“It’s Santa time. Move down the street a little bit,” a man said to the group gathered on the steps of the Athens County Courthouse.
Approximately 40 people gathered to protest President Donald Trump’s tax plan. The rally was hosted by the International Socialist Organization and began at 5:30 p.m., while Santa was also scheduled to make an appearance at the courthouse at 6 p.m.
Claire Eder, the secretary of the Graduate Employee Organization who is a graduate student studying creative writing, attended the rally because she believes Trump’s tax plan will hurt graduate students. Eder said she is scared that if the tax plan passes, graduate tuition waivers will become taxable income.
“Right now OU’s average stipend is $13,100,” Eder said. “That’s kind of already way below the livable income for Athens. If our tuition waivers become taxed, that’s a huge amount of money that we don’t actually see in our day-to-day life because it’s not actually income for us. But if that becomes tax, that will mean, for the average student at that $13,000 level, that would be 20 percent of the income they get at their stipend would be taxed.”
That 20 percent is tax on the tuition waiver, which would amount to about 20 percent of the total amount of the stipend. Eder said that would make many graduate students’ situations worse and may discourage them from attending graduate school.
“That’s bad for our culture overall, and we need people who can think critically and perform research, and I’m really concerned about what this would mean for our graduate students and our country,” Eder said. “I’m speaking on behalf of graduate employees, but there are so many other groups that are impacted in a negative way.”
Katherine King, an Athens resident, spoke at the rally to inform people of how Trump’s tax plan may affect them. King said she cannot assume that the plan may not pass but wants to be prepared if it does.
“We cannot wait until 2018,” King said. “If we don’t fight back, Trump will start to succeed, but we can have hope. By coming together and organizing our communities we have enough people to resist Trump. I see this rally, this today as a jumping off point for resistance in Athens to grow and develop.”
At 6 p.m., the group moved to the left side of the courthouse to accommodate for the space Santa and his followers were using. The Rev. Evan Young, executive director of United Campus Ministry, said he attended the rally because he believes the issue is important to everyone.
“I think when a tax bill is proposed that actually works to activate existing inequalities and to further disempower the people who are on the fringes of margins in our society, we have a duty to protest,” Young said. “We have an obligation to stand for the great principles of justice for all and equality for all on which the country was founded.”
Young said even though the protest may not change the minds of the those in Washington, he believes it will help bring people together.
“It will bring people here together and empower us in our efforts to collaborate and build coalitions that will increase our power and our influence in the political process and the cultural processes,” Young said.
The protest ended with a solidarity clap.
Clarification: The article has been updated to clarify where the 20 percent tax would come from.
