For over four hours, approximately 30 people protested against the University of New Mexico chapter of Turning Point USA, a conservative student organization that had a table set up near the Duck Pond on Monday, Oct. 27. Some students debated with members of TP-UNM, while others gathered and chanted.
TP-UNM members were promoting an upcoming lecture that occurred on Wednesday, Oct. 29, titled “CRT: Education or Indoctrination,” with guest speaker Stephen Davis, a Turning Point USA contributor and host of the podcast “SMASH with MAGA Hulk.”
Students protested Turning Point’s presence on campus, chanting “hey hey, ho ho, Turning Point has got to go.” Some protestors handed out “Lobos Against Fascism” stickers and sang “Bella Ciao,” “This Land is your Land,” “Solidarity Forever” and “John Brown’s Body.”
TP-UNM President and UNM senior Eric Soule said the student organization had been tabling on campus since last Tuesday and that protesters had “caught wind” that they were tabling.
“We’re out here just promoting our speaker event, not pushing our club or anything like that, because we want to let people have the opportunity to see what (Davis) has to say,” Soule said.
UNM sophomore and protestor Hannah Loftus said she showed up to show TP-UNM that their organization has resistance on campus.
“Even though they do have the freedom to talk here, we have the freedom to disagree and the freedom to push against them,” Loftus said.
UNM senior Machai Bluhm, who debated with TP-UNM members at the protest, said that while he doesn’t agree with how some of the protesters were conveying their message, he supported their right to be here.
“I really do enjoy seeing diversity of thought on this campus, and I enjoy seeing people having peaceful debates and discussion,” Bluhm said. “Our First Amendment rights are very important in this country.”
UNM sophomore Ricardo Miranda Sorrentini said he decided to skip class to attend the protest and debate with students tabling for TP-UNM.
Sorretini debated with TP-UNM members on topics including immigrant and transgender rights, arguing against the notion that gender dysphoria equates to mental illness such as schizophrenia, as was suggested during the debate.
“Instead of worrying about men being trans to go into women’s bathrooms, why not educate our men into not wanting to go into women’s bathrooms in the first place,” Sorrentini said. “You need to go after the actual perverts.”
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UNM sophomore and TP-UNM member Benjamin Fernandez engaged in some of the debates.
“I’ve had some really good conversations about all kinds of different topics, politics, religion,” Fernandez said. “People have been open, we’ve been open to hear what they say, so the people that do want to talk, those are the things that need to keep happening.”
On Wednesday, Davis spoke to approximately 60 people in a TP-UNM hosted event at the Kiva lecture auditorium, where he described critical race theory as a “mind virus,” and presented a montage of headlines relating to university professors calling for “white genocide.”
The montage referred to coverage of a 2016 tweet from former Drexel University professor George Ciccariello-Maher, that read “All I Want for Christmas is White Genocide,” mocking a conspiracy theory espoused by white nationalists, according to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. The tweet prompted a university internal investigation and resulted in Ciccariello-Maher’s barring from campus and resignation in 2017.
“(Critical Race Theory) demands that we be recognized by the color of our skin first and foremost and be treated with equity instead of equality, which goes against everything that our founding fathers set up within America,” Davis told the audience.
CRT is the premise that race is a socially constructed category used to oppress and exploit people of color, and that racism is inherent in legal institutions of the U.S, functioning to maintain social, economic and political inequalities, according to Encyclopedia Britannica.
The Kiva Auditorium was surrounded by metal barricades and a heavy security presence. Passersby were not allowed to enter the enclosed area unless they were attending the lecture, through which UNMPD was conducting bag checks.
Approximately 20 protesters stood outside the barricaded Kiva, chanting and blowing whistles. Some also debated with those who were entering the talk.
Local artist Joey Arieno said she showed up to protest because she thinks Turning Point USA should not be at universities as “New Mexico is better than that,” she said.
“I think that the school setting and a college setting is somewhere where students should be educated,” Arieno said. “Specifically when it comes to extremism, and this is straight up extremism. This is anti-women, anti-immigrant, anti-poor people, I don’t think it belongs anywhere near students”
Protesters left the scene before the lecture concluded.
Leila Chapa is the social media editor for the Daily Lobo. She can be reached at socialmedia@dailylobo.com or on X @lchapa06
Paloma Chapa is the multimedia editor for the Daily Lobo. She can be reached at multimedia@dailylobo.com or on X @paloma_chapa88
Leila Chapa is the social media editor for the Daily Lobo. She can be reached at socialmedia@dailylobo.com or on X @lchapa06
Paloma Chapa is the multimedia editor for the Daily Lobo. She can be reached at multimedia@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @paloma_chapa88
