The University of Mississippi College Democrats, alongside several other organizations, hosted the Mississippi “Rise Up Town Hall” at the Gertrude C. Ford Ole Miss Student Union on Wednesday in response to the Turning Point USA event on campus that featured Vice President JD Vance and TPUSA CEO Erika Kirk.
“I learned at a very young age what hate and bigotry and racism can do, the damage the terror that it instills,” Tennessee House Rep. Gloria Johnson, who was a featured speaker at the event, said. “It is domestic terrorism. There’s no question about it, and right now we’re seeing an administration that demonizes human beings, that demonizes our neighbors.”
Joining the College Democrats in organizing the event were other groups including the Environmental Coalition, UM Forward, Southern Progressives Alliance, UM Community Alliance Network, Lafayette County Democratic Party and United Campus Workers.
Other featured speakers included UM Associate Professor of Sociology James Thomas, California Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., former U.S. Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., and Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Composition at the University of North Georgia Matthew Boedy. Khanna, Heitkamp and Boedy joined the conversation via video conferencing.
Johnson also criticized how TPUSA utilizes Christian and religious rhetoric to further its cause.
“I know that Turning Point was masterful in that area (of Christian nationalism),” Johnson said. “They take a piece of the Bible, misinterpret it, understanding that the average person really doesn’t know where that verse came from and what the true intent was, but that’s why I think it’s really taking it back to that basic level of what Christ taught.”
The goal of the event was to hold “a conversation that celebrates civic engagement, open expression and a campus that represents all voices — not just one ideology,” according to an Instagram post by the UM Democrats. Students were invited to ask questions after the speakers finished.
President of the UM Democrats and senior public policy leadership major Elizabeth Wildman said the catalyst for the town hall came from the TPUSA event and also referenced President Donald Trump’s preferential funding compact he proposed to nine universities across the country.
“Ultimately, we realized that we feel that Trump is trying to show dominance over higher education, especially with the compact academic excellence that was sent to schools recently,” Wildman said. “So we just want to show that even though we’re in a conservative state and at a conservative school, that we are not beholden to one ideology.”
Calvin Wood, vice president of the UM Democrats and a senior public policy leadership major, said the town hall was organized to be inclusive to a range of voices.
“I think Turning Point often pretends to be a champion of free speech, and we wanted to show this as an opportunity for everybody in our community to come together and actually speak out, rather than a carefully chosen group of people to ask the vice president softball questions or to be humiliated by the vice president,” Wood said.
Thomas shared the impact of being placed on TPUSA’s Professor Watchlist, described on its website as “a carefully aggregated list sourced by published news stories detailing instances of radical behavior among college professors.” The site references Thomas’ viral tweets from 2018 that praised harassment of U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas.
“I was placed on the professor watchlist around 2019,” Thomas said. “Shortly after, I began receiving burial insurance advertisements in my mailbox on campus. For an organization that says it aims to promote the free exchange of ideas, Turning Point’s Professor Watchlist has done anything but that.”
Thomas also spoke about how suppression of faculty speech can impact the educational experience for students.
“When our faculty suppress their speech, when we censor ourselves in our classrooms, when we effectively hide our expertise, all students suffer,” Thomas said. “None of you came to the University of Mississippi because you want to be told things you already think you know. … You came here because you want to participate in the free exchange and vetting of ideas, and that free exchange and vetting of ideas is the bedrock of our university and every institution of higher education.”
Khanna specifically took issue with Vance’s ideology.
“It’s sad to me that he’s forgotten the values he wrote about in ‘Hillbilly Elegy,’ because he grew up with an empathy for people who had been screwed by the economic system, who did not have the opportunities for good paying jobs,” Khanna said. “And out of his own ambition now and doing Donald Trump’s bidding, he seems to have forgotten all of that.”
Sophie Kahle, a junior political science and psychology major from Ocean Springs, Miss., said she enjoyed the town hall format rather than a protest.
“I like this town hall style more, just because it feels more structured and organized and just representative of the Democratic Party,” Kahle said. “I feel like it encourages listening and intelligent conversation, which I think is something that can be hard to do at a typical protest.”
Lauren Graves, a senior public policy leadership major from Denver, appreciated that the event showed off a different political opinion than the TPUSA event.
“I think it’s really important to show that the University of Mississippi is diverse, not just in how the students that go here look, but also how we think,” Graves said.
Wildman said she hopes the event connected students with similar beliefs.
“I feel like a lot of times here (at the university) you can feel like you’re in this conservative bubble, and there’s no one else that thinks the same way as you,” Wildman said. “I just want people and students to know that that’s not true, and there are a lot of people that are here for them as well.”
President of the UM chapter of TPUSA and junior public policy leadership major Lesley Lachman expressed disappointment in those who chose not to attend the TPUSA event.
“You’re missing a monumental moment of the vice president coming to the university,” Lachman said. “He chose Ole Miss for a reason, regardless of political view. This is a huge deal for our university. So if you want to miss that monumental moment, you can.”
Madelyn Lass contributed reporting.
