How YDSA is Fighting to Disarm Portland State

In Academic Year 2025-26, the Portland State University (PSU) chapter of the Young Democratic Socialists of America has experienced a comeback. In the midst of the most racist administration of the 21st century, PSU-YDSA has taken on the challenge of rebuilding the movement to disarm the campus police. It’s worth noting where the movement went, where it’s at now, and lessons to take from the experience at PSU.

Resurrecting A Dead Movement

For some background, PSU has had an ongoing campaign to disarm campus police for a long while. It really took off in 2018 after the murder of Jason Washington, a black man, veteran and letter carrier who was shot 9 (with 17 bullets total shot in his direction) times after trying to break up a fight.

The initial height of the movement was a non-violent occupation of the campus public safety office, and gained newfound energy during the Black Lives Matter movement of 2020. From 2021 to 2023 campus police began a practice of “unarmed patrols,” however this practice was limited and did not meet the original demands of the Disarm PSU movement. Campus police could still access guns but just didn’t carry them while on patrol.

Nonetheless, news was spread that PSU had “disarmed,” and organizing and energy for the movement fell as the years went by. This was magnified by the demobilization of the Black Lives Matter movement after Biden’s election. In 2023, a couple of years after the PSU Student Union dissolved and other similar organizations were in decline, PSU brought back the guns.

In Winter of 2026, when discussing campaigns, PSU-YDSA decided to take on the task of rebuilding the Disarm movement. For a chapter that had effectively been founded the same academic year, and which kept a small but active membership, this presented a unique challenge. We started from square one, raising awareness through a petition.

Power From the Paper of a Clipboard

For most who are new to organizing, there is an immense feeling of dissatisfaction with the primary organizing tactics of liberal organizations, especially petitions. For most of us, especially youth, we know that petitions, even popular ones, aren’t likely to change the minds of those in power. This is true at Portland State University as well, whose self-proclaimed “capitalist feminist” President has gone as far as to say that bigger class sizes are better for students, showing how little she cares for student opinion.

However, when the momentum for a movement has died down to such a severe level that no organizations have campaigned on the issue, it becomes necessary to use introductory tactics to raise awareness. The point behind the petition was to make the demands known, start conversations, and find ways to organize those who are not already organized. In doing this, PSU-YDSA has been massively successful.

PSU-YDSA started off the academic year with a meeting attended by 8 people, and prior to that had a meeting in preparation for the year attended only by 3 people. As of currently writing this article, there are about 12-15 active members of PSU-YDSA, most of whom have contributed in one way or another to the Disarm PSU campaign. In our canvassing, tabling, and other forms of outreach, we have managed to bring the conversation about disarming the campus police back into our classrooms. This is an important step towards bringing justice not only to Jason Washington, but to the union workers and people of color who face discrimination from campus police.

Our petitioning has also been an opportunity to educate people on the history of the Disarm movement. Despite multiple murals on-campus being dedicated to Jason Washington, most do not know the full story of how he died, and armed campus police have been so normalized that most students don’t even realize that such a practice only started 12 years ago. Many are still under the impression that such decisions were made with the intent of public safety rather than for repressive purposes like kicking homeless people from campus grounds.

While the work we put in through the petition contributed greatly to building up the momentum needed, it’s only the beginning of our campaign. The majority of our membership acknowledges the need to escalate, but escalation requires a broad coalition and wider support.

This leads us to our most recent action: a rally to disarm campus police. With the help of the faculty and graduate worker unions, as well as student groups like Mecha, the rally brought out almost 50 attendees (large for a commuter campus towards the end of the year). The rally showed that our campaign’s momentum  is growing, and that we’re not going away. To conclude the demonstration, students sang John Brown’s Body, invoking the spirit of militant anti-racism.

Lessons

The first lesson I would take away from our experience is one of considerable importance: the fight for Black liberation does not have to stay dormant! Racism and police brutality never went away, what went away was the urgency. Without organization and a clear program and strategy, the movement dwindled and was cynically recuperated by the Democratic Party leadership. DSA can become the organizing home for those fighting against police brutality. We don’t need to wait  for another spontaneous uprising to undertake the patient work of rebuilding the mass movement.

PSU-YDSA’s attempt to do this is only getting started, but we are already seeing some results. Conversations about disarmament are back on the table now and people are paying attention to us.

The second lesson is that a campaigning approach to anti-racism is possible. Speaking from personal experience, the type of anti-racist organizing which I’ve encountered in my time in Portland has largely manifested in the form of attempting to “build dual power” through mutual aid. Mutual aid no doubt is an important area of work, but it cannot act as a substitute for political struggle in pursuit of direct, winnable demands.

Overemphasizing a single tactic can lead a movement on a road to nowhere, repeating the same thing without much fundamental change. This is true for many protest movements, and also  true for approaches which limit themselves to “community building” in a subcultural sense.

PSU-YDSA has been able to make important steps towards the disarmament of campus police. The nature of the campaigning approach which we have taken on has required us to think not in terms of just one petition or rally but to think about  what it all accumulates to. Our strategic horizon is what enables us to organize effective campaigns, and we hope to create a replicable example for other DSA and YDSA chapters.