FIX EXCLUSIVES
Group’s ‘true agenda is the redistribution of wealth,’ critic says
More Perfect Union, a nonprofit focused on “building power for the working class,” has launched a collegiate counterpart, More Perfect University, as a progressive competitor to Turning Point USA.
Elise Joshi, the Campus Program Manager for More Perfect Union, told The College Fix the effort aims to support student journalists and activists covering working-class and economic issues that are often ignored by mainstream media.
The program focuses on issues like “skyrocketing rent,” increased cost of living, and “unaffordable college tuition.”
“These are issues that face all of us and can bring us together against a, you know, the common enemy, which is the people rigging our economy, and that’s corporations and the billionaire class,” Joshi told The Fix over the phone.
The organization is building an Advocacy Journalism Network for students “who want to speak truth to power on their campus,” she said.
The students will produce videos and stories about problems on their campuses and in their communities.
She added that the group runs a Discord server — an online messaging platform — with nearly 1,000 students discussing the issues together.
Further, Joshi criticized MPUniversity’s conservative competitor, Turning Point USA, for being backed by corporate interests. She said that her group wants to offer a more authentic, left-leaning economic populist alternative.
TPUSA proposes solutions “that further marginalize the most marginalized people in this country, immigrants, the trans community, the black community. They’re obviously not going to champion real working class solutions, because they’re bankrolled by the people who rigged our economy.”
MPUniversity aims to “provide the substance that turning point refuses to and never will because of their conflicts of interest,” Joshi told The Fix.
Faiz Shakir, the executive director of More Perfect Union, told The New York Times that MPUniversity aims to develop progressive influencers, much like how TPUSA launched conservative commentator Candace Owens’ career.
“I assume, if we’re very successful here, you look at us in a year or two years, you say, ‘Whoa, those economic populist voices who are compelling and interesting first came out of’” MPUniversity, he said.
However, Claremont Institute spokesperson Iris Miller criticized MPUniversity for seeming to advocate for the redistribution of wealth in an interview with The College Fix.
The group’s “mission statement, at first glance, is anodyne and focused on uplifting the working class. But it’s clearly a democratic-socialist-populist organization if you look at its leadership’s political and activist experience and background,” Miller said.
She said that free markets have lifted millions of people out of poverty throughout history.
“MPU may cloak its project under airy abstractions like ‘building our democracy,’ but the organization’s true agenda is the redistribution of wealth,” she said.
Miller also told The Fix she is concerned the new group will worsen an already existing problem on campus.
“The addition of yet another activist and committed progressive organization on America’s campuses will only continue to fuel progressive populism nationally, which fundamentally misunderstands the purpose of government, the nature of individual rights, and the components of a flourishing economy that helps all Americans, the working class included,” she said.
According to its website, MPUniversity uses advocacy journalism “to embolden and empower the working class to engage in building our democracy for the betterment of all working Americans.”
It relies solely on donations and philanthropic organizations that align with its values for funding.
The group launched in April with a livestreamed interview with Sen. Bernie Sanders. MPUniversity was founded by Sanders’ advisors, according to The Hill.
