VSPN envisions a future of collective liberation, in which all communities break free from policing and the carceral state, everyone has access to truly affordable higher education, and students, faculty, and workers have decision-making power within their lives – including their educational and governmental institutions.
To achieve our goals, VSPN engages in transformative leadership development of youth leaders throughout the state. We incubate issue-based campaigns at both the local and state level designed and led by our members. Together with others, we are building a mass movement of young Virginians—BIPOC, LGBTQ, immigrant, and working class—who are rising up to actively build a better future for themselves, our state, and our country.
VSPN is a political home for young emerging organizers in Virginia.
Our base, our member leaders, and our staff are predominantly BIPOC, LGBTQ, gender non-binary folks and women who attend or have attended a public university in the state.
We center our work on deep relationship-building among our members, in tandem with transformative leadership development and skill-building tailored to youths’ needs.
The majority of our members are actively involved in leading or engaging in campus/community based organizations in their own communities. Our members currently are concentrated in Richmond and Charlottesville, and we are deepening our base building work in Northern Virginia, Williamsburg, Fredericksburg, and the Hampton Roads regions.
OUR WORK
VSPN also serves as a critical repository of institutional knowledge and history of student activism in Virginia. With a base that effectively turns over every 4-6 years, we emphasize teaching a “people’s history” of student organizing in VA to ensure that students are effectively building upon campaigns rather than reinventing the wheel, and connecting with other generations of youth organizers in the state.
