sanctuary now
why and howThe Sanctuary Campus Network (SCN) is a coalition of students, faculty, and staff organizing to protect and support those most vulnerable against state repression and violence under the current administration.
We have come together to facilitate local organizing to protect each other against rising attacks, while building the university and future we want. We commit to loving and protecting communities made vulnerable by state and extra-state attacks: migrants, queer and trans people, the unhoused, women and pregnant people, Arabs and Muslims, environmentalists, earth and land defenders, Indigenous nations, people of color, scientists and health practitioners, and more.
The Sanctuary Campus Network seeks to build local and regional organizing groups, pool our efforts, share resources, communicate about our victories and setbacks, and care for one another.
we aim to
Resist
immigration enforcement and ICE presence on campus
Build
networks of care and direct action
Fight
for a democratic, decolonized university that serves the people, not oppressive systems
Dismantle
structures of policing and surveillance within academic institutions
We propose that particular policies adopted by the Sanctuary Campus Network be grounded by a set of three core commitments:
Sanctuary for all
Sanctuary does not distinguish between the deserving and undeserving. All who are defined as outsiders to the MAGA state are targets: women, people of color, workers, ill and disabled people, queer, trans, and gender non-conforming people, Arab and Muslim folks, migrants, land defenders, and more. None of us are safe from Project 2025. We must love and protect one another.
Abolitionist Sanctuary
Sanctuary cannot condone some cages while condemning others. We must organize to dismantle the conditions that foster prisons, concentration camps, police departments, and imperial military forces, and to build a world in which such repressive institutions are neither necessary nor tolerated. Nation-state borders are a modern invention inextricably tied to the colonialist and capitalist systems that are destroying the planet. They are an inherent violation of the human right to mobility. Borders must be abolished.
Beyond Academic Freedom:
A Democratic, Decolonized University
The university is a prime target in the efforts to destroy democracy, starting with progressive movements. While academic freedom is essential, to defend intellectual inquiry, free speech, and the university as an institution for critical thought, we need to build a movement for a thorough democratization and decolonization of the university. Now is a moment when we can mobilize a mass movement that connects multiple, intersecting facets of the shared struggle.
Values
Assume people are trying their best
Aim ire upwards, not across/horizontally. No circular firing squads.
Protect each other
Center directly affected folks
Our silence will not protect us
Solidarity with other facets of the resistance
