SDS returns

[emma_goldman]

SDS: Back from the void.
Friday, August 25 2006 @ 09:58 EDT
http://www.intheset imes.com/ site/main/ article/2796


Beginning in 1960 and lasting through the next nine years, SDS pioneered the teach-in as a means to examine and protest the Vietnam War and organized an estimated 100,000 students. The sectarian downfall of SDS at their national convention in Chicago in 1969 led to the disintegration of almost 200 active chapters and created a void on college campuses that many think remains unfilled. “The demise of SDS was so disastrous that it left many suspicious of any form of a national organization,” says Maurice Isserman, a history professor at Hamilton College, former member of SDS and the author of three books about the New Left.

But hope springs eternal. In January, a group of students and SDS veterans, led by Pat Korte, then a senior at Stonington High School in Connecticut, and SDS’s first president Alan Haber, decided to re-establish the group. In just eight months, more than 1,000 students registered as members and 150 local chapters have started up.

The 100 or so students who attended the convention shared war stories from local campaigns. Chapters from various schools, such as Pace University, the University of Central Florida and the New School, also organized diverse workshops on broader topics ranging from “The Student Syndicalist and Unionist Movement” to “White Privilege and Gentrification,” allowing members to exchange tactics and organizing methods. The most passionate exchanges, however, were reserved for the larger brainstorming session on how to develop a provisional national structure for the group, which included discussions on its purpose, voting processes and maintaining both democracy and the decentralization of power.

By practicing participatory democracy, direct action and chapter autonomy, the new generation of SDS organizers has embraced many of the idealistic values expressed in its predecessor’s seminal manifesto, the Port Huron Statement. Members hope to create a viable, multi-issue movement that will effect radical social change and reinvigorate the student left. “SDS is a valuable organization because it gives students an opportunity to define and direct their own movement,” says Korte. “It also allows us to build a movement that will utilize dual power, create alternative institutions and is modeled after a society we collectively envision.”


All you college students reading this - seek out your local SDS chapter. If you don't have a local chapter, start one. Informing your contemporaries who might otherwise not learn about what the American government is doing is one of the most important actions you can take.

And an added side-benefit - it will strike abject fear into the black hearts of the thugs in the White House who used to work for Nixon.

[Ze]

My homegirl went to an SDS convention a couple weeks ago in Chicago. For the most part the SDS is what they've always been, middle to upper class white and jewish students organizing to try to do the right thing. They tend to misunderstand the plight of the non-white populations in the US though which is what my peoples pointed out to their surprise at the convention.

[bcbm]

Now we can offer greater oppurtunity for students to flirt with radical politics for a few years before moving on to Yuppiedom. Excellent!

[Black Dagger]

Originally posted by black banner black [email protected] 1 2006, 02:29 AM
Now we can offer greater oppurtunity for students to flirt with radical politics for a few years before moving on to Yuppiedom. Excellent!
Even though you're being a smart-arse, that is so true.

The amount of 'student activists' that i've come into contact with who have no class analysis whatsoever probably outnumbers those who do. Political organising to them is like doing after-school sport! Like lol i dunno how im ever gonna stay politically active once i leave uni lol!

I take it this is much worse in places like the US, where most college students have to pay up-front for their degrees.

[bcbm]

Like lol i dunno how im ever gonna stay politically active once i leave uni lol!

There's always the ISO, where university activism doesn't have to end when you leave the university!


I take it this is much worse in places like the US, where most college students have to pay up-front for their degrees.

Oh lord, yes. I think it is slightly better at my school just because of demographics but... not much.

[which doctor]

The SDS certainly has potential, but right now it is quite shit.

A bunch of kids walking through campus with carrying banners and protesting the war...

[violencia.Proletariat]

Originally posted by Black Dagger+Aug 31 2006, 12:38 PM--> (Black Dagger @ Aug 31 2006, 12:38 PM)
black banner black [email protected] 1 2006, 02:29 AM
Now we can offer greater oppurtunity for students to flirt with radical politics for a few years before moving on to Yuppiedom. Excellent!
Even though you're being a smart-arse, that is so true.

The amount of 'student activists' that i've come into contact with who have no class analysis whatsoever probably outnumbers those who do. Political organising to them is like doing after-school sport! Like lol i dunno how im ever gonna stay politically active once i leave uni lol!

I take it this is much worse in places like the US, where most college students have to pay up-front for their degrees. [/b]
The fact that this is coming out of your mouth is hilarious.


The SDS as it stands is a liberal-radical group if such a description exists. The point is, students coul utilize it to fight the class war. If we join and try our best to radicalize its membership and program it could do some worthwhile things. We have no student unions like they do in France or Chile, so this is an alternative.

[emma_goldman]

Originally posted by [email protected] 31 2006, 09:17 PM
The SDS certainly has potential, but right now it is quite shit.

A bunch of kids walking through campus with carrying banners and protesting the war...
I'm not following you. That makes SDS sound good. :blink:

[which doctor]

A bunch of kids walking through campus with carrying banners and protesting the war...
That is not in the least bit revolutionary.

The SDS in it's current form is not radical at all but they do have the potential to be.

[emma_goldman]

Originally posted by [email protected] 31 2006, 10:35 PM

A bunch of kids walking through campus with carrying banners and protesting the war...
That is not in the least bit revolutionary.

The SDS in it's current form is not radical at all but they do have the potential to be.
But if they are getting an anti-war base on campus....

I'm not arguing for SDS, I just don't see the problem with that scenario.

[bcbm]

The SDS as it stands is a liberal-radical group if such a description exists. The point is, students coul utilize it to fight the class war. If we join and try our best to radicalize its membership and program it could do some worthwhile things. We have no student unions like they do in France or Chile, so this is an alternative.

It could be useful in fighting some struggles that would benefit students, and the proletariat, but I don't see much potential for it as a class war instrument, especially in the abscence of organized proletarian groups.

[IronColumn]

Have people forgotten what happened in France 1968? The student strike ignited a general strike. In Hungary 1956 the student led protest sparked the formation of factory councils and a general strike. Students can help the class struggle.

I was at the SDS convention this summer and most of the kids there were anarchists friendly to the IWW, and no authoritarian socialists that I could see. Of course, most measures are going to be liberal at this point, but the organization just started. The original SDS was far more liberal when it started. I don't think SDS will be doing any "halfway with LBJ" campaigns. Or I hope not.

[violencia.Proletariat]

Originally posted by black banner black [email protected] 31 2006, 09:45 PM


The SDS as it stands is a liberal-radical group if such a description exists. The point is, students coul utilize it to fight the class war. If we join and try our best to radicalize its membership and program it could do some worthwhile things. We have no student unions like they do in France or Chile, so this is an alternative.

It could be useful in fighting some struggles that would benefit students, and the proletariat, but I don't see much potential for it as a class war instrument, especially in the abscence of organized proletarian groups.
Why cant students be organized proletarian groups? Are you inferring that all students are bourgeoisie?

[Severian]

Political necrophilia.

[Black Dagger]

Originally posted by VP
The fact that this is coming out of your mouth is hilarious.

O RLY?

Let me in on this joke, please.

[YSR]

I think V.P. is right in what we can do with it. I start college (on Saturday! :o ) and I know my school doesn't have an SDS. Hopefully we can organize one and push it into a really radical direction.

[Comrade-Z]

I hope this isn't a case that fits Marx's famous quote:


Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. Caussidiere for Danton, Louis Blanc for Robespierre, the Montagne of 1848 to 1851 for the Montagne of 1793 to 1795, the nephew for the uncle. And the same caricature occurs in the circumstances of the second edition of the Eighteenth Brumaire.

Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. And just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionizing themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honored disguise and borrowed language. Thus Luther put on the mask of the Apostle Paul, the Revolution of 1789-1814 draped itself alternately in the guise of the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, and the Revolution of 1848 knew nothing better to do than to parody, now 1789, now the revolutionary tradition of 1793-95. In like manner, the beginner who has learned a new language always translates it back into his mother tongue, but he assimilates the spirit of the new language and expresses himself freely in it only when he moves in it without recalling the old and when he forgets his native tongue. [Bolding mine]

I have yet to be impressed by SDS.

[which doctor]

Why are you using the quote of a man who lived in the 1800's to exibit the fact that we should forget past traditions?

It's contradictory.

[The Grey Blur]

Originally posted by [email protected] 1 2006, 08:51 PM
Why are you using the quote of a man who lived in the 1800's to exibit the fact that we should forget past traditions?

It's contradictory.
:huh:

It's for him to argue but I think Z was pointing out Marx's (negative) opinion on resurrecting past movements when one should be focused on creating a comtemporary revolutionary force.


In like manner, the beginner who has learned a new language always translates it back into his mother tongue, but he assimilates the spirit of the new language and expresses himself freely in it only when he moves in it without recalling the old and when he forgets his native tongue.

Although I suppose that could be applied to Marxism as well :lol:

[bcbm]

Why cant students be organized proletarian groups?

Some can. I was clearly referring to the organization of proletarian groups off campus.


Are you inferring that all students are bourgeoisie?

Not at all. I'm a proletarian student, and I know others. I simply don't think an organized student movement by itself will accomplish much. It should be pushing for joint worker-student organization, if nothing else.

[Comrade-Z]

Why are you using the quote of a man who lived in the 1800's to exibit the fact that we should forget past traditions?

It's contradictory.

Good point. You caught me. :P

I don't know if it is so much "forgetting past traditions" that we need. After all, we need to learn from the past. I think what I'm getting at is that using the label "SDS" will not conjure up from the dead the old spirit of SDS just by itself, nor would that be desirable in the first place because the new SDS cannot be effective for our modern age when using carbon copies of the strategies and theories of the old SDS from the old age. Yet it seems to me that some people have this illusion (otherwise, why would they choose the label "SDS"? Did they just happen to come up with the name after a period of brainstorming, and then only later find out that there happened to be a similarly named group in the '60's? Or did they consciously set out to recreate the old SDS? I think it's the latter, and I don't think this is necessarily a good strategy.) However successful the old SDS was, it was ultimately unsuccessful for a reason. I hope the new members of SDS have given a lot of thought to what that reason was and how to avoid it this time. SDS needs to be a self-innovating, organic organization, or else it's not worth having.

[violencia.Proletariat]

Originally posted by black banner black [email protected] 1 2006, 07:31 PM
I simply don't think an organized student movement by itself will accomplish much. It should be pushing for joint worker-student organization, if nothing else.
The new SDS has had a lot of contact with the wobblies. We just have to make sure this is a real connection and make sure we are organizing campus employees with the union, etc.

[Guerrilla22]

The SDS chapter at mu university sucks, its just a bunch of delusional liberals trying masquerade as leftist,

[LoneRed]

Originally posted by [email protected] 3 2006, 09:02 PM
The SDS chapter at mu university sucks, its just a bunch of delusional liberals trying masquerade as leftist,
how could it be anything else?

[Blue Collar Bohemian]

I've recently contacted the SDS Chapter at Michigan State University. Hopefully they are organized in some fashion, though it occurs to me that my politics are past theirs, in that I no longer think democracy is a feasible system of government, while they obviously do. We'll see where this goes.

[ComradeBen]

Does the SDS do High schools?

[which doctor]

Yes. They currently have 25 chapters in high schools around the country.

[rebelworker]

Im currious as o how some of you think large amounts of people become radicals apart from building mass movements and coming up against the limitations of the system.

Or do you have to be born a revolutionary?

I know lets build succesivly smaller groups based on increasingly "revolutionary" politis untill were left with a few one or two person sects, then the revolution!

[bcbm]

Originally posted by violencia.Proletariat+Sep 2 2006, 10:04 PM--> (violencia.Proletariat @ Sep 2 2006, 10:04 PM)
black banner black [email protected] 1 2006, 07:31 PM
I simply don't think an organized student movement by itself will accomplish much. It should be pushing for joint worker-student organization, if nothing else.
The new SDS has had a lot of contact with the wobblies. We just have to make sure this is a real connection and make sure we are organizing campus employees with the union, etc. [/b]
Sounds like a good start. One of the major problems I see with organizing students and campus employees is the transitory nature of their positions. Any thoughts on how to bridge past that?

[Severian]

Originally posted by Comrade-[email protected] 2 2006, 09:16 PM
I think what I'm getting at is that using the label "SDS" will not conjure up from the dead the old spirit of SDS just by itself, nor would that be desirable in the first place because the new SDS cannot be effective for our modern age when using carbon copies of the strategies and theories of the old SDS from the old age. Yet it seems to me that some people have this illusion (otherwise, why would they choose the label "SDS"?
Yeah, exactly. It's reflected in especially ridiculous form in the thread title "SDS Returns" - as if you could resurrect an organization just by using the name. No, an organization is composed of people and their interrelations; that can't simply be recreated.

You could try to create another organization like it...but SDS self-destructed after a whole period of trying hard to ignore the main development in politics at the time - the movement against the Vietnam War. So it'd be better to try to learn from SDS' mistakes.

[angus_mor]

The SDS is much more radical than many think, and this thread reflects the lack of acknowledgement of the consciousness within the SDS. While it is true that many members of the SDS have white, "middle class" backgrounds, not every college student is a yuppie, most college students are wage workers, the organization is not based on ideas that reflect infantile middle class reaction. It isn't any elitist, pretentious Fabian Society. It's antibureaucratic, participative democratic, autonomist and acknowledges a will of the organized students to seek out social change and progress of human society. Let us not forget Weatherman, the most radical Marxist faction to arise from the SDS, can you deny THEY understood class struggle?

[The Grey Blur]

Originally posted by [email protected] 16 2006, 09:08 AM
can you deny THEY understood class struggle?
Yes

Rather easily

[angus_mor]

Well, if it's so easy, then you won't mind elaborating, instead of using circular logic ("It is because I say so.").

[angus_mor]

Who's to say how anyone understands anything? Isn't the fight for democracy the startingpoint of any labor movement, paramount in the realization of social progress? Isn't a true communist society a more democratic society? If we're going to argue about who's a "good Communist" and be picky about our "revolutionaries", then when is it that we'll actually sit down and work together to change anything? The kind of attitudes expressed in this thread will result in sectarian leftism if we can't look past this ideological egotism which makes all of our ideas and actions worthless as well as motionless.

[The Grey Blur]

You said the Weathermen understood class struggle (bombing buildings = class strugge?) and then said;

Who's to say how anyone understands anything?
Quite confusing

[angus_mor]

"QUOTE
Who's to say how anyone understands anything?


Quite confusing " -- Permanent Revolution

I was speaking generally of interpretations of leftist theory. While the Weathermen did a lot of things that we question today, their intention was not to harm anyone in the process, although they accidentally killed a few of their own comrades in the process. They bombed Federal buildings, lucrative corporate holdings, as well as other landmarks in connection with emerging American Hegemony, planned jail breaks, they even broke Timothy Leary out of prison. They were a faction of "communist women and men," and did in fact understand class struggle; their ultimate goal was to foment revolution in the US.

"The group referred to itself as a "revolutionary organization of communist women and men" whose purpose was to carry out a series of militant actions that would achieve the revolutionary overthrow of the Government of the United States (and of capitalism as a whole)."

-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weatherman_%28organization%29

[Janus]

I think this belongs better in Politics as it is a current event.

[afrikaNOW]

Originally posted by [email protected] 17 2006, 05:35 AM
"QUOTE
Who's to say how anyone understands anything?


Quite confusing " -- Permanent Revolution

I was speaking generally of interpretations of leftist theory. While the Weathermen did a lot of things that we question today, their intention was not to harm anyone in the process, although they accidentally killed a few of their own comrades in the process. They bombed Federal buildings, lucrative corporate holdings, as well as other landmarks in connection with emerging American Hegemony, planned jail breaks, they even broke Timothy Leary out of prison. They were a faction of "communist women and men," and did in fact understand class struggle; their ultimate goal was to foment revolution in the US.

"The group referred to itself as a "revolutionary organization of communist women and men" whose purpose was to carry out a series of militant actions that would achieve the revolutionary overthrow of the Government of the United States (and of capitalism as a whole)."

-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weatherman_%28organization%29
If they understood class struggle as you say they did then they would know a "series of militant actions" would NOT achieve the revolutionary overthrow of the Government of the United States (and of capitalism as a whole)."

[angus_mor]

They were trying to INSIGHT and FOMENT revolution in the proletariat, they felt that at the time the US was on the brink of proletarian revolution due to the rampant revolutions occuring the world over and the blatantly fascistic actions of Capitol Hill. They didn't just blow shit up randomly, their targets were the property of government bureaus, bourgeois holdings, and holding political demonstrations and instigating riots. Why is it so hard for people to actually admit they havent read anything on the subject and say, "hey, maybe I should understand what I'm talking about before I say something stupid!"? Though it's clear now that their actions were in vain and they're only a relic of history.

[karmaradical]

The new SDS really needs to get its shit together.

They tried to form one over here in my region, but it didnt go through because of the actions of the National Office. They basically scared everyone off. While they continue to put slogans in Spanish on their posters at demonstrations, they really dont know how to work with the chicano movement.

Or at least they didnt know how to work with the El Paso Chicano movement.