United Left group seeks to provide framework for liberal discussion

Liberal students on campus may soon have a new organization through which to discuss their beliefs.

Princeton United Left, an organization started by Seongcheol Kim ’14, is a left-wing group currently seeking recognition from the Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Students. The organization, Kim said, is separate from the College Democrats and other campus organizations with similar political views. He described PUL as a broad-based left-wing political party on campus that operates outside of the existing political space while at the same time participating in campus-based actions.

Kim said he hopes the club will give a big picture of left-wing views and provide a framework for left-wing discussion at Princeton.

The club has already published several articles on the Orange Revolution, its blog publication.

“The blog serves as a forum for exposition and analysis of issues from left-wing viewpoints as well as a medium for sharing information and mobilizing interest for ongoing campaigns on campus and elsewhere” Kim said. He added that the blog is intended to be the major publication of PUL.

“The blog is an incarnation of the convergence between discourse and action, and it’s also a medium of sharing information on public actions, mobilizing interest on actions, striving for balance between rigorous analysis and some discussion of theory, along with trying to share information about the kinds of actions we’re participating in,” Kim said.

In addition to Kim, a team of four or five regular contributors writes for the blog, and Kim also solicits occasional guest posts by other Princeton students. Kim edits and formats all blog posts before they are published, usually through an informal editing process.

“The writers we have right now are people I’ve already known from similar organizational settings but on one level we want to encourage all members in PUL to contribute,” Kim said.

Since its first post in Sept. 18, the Orange Revolution, whose name is a reference to both the democratic revolution in Ukraine seven years ago and the color of Princeton’s bubble, has had five blog posts. Kim named increasing the site’s visibility as a major challenge.

“One option that hasn’t been ruled out is eventually expanding into some sort of print format like a monthly or bi-monthly newsletter,” Kim said.

The topics of the blog posts have ranged from commentary on the debate around class warfare and taxes to a guest post on Palestine’s application for UN membership.

“In terms of the slant, while it is PUL’s blog publication, we want this to look like a party organ,” Kim said. “It’s supposed to be a pretty open forum, and in the ‘About Us’ page we want to make sure individual writers have a chance to express their own opinions.”

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In addition to the blog, Kim said that PUL also aims to hold regular dinner discussions and a film series centered around workers’ past and present rights. Kim also said he hopes to organize trips such as attending an anti-war rally in Trenton and occupying Wall Street in New York City.