The Progressive Student Alliance was formed as a non-partisan forum for progressive students and groups to promote education and activism. The PSA was also formed under the idea that progressive goals can be better achieved if groups work together - communicating across divides to build understanding and organizational strength. Founding goals included:
- promoting activism through social activities, conferences, outreach, and direct action
- creating a forum for discussion and a network for action by forming study groups, maintaining a web page and phone and e-mail lists
- educating through the creation of a library, publications, monthly progress reports, a calendar of events, literature exchanges and a deCal class
- acting as a watchdog on the school and government
The PSA came out of a series of meetings at the end of Fall 2000 and was offically formed at the Progressive Community Forum on January 24, 2001. At this time, issues arose as to whether we would exist as a colalition of groups or a completely seperate group. This lead to the queston of whether PSA should take on "issues" or do actions, and if so, how? Since then, the PSA played with these ideas and slowly built a structure based on both outreach and issues. Outreach would focus on the calendar of progressive events and the website, while issues would focus on initiating forums and coordinating actions. PSA wasn't very active during the Fall of 2001 due to 9-11 and other issues.
Past Projects:
Earth Weekend Conference Website - March & April 2002
PSA created the website for the Environmental Coalition's Earth Weekend Conference 2002. You can view it here: http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~eco/earthweekend
End of Year Progressive Picnic - Sunday, May 13th 2001
At the end of the academic year, we hosted a pot-luck progressive picnic at People's Park. The first publication of The Wild Blue was distributed and students + community members socialized and played soccer.
FTAA Events
From early to mid April 2001 we helped coordinate local events dealing the FTAA summit. Our actions included coordinating
groups that wanted to do FTAA teach-ins prior to the summit, helping make available transportation to the protests on
the San Diego / Tiajuana border, and organizing a group of UC Berkely students to march together at the action in San
Francisco.
UC Investments and Labor Practices Forum - Wednesday, March 21 2001, 6:00pm, 101 Morgan
Our second forum of 2001 centered around the theme of UC Investments and Labor Practices. All participating
progressive groups were invited to join a panel and give thier insight regarding this issue. Students on campus were highly
encouraged to attend and join in the discussion.
Click for detatils of forum
Progressive Community Forum - Wednesday, January 24, 2001 101 Morgan
This forum was a chance for UC Berkeley's progressive community to get together, network, and help decide the future of PSA. A good chunk of time was devoted to introductions. People from campus groups talked about their group -- meetings, issue campaigns for this semester, past glories, purpose, etc. Surveys were passed out among groups to collect this info for a database of progressive groups at UC Berkeley. An overview was given on the creation of the PSA and suggestions were given on its form and content. Debate continued on whether it should be a coalition, a forum, or a club with its own issues.
Click for detatils of forum
