SFL North America: October 2016 Update
October was a busy month at Students For Liberty. Read the highlights of what our North American team have been up to!
Regional Conference season in full swing!
T
his weekend sees our final two events in what has been an extraordinary Regional Conference season. During October, hundreds of students across North America have come together to discuss the ideas of liberty. From Utah to Florida, young people interested in various aspects of creating a free society heard from a diverse range of speakers, ranging from sex worker rights activists to ex-SFLers who have become libertarian economics professors.
Students across North America “Get Out The Liberty”
Our Get Out The Liberty (#GOTL) campaign was wildly successful. So far, we’ve accepted 75 applications for these $250 grants, which are aimed at activism and recruitment for pro-liberty groups on campus. Events funded by the grants have ranged from tabling and recruitment drives to our nationwide Deep Web screenings. Based on the success of the GOTL campaign, we’ve now launched our Peace, Love, Liberty grant program: aiming to promote non-interventionist foreign policy.
Big free speech rally at UMD
Huge congratulations to our activists at College Park Students For Liberty, who hosted a well-attended free speech rally that generated substantial media coverage. The event saw SFLers collaborate with Jim Caruso, CEO of Flying Dog Brewery, as well as other campus groups. Ethan Pritchard, the Chapter President of SFL College Park, told the audience that universities are “sending a message that it’s okay to shelter yourself and to just go without hearing other people’s opinions and that you’ll be fine your entire life, and that’s not how it is.”
#NoNanny corner store makes waves in Calgary, Canada
Students For Liberty Canada performed another widely reported plain-packaged corner store stunt to highlight the importance of lifestyle freedom. These pop-up stores are meant to replicate what today’s corner stores will look like if the Canadian government had its way and, in the words of our North American Programs Director David Clement, “overtaxed, over-regulated, or straight-up banned everything that is bad for our health.” Part of our ongoing #NoNanny campaign, the store was covered in mainstream news outlets and made a big impression on Calgary residents.
Mock presidential debates highlight alternatives to mainstream politics
SFLers held several mock presidential debates in the run-up to the election, highlighting alternatives to the failures of status quo politics. One such debate at Ohio University saw our activists promote the philosophy of liberty to a particularly large audience, with Vice-President of Ohio Students For Liberty Sam Raptis remarking at the end of the debate that “We’ve seen tonight [that] politics is an ugly thing. It pits people against each other.”
“Exploring Atlas Shrugged” Virtual Reading Group
October saw the launch of our “Exploring Atlas Shrugged” Virtual Reading Group with David Kelley, Founder and CIO at Atlas Society. Students signed up to explore Ayn Rand’s thrilling mystery novel, which was one of the primary works that inspired contemporary libertarianism, due to Rand’s vision of free-market capitalism as a moral ideal and her analysis of anti-capitalist cronies and politicians. Other ongoing reading groups include an exploration of Radley Balko’s “Rise of the Warrior Cop”, which details the ways in which the American police force has gradually militarized, along with the negative consequences of this trend.