September 24th, 2021

The Multicultural Solidarity Coalition (MSC) is a group of graduate and undergraduate students from marginalized and oppressed communities who have been trying to create a space for our community members to exist on campus without the ubiquitous threat of racial and gender-based violence that we experience on campus. We have been working toward this goal since 2016 and, as of 2020, we have been coordinating with ASU administrators to establish a multicultural center. The multicultural center is currently housed in one room on campus that was opened this semester and has not yet been fully launched.  You can read our full proposal here.

The incident that took place on Thursday, September 23rd is a result of ASU not taking seriously our safety concerns, especially in regards to the multicultural center. Despite repeatedly expressing our concerns during biweekly meetings with Dean Aska last semester, administrators did not adequately prepare the multicultural center before the start of this semester to avoid these types of confrontations.

We believe that inclusion means making spaces safer for the most marginalized students. We understand “blue lives matter” to be an explicit rejection of the Black Lives Matter movement and therefore an overt threat to Black lives. In the new multicultural centers, we will not tolerate people entering with racist slogans to intimidate and antagonize historically and currently marginalized students.

Inclusion does not mean we accommodate white supremacists, their slogans, and behaviors at the cost of endangering all other community members. This has been made overwhelmingly clear by the many death threats we have received.  These racially-charged threats are directed at the two MSC members from BIPOC communities who confronted the two white men with a “Police lives matter” sticker and a “Did Not Vote For Biden” shirt who were in the multicultural center making students uncomfortable.

If you do not understand the purpose of a multicultural center, click here.

If you do not understand why “blue lives matter” is racist, click here.

If you do not understand that reverse racism doesn’t exist, click here.

If you do not understand what racism is, click here.  

The Multicultural Solidarity Coalition will keep advocating for students from marginalized communities until we have fully-supported and fully-staffed multicultural centers on every ASU campus and we call on students to join us in defending these spaces and to #defendMSC.