An Interview with Amani Millon: YDSA, Political Burnout, and Plan-B

Last year, then-sophomore Amani Millon started a chapter for the Young Democratic Socialists of America at Centenary. He planned with fellow members and recruited like-minded students. They set out with big plans for the college–not all of them political. From the beginning, Millon and YDSA have strongly focused on the fight for social, environmental, and humanitarian rights at Centenary and the larger Shreveport-Bossier area.

This past week, I sat down with Millon to talk to him about YDSA and their newest program for Plan-B distribution on campus.

JH: Can you tell me what is YDSA?

AM: Yeah, so YDSA stands for Young Democratic Socialists of America. We’re basically an umbrella organization that is a mostly left leaning activist organization. What that means is that we fight for trans rights, workers rights, currently we're doing a lot of work surrounding Palestine. Our YDSA specifically is working on getting more contraceptive access on campus right now, and a few other things.

JH: You're the president of our organization here. How did you learn about it?

AM: My friend Bobby has been involved with YDSA ever since he graduated, so I’ve always known about YDSA. When I first came to Centenary, my plan was actually to start a YDSA, but I fell out of love with politics. I was just very jaded and very annoyed with the current state of the American political system. I felt like I'd avoid a massive headache if I just didn't get involved with this. But then I changed my mind a year later, and I was like this work is really important. I think that politics will affect people's lives, whether they want it to or not, so I might as well learn and try to help people to the best of my ability.

JH: I love to hear that. I think it's an important topic to talk about, people getting exhausted with politics. And it's good to hear the story of someone coming back from that instead of just remaining jaded.

AM: A lot of people get burnt out or want to stop getting involved in politics. That’s why I don't fuck with a lot of harassing people or getting mad at them when they don't do stuff. Instead I’m trying to get them involved in different ways and just seeing how we can make things work with what we have now. I do feel like being involved is like the most effective and the most important in my mind, but I can understand why people go the route they do.

With Centenary being in a conservative part of the United States, there have been worries about pushback from right wing opposition. Millon seemed aware of the potential divisiveness, but overall undeterred

AM: In my opinion, I think a lot of people are unsure on how they feel. I know some people are taking a stance against it just because it has that “socialist” aspect in there. People have literally come up to one of my chapter members and told her that they want to be involved with the community garden, but because they have to deal with the YDSA, they’d just rather not

We're also having some issues with SGA right now when it comes to chartership, which I understand why they feel like we shouldn't be a chartered organization because then they'd have to charter other political organs. They would have no reason not to charter a [Turning Point USA]. I can understand being scared about that, but I feel like the work that we do is important. I don't really see much of what TPUSA, Young Republicans, or even Young Democrats are doing, except for voting drives, which anybody can do. I think for our case, it's a little bit different and a little bit special.

JH: You'd rather deal with the potential issues of having another chartered political organization on campus that's potentially opposing your ideas and viewpoints, rather than not be chartered at all?

AM: Yeah.

Despite not being able to earn chartered status from the SGA, YDSA has still managed to pull off impressive programming. They’ve invested considerable time in restarting the Community Garden, protesting for Palestine, and most recently providing greater access to contraceptives on Centenary’s Campus. Millon told me about their new Plan-B initiative.

AM: One, the Plan B is safe. We get it through this organization called Advocates for Youth. A lot of our Plan B currently that we have on campus right now is from Advocates for Youth, but it’s donated to us by the LA Tech YDSA. We have 144 pills right now, but Advocates for Youth does a drive where if you apply, they'll give you 1,200 pills at one time to distribute across your campus.

And essentially how this is going to look like is we are going to, uh. Res Life cannot store the Plan B like we thought they could, so our membership will be storing the Plan B, and we’ll keep the people holding on to the Plan B anonymous, as well as the person that wants the Plan B. That person (YDSA member) would drop off the Plan B to whoever needs it. We would, of course, have all the people distributing the Plan B sign a confidentiality waiver, but they never see this person's face, so that shouldn't be an issue.

We hope to fill out that application [with Advocacy for Youth] later this semester and get the 1,200 pills, because if we can, then we might just start taking more preventative measures, like handing out Plan B on the caf deck whenever we table.

YDSA hopes to roll out the program within the month and will announce when the program is available to students. The group had their first meeting this past week, and plans to hold recurring meetings every Tuesday at 6:00 p.m. Future plans include a panel on Palestine featuring Centenary professors and alumni. If you want to find out more, you can find their Instagram @centydsa.

Special thanks to Amani Millon for sitting down with me and having this interview.