This year, co-chairs Isabel Root and Maggie Snyder founded Young Dems, a new club at Academic Magnet that meets every other Friday to talk about politics. There have been three meetings to date and at least thirty members have already signed up. In case you were wondering, Young Dems discusses topics such as gun control legislation, election of local mayors, and voter registration discrimination–just to name a few. The club intends to host a joint meeting with Spectrum and Black Student Alliance within the next few weeks, so please attend if you are interested!

A major goal of the club is for members to go out into the Charleston community to volunteer at rallies or participate in protests. Young Dems has noted how local elections are not truly representative of the demographic of our area, partly due to a lack of voter turnout. Plans are currently in the works to set up outside Walmart in North Charleston to register voters and raise awareness of the importance of voting.

Maggie and I recently attended the “Park the Hate” protest against Steve Bannon’s appearance at a Citadel student organization’s annual fundraising dinner on Friday, November 10^th. By the time we got there at 6 p.m., around 200 people had gathered to listen to speakers such as S.C. Democratic Representative Wendell Gilliard, Elder James Johnson, president of NAN’s South Carolina chapter, and Vanessa A. Moody-Laird, an Indivisible spokeswoman. “The Citadel must know that the good people of the Lowcountry will not be silent while this homophobic, xenophobic, misogynistic, racist is invited into our city,” said Moody-Laird. The focus of the speech was to incite love, equality, and inclusion in Charleston rather than instilling further division. Young Dems wants to follow this precedent and work to make progressive change at Magnet, but more broadly the community.