JULIAN, a national civil and human rights non-profit, established a new chapter at the University of Mississippi. The group will hold its first meeting on Friday, Sept. 27 in the LGBTQ+ Lounge in Lamar Hall.
“The main mission of JULIAN is to end a caste-based society in the U.S., whether that’s regarding race, gender, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation and things like that,” Xavier Black, co-president of JULIAN and a senior international studies and French double major, said.
Black’s involvement with JULIAN started when the United States Justice Department opened a civil pattern or practice investigation into his hometown, Lexington, Miss. The investigation focused on the town police department’s use of force and its stops, searches and arrests, according the United States Justice Department.
“That being the county that I’m from opened my eyes to the fact that problems I see on TV are not only in Mississippi but in my own county,” Black said.
Before beginning independent campaigns, JULIAN Ole Miss is working to network with other student and local organizations.
“At the moment, we’re simply in what we like to call the ‘base building phase,’” Black said.“(We are) getting out, networking with other clubs and RSOs as well as organizations within Oxford.”
JULIAN developed college chapters, including the one at Ole Miss, to give students an opportunity to organize and provide support, Kadin Love, JULIAN’s state organizing director, said.
“One strategy we’ve been using is developing college chapters in order to build out a base but also to give students an opportunity to organize on their campus and have an organization outside of that college that can support them and provide them opportunities to break into policy, legal and organizing work as a whole,” Love said.
Love also hopes that the on-campus chapters will encourage students to take what they have developed into their local communities.
“I wanted to give students an opportunity to be supported in on-campus organizing campaigns by an organization that is involved in on-campus politics; (I) also (wanted) for them to be able to take some of JULIAN’s resources and maybe apply some issues going on in their communities at home,” Love said.
Co-President Jishnu Kher, a senior political science and philosophy double major, hopes that JULIAN can help promote camaraderie among UM students.
“We want to support students of different backgrounds (such as) minorities, LGBTQ+ students and people of disadvantaged communities,” Kher said. “(We want to) help them through college or if there’s any troubles they have, provide a safe space.”
