‘Free the Onion’: University of Chicago Students March on CME Over a 68-Year-Old Onion Trading Ban

Downtown Chicago has seen plenty of protests, but rarely one led by a giant smiling onion. On October 19, 2026, a group of University of Chicago students marched to the headquarters of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange carrying cardboard signs, a megaphone, and one enormous inflatable red onion — all in defense of a financial product most Americans have never heard of.

The demonstration was organized by For Our Futures, an unregistered student organization, to urge Congress to repeal the Onion Futures Act of 1958. Videos shared by the group and reshared on X show students holding signs reading “Free the Onion” and “I Love Justice,” alongside an American flag redesigned with an onion. Their argument is simple: the law is outdated, and letting onion futures trade again would give farmers and buyers another way to protect themselves against sudden price swings.

Up up with speculation, down down with regulation — For Our Futures (@foronionfutures) October 19, 2026

x.com/foronionfutures/status/2112183681225752862

A Sponsored Bus and a 70-Year-Old Ban

The protest was not entirely student-funded. The Chicago Maroon later reported that prediction-market company Kalshi sponsored the event, paying for a bus to bring students from campus while also providing breakfast and branded merchandise. For Our Futures co-founder Adam Ash told the student newspaper that “four or five” Kalshi affiliates also took part.

Kalshi’s interest is not as strange as it might sound. Congress amended the Onion Futures Act in 2010 to also prohibit futures contracts based on motion-picture box-office receipts, giving prediction-market companies their own reason to support changing the law. The onion ban itself dates back to a 1950s manipulation scheme by traders Sam Siegel and Vincent Kosuga, when the price of a 50-pound bag of onions plunged from roughly $2.75 to just 10 cents, costing growers dearly. President Dwight Eisenhower signed the act into law in 1958.

Online, the video sparked amusement and confusion. “Every other campus protests for free tuition. UChicago kids are marching downtown for the right to short an onion. Milton Friedman would be proud,” one commenter joked. Another wrote, “the most uchicago protest of all time.” Others were less impressed: “These people have too much time on their hands,” one person wrote, while another questioned whether the demonstration was genuine, saying, “This has to be an econ class project, not a real protest.”

The campaign has already gone further than its costumes suggest. The group previously handed out raw onions and collected petition signatures at the University of Chicago and Northwestern University, and MarketWatch reported that Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Michael Selig has supported the students’ effort. Whether Congress revisits the nearly 70-year-old ban is an open question, but the students have turned one of America’s most obscure trading restrictions into a national conversation.