We as young people have been brought up to see the present system, with the current arrangement of power, as the only option for our futures. The persistence of racism, *cis-hetero-patriarchy, and other forms of capitalist exploitation have been portrayed as unfortunate but inevitable holdovers from a contentious past. However, as we grew we have learned that our nation, far from moving beyond these systems of oppression, depends upon them. Rather than advancing toward a prosperous shared future, our home state of Michigan, has spent our entire lives cutting budgets, defunding communities, placing whole populations in sacrifice zones. The mantra of “running the state like a business” rang out clearly across the Great Lakes region; all while our communities were poisoned, our friends taken from us, our jobs made part time, and our futures transformed into part time internships.

Young people have refused to accept this prescribed future. Over the past years there has been a resurgence of organizing, activism and protest across our state. Students and young people have been at the forefront of a wave of moments and movements: organizing locally, regionally and nationally on a huge array of issues.

One of the key things weakening our movements has been the separation of specific struggles from one another. Across location, identity and issue, our work is too frequently divided, weakening the strength that should lay in a collective movement. In response to this weakness we are organizing across Michigan to build relationships, community, and skills; and collaborate in resistance. Michigan Student Power (MSP) believes that any one of our causes will not truly succeed unless we are connected to each other's work.

Michigan Student Power is a statewide association of progressive student organizations and organizers, started in 2014 and currently operating on 8 campuses across Michigan. MSP works to connect student struggles across campuses, issues and identities, in order to share skills and build statewide movements capable of effecting radical change. MSP uses a variety of tactics and strategies to effect change in Michigan and on our campuses, including direct member education, voter engagement, issue-based campaign organizing, and direct action.

Michigan Student Power believes that our society is confronted by large scale structures of oppression, including racism, cishetero-sexism {cissexism}, and capitalism. We believe that the key systems of oppression that operate in our lives are all inextricably linked. They have been shaped by each other over time and cannot be broken up and defeated in isolation. At the same time we want to go beyond opposing the current organization of society to think critically about what we want for our communities.

We believe that the world we are trying to build will take the form of some kind of economically liberated society: where value is not defined by an individual's profitability, where reparations are made for the centuries of oppression that have come before, where no private individual controls the lives of others through jobs or wealth, where we are able to labor to meet our needs and democratically control our future. This theory of change comes from a long tradition of Black, PoC, radical thinkers reaching back into the 1800’s (and beyond), and seeks to build an understanding of past movements as we continue the work today.