SFL Around the World: September 2016

In an attempt to better share our current activities with the network, the SFL Around the World blog post series will summarize our biggest news in each region monthly.

Here’s what SFL-ers around the world accomplished in September:

Africa: Olumayowa Okediran, Director of African Programs at Students for Liberty, spoke to the South African Institute for Race Relations on the work of SFL in the region. September also saw the launch of ASFL’s Open Online Local Coordinator Program, which aims to train local student leaders across Africa!

ESFL: On September 17th, ESFL kicked off their Regional Conference season in Yerevan, Armenia, where 30 students gathered to learn more on how the ideas of liberty can make Armenia a better place. On the same evening, over 60 people participated in an informal Liberty Evening in Prague. One week later, on September 24th, the city of Vilnius, Lithuania, was the stage of the second conference of this season, which ESFL organised in cooperation with Lithuanian Liberal Youth. Another highlight of the month was Maastricht Students For Liberty organizing a lecture on private healthcare, titled “Private Healthcare: How I stopped worrying and love the competition!”

EsLib: Eslibertad’s Argentina team held a seminar titled “Keynes, Friedman and the Triumph of the Austrian School,” which had Javier Milei as speaker.  Meanwhile, SFL Mexico gathered at the national plaza of Mexico City in order to defend the right to same-sex marriage with a colorful protest and the slogan #LibreParaAmar (Free To Love). Around 200 students wrote their ideas of what freedom meant for them during the event, and 400 people were given #LibreParaAma bookmarks. The team in Venezuela held a Local Coordinator retreat in Miranda, whilst EsLibertad Guatemala have been organizing reading groups centered around critiquing The Communist Manifesto.

North America: Students across North America attended the Campus Debut of Deep Web, jointly organized by SFL, YAL, and SSDD. The movie tells the story of Ross Ulbricht’s efforts to create the “Silk Road” online market, which ended with his 2013 arrest. September also saw the launch of our 2016 Regional Conference season, which aims to explore the future of freedom in a variety of areas. With individual themes ranging from anarchism to free market environmentalism, these conferences are giving North American students a taste of libertarian ideas and the liberty movement in general. North American social media has also been myth-busting the “success” of socialism in Venezuela with our #PorUnaVenezuelaLibre campaign.