Common Platform (Macalester)

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The Common Platform was a progressive political coalition of Legislative Body members and MCSG exec candidates at Macalester College. The coalition lasted formally from April 2004 until May 2005.

Throughout these coordinating meetings, Green Party members pushed for the idea of seizing the student government to advance progressive goals. What I had not realized then, nor later when we were in power, was that the outgoing administration was the one established by a coalition of domestic students of color, an initiative of which I was part a year ago. (hmm)

Through a series of meetings among a few students of color and various progressive student organization leaders, the group developed a plan of action and called itself the Common Platform. The goal of the loosely connected coalition was to take control of the student government, then deemed as ineffective in addressing issues of social responsibility such as the war on Iraq or the moving of Wal-Mart to Saint Paul, by gathering a critical mass of progressive students. Much time was initially spent by discussing which would be the core issues to be incorporated into the group's agenda, as many members were, surprisingly, reluctant to support a ban to Coca Cola. After establishing a core of four central issues and recruiting a mass of potential student executive and legislative candidates, Common Platform launched on campaigning and talked many visiting accepted high school students into coming to Macalester with the specific goal of taking up the initiative. I supported this phase of organizing by providing technical means (setting up mailing lists, digging newspaper archives on similar former initiatives) and by introducing various students of color, albeit reluctantly, into the candidateship.

As a result of the mobilizing the spring elections of 2004 saw a flurry of (opposing) candidates and much more political talk than before, but Common Platform lost all of its executive races (Rebecca Hossain won an SSC spot, but did we ever talk to her before/afterhand?) and only succeeded at dominating 50% of the legislature, at the cost of broadening the definition of a supporter.