitively brought mass consciousness of legislation like HB999 into an arena which also challenges the privatization of public education, the decay of labor rights, and connects us to issues like trans liberation. 

Joint grassroots movement-building reverberated across our respective organizations. A new group of radicalizing students was brought into YDSA through our coalition, and in UFF-FIU’s elections the rank and file voted to replace leadership with some of Free FIU’s most active faculty organizers. But all of this only means something if it’s the start of something new. Capitalism continually creates the conditions for oppression. Winning against DeSantis in the short term will require a mass movement of working-class Floridians, both on and off campus, organized around bold demands; winning against racism, transphobia, and sexism in the long term means we need to do away with capitalism entirely. The far right is on the rise, but our success organizing youth with socialist tactics shows a way forward for DSA across the country.

The Importance of a Marxist Intervention

Throughout all of this I served as my YDSA chapter’s President; I was also a member of Reform & Revolution, as were some of the chapter’s most active and organic leaders. I believe that the revolutionary Marxist politics we shared were an indispensable part of our ability to navigate these battles and sustain a student movement. It gave us the principles we needed to connect our urgent political tasks to a socialist program, and it prepared all of us to move forward. Hours after the walkout, members of my chapter and I reconvened to read and discuss Leon Trotsky’s “For a Workers’ United Front Against Fascism” together. We wanted to connect our movement to a wider Marxist tradition, to consider what it means to fight the far right and consolidate our political energy into an organized strategy. We built unity from our mass work which allowed us to act quickly and develop a powerful, inspiring group of socialists; comradery emanated from every project we engaged in. That the spirit of so many people could be rekindled by the struggle rather than diminished by it is heartening. It’s with that indispensable truth in mind that the conclusions of December 1931 seem to find their way into the present day:

“Worker-Communists, you are hundreds of thousands, millions; you cannot leave for anyplace; there are not enough passports for you. Should fascism come to power, it will ride over your skulls and spines like a terrific tank. Your salvation lies in merciless struggle. And only a fighting unity with the Social Democratic workers can bring victory. Make haste, worker-Communists, you have very little time left!”

FIU is worth fighting for, Florida is worth fighting for—and these two things are connected. Build the socialist movement and fight the good fight.