Students for a Democratic Society

This article is about the 1960s organization. For the more recent organization, see Students for a Democratic Society (2006 organization).

Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was a student activist movement in the United States that was one of the main representations of the New Left. The organization developed and expanded rapidly in the mid-1960s before dissolving at its last convention in 1969.

SDS has been an important influence on student organizing in the decades since its collapse. Participatory democracy, direct action, radicalism, student power, shoestring budgets, and its organizational structure are all present in varying degrees in current American student activist groups. Though various organizations have been formed in subsequent years as proposed national networks for left-wing student organizing, none has approached the scale of SDS, and most have lasted a few years at best.

A new incarnation of SDS was founded in 2006.

Origins

SDS developed from the Student League for Industrial Democracy (SLID), the youth branch of a socialist educational organization known as the League for Industrial Democracy (LID). LID descended from the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, started in 1905. Early in 1960, the SLID changed its name into SDS at the behest of its then acting Director, Aryeh Neier.[1] The phrase “industrial democracy” sounded too narrow and too labor oriented, making it more difficult to recruit students. Moreover, because the LID's leadership did not correspond to the expectations and the mood on the campuses, the SLID felt the need to dissociate itself from its parent organization. SDS held its first meeting in 1960 on the University of Michigan campus at Ann Arbor, Michigan, where Alan Haber was elected president. Its political manifesto, known as the Port Huron Statement, was adopted at the organization's first convention in 1962,[2] based on an earlier draft by staff member Tom Hayden.

The Port Huron Statement criticized the political system of the United States for failing to achieve international peace and critiqued Cold War foreign policy, the threat of nuclear war, and the arms race. In domestic matters, it criticized racial discrimination, economic inequality, big businesses, trade unions and political parties. In addition to its critique and analysis of the American system, the manifesto also suggested a series of reforms: it proclaimed a need to reshape into two genuine political parties to attain greater democracy, for stronger power for individuals through citizen's lobbies, for more substantial involvement by workers in business management, and for an enlarged public sector with increased government welfare, including a "program against poverty." The manifesto provided ideas of what and how to work for and to improve, and also advocated nonviolent civil disobedience as the means by which student youth could bring forth a "participatory democracy." Kirkpatrick Sale described the manifesto as "nothing less than an ideology, however raw and imperfect and however much would have resisted this word."[3]

The manifesto also presented SDS's break with the left-wing policies of the postwar years. Firstly, it was written with the same overall vision all along the document and reflected their view that all problems in every area were linked to each other and their willingness not to lead single-issue struggles but a broad struggle on all fronts at the same time. Then, it expressed SDS's willingness to work with groups whatever may be their political inclination and announced their rejection of anti-communism, a definitely new radical view contrasting with much of the American Left which had developed a policy of anti-communism. Without being Marxist or pro-communism, they denounced anti-communism as being a social problem and an obstruction to democracy. They also criticized the United States for its exaggerated paranoia and exclusive condemnation of the Soviet Union, and blamed this for being the reason for failing to achieve disarmament and to assure peace.

The Port Huron Convention opened with a symbol of this break with the policy of the past years: the delegate of the Communist Progressive Youth Organizing Committee asked to attend the conference as an observer. The people from the Young People's Socialist League objected while most of the SDSers insisted on letting him sit. He eventually sat. Later in the meeting, Michael Harrington, an LID member, became agitated over the manifesto because he found the stand they took toward the Soviet Union and authoritarian regimes in general was insufficiently critical, and because, according to him, they deliberately wrote sections to pique the liberals. Surprisingly, Roger Hagan, a liberal, defended the SDS and its policy. After lively debates between the two, the draft finally remained more or less unchanged. Some two weeks later, a meeting between the LID and SDS was held where the LID expressed its discontent about the manifesto. As a result, Haber and Hayden, at this time respectively the National secretary and the new President of the organization, were summoned to a hearing on the 6 July 1962. There, Hayden clashed with Michael Harrington (as he later would with Irving Howe[4]) over the perceived potential for totalitarianism among other things. Harrington denounced the seating of the PYOC member, SDS’s tolerance for communism and their lack of clarity in their condemnation of communist totalitarianism and authoritarianism, and he reproached SDS for providing only a mild critique of the Soviet Union and for blaming the cold war mostly on the United States. Hayden then asked him to read the manifesto more carefully, especially the section on values. Hayden later wrote:

"While the draft Port Huron Statement included a strong denunciation of the Soviet Union, it wasn't enough for LID leaders like Michael Harrington. They wanted absolute clarity, for example, that the United States was blameless for the nuclear arms race.... In truth, they seemed threatened by the independence of the new wave of student activism..."[5]

The tension between SDS and the LID was greatly increased when SDS called for a national demonstration to take place during the spring of 1965. The LID was very concerned about "Communist" participation but SDS refused to restrict who could attend and what signs they could use. The rift opened even further when, at the 1965 SDS National Convention, the clause excluding communists from membership was deleted from the SDS constitution. During the summer of 1965 delegates from SDS and the LID met in Chicago and New York. The League for Industrial Democracy, SDS's sponsoring organization, objected to the removal of the exclusion clause in the SDS constitution,[6] as SDS benefited from LID's non-profit status, which excluded political activity. By mutual agreement the relationship was severed October 4, 1965.[7]

Early years: 1962–1965

In the academic year 1962–1963, the President was Tom Hayden, the Vice President was Paul Booth and the National Secretary was Jim Monsonis. There were nine chapters with, at most, about 1000 members. The national office (NO) in New York City consisted of a few desks, some broken chairs, a couple of file cabinets and a few typewriters. As a student group with a strong belief in decentralization and a distrust for most organizations, the SDS did not have a strong central bureaucracy. The three stalwarts at the office, Don McKelvey, Steve Max, and the National Secretary, Jim Monsonis, worked long hours for little pay to service the local chapters, and to help establish new ones. Even during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October, little could be accomplished. Most activity was oriented toward civil rights issues and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) played a key role in inspiring SDS.

By the end of the academic year, there were over 200 delegates at the annual convention at Pine Hill, New York, from 32 different colleges and universities. It was then decided to give more power to the chapters, who would then send delegates to the National Council (NC), which would meet quarterly to handle the ongoing activities. Also, in the spirit of participatory democracy, a consensus was reached to elect new officers each year. Lee Webb of Boston University was chosen as National Secretary, and Todd Gitlin of Harvard University was made president. Some continuity was preserved by retaining Paul Booth as Vice President. The search began for something to challenge the idealistic, budding activists.

It was at this time that the Black Power Movement was first gaining some momentum (although Stokely Carmichael would make the movement more mainstream in 1966). The movement made it impolitic for white activists, such as those in SDS, to presume to lead protests for black civil rights. Instead, SDS would try to organize white unemployed youths through a newly established program they called the Economic Research and Action Project (ERAP). This "into the ghetto" move was a practical failure, but the fact that it existed at all drew many young idealists to SDS.

At the summer convention in 1964 there was a split between those who were campus-oriented, and the ERAP supporters. Most of the old guard were ERAP supporters, but the campus activists were growing. Paul Potter was elected president, and by the end of summer there were ten ERAP programs in place, with about 125 student volunteers. C. Clark Kissinger of Shimer College in Illinois was elected as National Secretary, and he put the NO on a much more business-like basis. He and his assistant, Helen Garvey, mailed out the literature list, the newsletters and the news of chapter's activities to a growing membership list. Kissinger also worked to smooth the relationship with the LID.

A small faction of SDS that was interested in change through conventional electoral politics established a program called the Political Education Project (PEP). Its Director was Jim Williams of the University of Louisville, and Steve Max served as its Associate Director. This was never very large, and it was opposed by the mainstream SDSers, who were mostly opposed to such traditional, old-fashioned activity, and were looking for something new that "worked". The landslide victory of Lyndon B. Johnson in the November presidential election played its part, as well, and PEP soon withered away. A Peace Research and Education Project (PREP) headed by Paul Booth, Swarthmore, met a similar fate. Meanwhile, the local chapters got into all sorts of projects, from University reform, community-university relations, and now, in a small way, the issue of the draft and Vietnam War. With the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the SDS broke with the pro-labor ideas in the Port Huron Statement and decided that it was best to shift the focus of civil rights away from the southern states and more towards urban cities in the north.[8]

Then, on October 1, the University of California, Berkeley exploded into the dramatic and prolonged agony that was the free speech movement. Led by a charismatic Friends of SNCC student activist named Mario Savio, upwards of three thousand students surrounded a police car in which a student was being taken away, arrested for setting up an informational card table for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in defiance of the University's ban on politics. The sit-down prevented the police car from moving for 32 hours. The demonstrations, meetings and strikes that resulted all but shut the university down. Hundreds of students were arrested.[9]

From protest to resistance: 1965–1968

In February 1965, United States President Johnson dramatically escalated the war in Vietnam by bombing North Vietnam in Operation Flaming Dart and introducing ground troops directly involved in fighting the Viet Cong in the South. Campus chapters of SDS all over the country started to lead small, localized demonstrations against the war and the NO became the focal group that organized the march against the war in Washington on April 17. Endorsements came from nearly all of the other peace groups and leading personalities, there was significant increase in income and by the end of March there were 52 chapters. The media began to cover the organization and the New Left. However, the call for the march and the openness of the organization in allowing other groups, even communist front groups, or communists themselves, to join in caused great strains with the LID and some other old left organizations.

The first teach-in against the war was held in the University of Michigan. Soon hundreds more, all over the country, were held. The demonstration in Washington, D.C. attracted about 25,000 anti-war protesters and SDS became the leading student group against the war on most U.S. campuses.

Representing its move into the heartland, the 1965 summer convention was held at Kewadin, a small camp in Northern Michigan. Moreover, its National Office, which had been located in Manhattan, was moved to Chicago at about the same time. The rapid growth of the membership rate during the preceding year brought with it a new breed with a new style:

“ "For the first time at an SDS meeting people smoked marijuana; Pancho Villa mustaches, those droopy Western‑movie addenda that eventually became a New Left cliché, made their first appearance in quantity; blue workshirts, denim jackets, and boots were worn by both men and women. These were people generally raised outside of the East, many from the Midwest and Southwest, and their ruralistic dress reflected a different tradition, one more aligned to the frontier, more violent, more individualistic, more bare‑knuckled and callus‑handed, than that of the early SDSers. They were non‑Jewish, nonintellectual, nonurban, from a nonprofessional class, and often without any family tradition of political involvement, much less radicalism. They tended to be not only ignorant of the history of the left and its current half‑life in New York City, but downright uninterested: ..."[10] ”

The convention elected an Akron, Ohio student, Carl Oglesby, President and Jeff Shero, from the increasingly influential University of Texas chapter in Austin, as Vice President—in preference to "old guard" candidates.[11] The convention voted to remove the anti-communist exclusion clauses from the SDS constitution,[12] failed to provide for any national program,[13] and increased the reliance on local initiatives at the chapters. As a result, the National Office's leadership fell into ineffectual chaos. The League for Industrial Democracy, SDS's nominal sponsoring organization, was disappointed with removal of the exclusion clause from the SDS constitution, as SDS was covered under LID's non-profit status which excluded political activity. By mutual agreement the relationship was severed October 4, 1965.[14]

On November 27, 1965 there was a major anti-war demonstration in Washington, D.C. at which Carl Oglesby, the new SDS president, made a very successful speech, addressed to the liberal crowd,[15] and in circuitous terms alleged that the United States government was imperialist in nature. The speech received a standing ovation, substantial press coverage, and resulted in greatly increased national prominence for SDS.[3][16]

There was also resistance to women's equal participation, which drove some women away from the group. According to Jacqui Ceballos, "Women at a 1965 SDS conference [were] put down with she just needs a good screw; the following year SDS women [were] pelted with tomatoes when they demand[ed] a plank on women's liberation." [17]

The unexpected influx of substantial numbers of new members and chapters combined with the ousting of the previous leadership, the "old guard", resulted in a crisis which dogged SDS until its final breakup; despite repeated attempts to do so, consensus was never reached on what form the organization should take or what role it should play. A final attempt by the old guard at a "rethinking conference" to establish a coherent new direction for the organization failed. The conference, held on the University of Illinois campus at Champaign-Urbana over Christmas vacation, 1965, was attended by about 360 people from 66 chapters, many of whom were new to SDS. Despite a great deal of discussion, no substantial decisions were made.[18][19]

Nationally, the SDS continued to use the draft as an important issue for students, and over the rest of the academic year began to attack university complicity in it, as the universities had begun to supply students' class rankings, used to determine who was to be drafted. The University of Chicago's administration building was taken over in a three-day sit-in in May. Rank protests and sit-ins spread to many other universities.

The summer convention of 1966 was moved even farther west, this time to Clear Lake, Iowa. The "prairie people" continued to increase their influence. Nick Egleson was chosen as President, and Carl Davidson was elected Vice President. Greg Calvert, recently a History Instructor at Iowa State University, was chosen as National Secretary. It was at this convention that members of Progressive Labor Party (PL) first participated. PL was a Maoist group that had turned to SDS as fertile ground for recruiting new members sympathetic to its long-term strategy of organizing the industrial working class.[20] SDSers of that time were nearly all anti-communist, but they also refused to be drawn into actions that smacked of red-baiting, which they viewed as mostly irrelevant and old hat. PL soon began to organize a Worker Student Alliance. By 1968 and 1969 they would profoundly affect SDS, particularly at national gatherings of the membership, forming a well-groomed, disciplined faction which followed the Progressive Labor Party line.

The 1966 convention also marked an even greater turn towards organization around campus issues by local chapters, with the NO cast in a strictly supporting role. Campus issues ranged from bad food, powerless student "governments," various in loco parentis manifestations, on-campus recruiting for the military and, again, ranking for the draft. Campuses around the country were in a state of unprecedented ferment and activism. Despite the absence of a politically effective campus SDS chapter, Berkeley again became a center of particularly dramatic radical upheaval over the university's repressive anti-free-speech actions, and an effective student strike with very wide support occurred. Even Harvard endured an upheaval engendered by a visit there of United States Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.

At this time many in SDS turned to a more anarchist-influenced politics and organized activities aimed at the country’s burgeoning countercultural community. These efforts were especially successful at the large and active University of Texas chapter in Austin where The Rag, an underground newspaper founded by SDS leaders Thorne Dreyer and Carol Neiman was, according to historian Abe Peck, the first underground paper in the country to incorporate the “participatory democracy, community organizing and synthesis of politics and culture that the New Left of the midsixties was trying to develop.” [21] And SDS' now legendary “Gentle Thursday” events on the UT campus helped to galvanize the Austin cultural community and turn it into a potent political force.[22] Austin's Gentle Thursday inspired similar activities at a number of other universities including Penn State and Iowa State. Austin, also a center of civil-rights and anti-war activities, was in 1967 the scene of an SDS-generated free speech movement (the University Freedom Movement) that mobilized thousands of students in massive demonstrations and other activities.[23]

The Winter and Spring of 1967 saw an escalation of the militancy of the protests at many campuses. SDSers and self-styled radicals were even elected into the student government at a few places. Demonstrations against Dow Chemical Company and other campus recruiters were widespread, and ranking and the draft issues grew in scale. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) (mainly through its secret COINTELPRO) and other law enforcement agencies were often exposed as having spies and informers in the chapters. Harassment by the authorities was also on the rise. The National Office became distinctly more effective in this period, and the three officers actually visited most of the chapters. New Left Notes, as well, became a potent vehicle for promoting some coherence and solidarity among the chapters. The Anti-War movement began to take hold among university students.

The 1967 convention took an egalitarian turn by eliminating the Presidential and Vice-Presidential offices and replacing them with a National Secretary (20-year-old Mike Spiegel), an Education Secretary (Texan Bob Pardun of the Austin chapter), and an Inter‑organizational Secretary (former VP Carl Davidson). A clear direction for a national program was not set but they did manage to pass strong resolutions on the draft, resistance within the Army itself, and they made a call for immediate withdrawal from Vietnam. A women's liberation resolution on the issue of male chauvinism was passed by conference attendees, for the first time.

This resolution on women's liberation, drafted in the Women’s Liberation Workshop, had two goals. They were to “free women to participate in other meaningful activities” and to “relieve our brothers of the burden of male chauvinism.” For the first goal, they had three specific subgoals. The first was the creation of communal childcare centers, so mothers at home could have free time to pursue their interests. The second was the acknowledgment of the right of women to choose when to have children. They said that free distribution of birth control information and competent medical abortion should be provided for all women. The third called for the even distribution of household chores between all adult members, male and female. For the second goal, to rid SDS of male chauvinism, they had four specific subgoals. The first was that the male SDS members should first work on their personal chauvinism first, and try and remove that from their work and social relationships. The second is for women to participate in all levels of SDS work, “from licking stamps to assuming leadership positions.” The third is for leaders to be aware of the power they hold in creating the dynamic of the leader/subordinate relationship, and to be responsible for not abusing that power. The fourth mentions that all programs created by the SDS must include a section on women’s right. The New Left Notes reprinted the statement, however, it was accompanied by a caricature of a woman dressed in a baby-doll dress, holding a sign with the slogan “We want our rights and we want them now![24]

That fall saw a great escalation of the anti-war actions of the New Left. The school year started with a large demonstration against university complicity in the war in allowing Dow recruiters on campus at the University of Wisconsin in Madison on October 17. Peaceful at first, the demonstrations turned to a sit-in that was violently dispersed by the Madison police and riot squad, resulting in many injuries and arrests. A mass rally and a student strike then closed the university for several days. A coordinated series of demonstrations against the draft led by members of the Resistance, the War Resisters League, and SDS added fuel to the fire of resistance. After conventional civil rights tactics of peaceful pickets seemed to have failed, the Oakland, California Stop the Draft Week ended in mass hit and run skirmishes with the police. The huge (100,000 people) October 21 March on the Pentagon saw hundreds arrested and injured. Night-time raids on draft offices began to spread.

Climax and split: 1968–1970

In the spring of 1968, National SDS activists led an effort on the campuses called "Ten Days of Resistance" and local chapters cooperated with the Student Mobilization Committee in rallies, marches, sit-ins and teach-ins, which culminated in a one-day strike on April 26. About a million students stayed away from classes that day, the largest student strike in the history of the United States. It was largely ignored by the New York City-based national media, which focused on the student shutdown of Columbia University in New York, led by an inter-racial alliance of Columbia SDS chapter activists and Student Afro Society activists. As a result of the mass media publicity given to Columbia SDS activists such as Columbia SDS chairperson Mark Rudd during the Columbia Student Revolt, the organization was put on the map politically and "SDS" became a household name in the United States for a few years. Membership in SDS chapters around the United States increased dramatically during the 1968-69 academic year.

Also in 1968, an SDS organizer at the University of Washington told a meeting about white college men working with poor white men, and "[h]e noted that sometimes after analyzing societal ills, the men shared leisure time by 'balling a chick together.' He pointed out that such activities did much to enhance the political consciousness of poor white youth. A woman in the audience asked, 'And what did it do for the consciousness of the chick?'" (Hole, Judith, and Ellen Levine, Rebirth of Feminism, 1971, pg. 120).[25] After the meeting, a handful of women formed Seattle's first women's liberation group.[25]

Led by the Worker-Student Alliance and rival Joe Hill caucuses, SDS in San Francisco played a major role in the Third World Student Strike at San Francisco State College. This strike, the longest student strike in U.S. history, led to the creation of Black and other ethnic studies programs on campuses across the country.[26]

SDS members from Austin, Texas participated in a mass demonstration in San Antonio, Texas in April 1969 at the "Kings River Parade". San Antonio SNCC members called the demonstration to protest the killing of Bobby Joe Phillips by San Antonio Police Officers.

In the summer of 1969, the ninth SDS national convention was held at the Chicago Coliseum with some 2000 people attending. Many factions of the movement were present, and set up their literature tables all around the edges of the cavernous hall. The Young Socialist Alliance, Wobblies, Spartacists, Marxists and Maoists of various sorts, all together with various law-enforcement spies and informers contributed to the air of impending expectations.

Each delegate was given the convention issue of the newspaper New Left Notes, which contained a manifesto, "You don't need a Weatherman to know which way the wind blows", a line taken from Bob Dylan's Subterranean Homesick Blues. This manifesto had been first presented at the Spring, 1969, SDS National Council Meeting in Austin, Texas. The document had been written by an 11-member committee that included Mark Rudd, Bernardine Dohrn and John Jacobs, and represented the position of the Revolutionary Youth Movement (RYM) wing of SDS, most of which later turned into the Weather Underground Organization. The New Left Notes issue was full of the language of the Old Left of the 1930s; and was thus impenetrable and irrelevant to the majority of SDSers.

Once it became clear that the Worker Student Alliance (WSA) faction was the largest contingent with a majority of the delegates, the convention quickly fell into disarray, as the RYM and allied groups moved to expel Progressive Labor (PL) members and the WSA faction of SDS. The Black Panther representatives attacked PL and at the same time proved itself inclined towards sexism by advocating "pussy power." The entire convention fell into something approaching chaos, or worse, farce.[27]

The RYM and the National Office faction, led by Bernardine Dohrn, led a breakaway meeting from which PL and WSA members were barred. This group then voted by about 500 to 100 to expel PL from SDS, and then walked out of the conference hall with that 500. By the next day, there were two SDS organizations, which RYM termed "SDS-RYM" and "SDS-WSA."

In the fall of 1969, many of the SDS-RYM chapters also split up or disintegrated. The Weatherman faction evolved into a small underground organization that first took to street confrontations and then to a bombing campaign. The Weathermen held one final national convention in Flint, Michigan, from December 27–31, 1969. It was at this convention, more popularly known as the "Flint War Council," that the decision was made to disband what remained of SDS-RYM.[28] SDS-RYM was fully defunct by 1970, while SDS-WSA continued its activity.

Also in 1969, the New Left was present at a Counter-Inaugural to Richard Nixon’s first inauguration, at which the antiwar leader Dave Dellinger, serving as master of ceremonies, incorrectly announced, “The women have asked all the men to leave the stage.”[29] After that, SDS activist Marilyn Salzman Webb attempted to speak about women's oppression, and SDS men heckled her, shouting, "Take her off the stage and fuck her!" and so forth until she was drowned out.[29][30][31][32] Later Webb received a threatening phone call which she thought was from Cathy Wilkerson, but that was not confirmed, and it may have been from a government agent.[31]

SDS-WSA: 1969 to 1974

SDS-Worker-Student Alliance (SDS-WSA) continued to function nationwide, with a focus on (a) fighting racism; and (b) supporting workers' struggles and strikes, including the 1969 General Electric strike and 1970 Postal Workers' strikes. The WSA organized a support demonstration for the post office strikers, which worried Richard Nixon's administration a lot. This is the entry from H.R. Haldeman’s diary:

“ "Saturday, March 21, 1970.

P in early, to EOB, to work on briefing books. Had to spend quite a little time on postal problem. The settlement didn’t work, because rank and file won’t go back, have rejected leaders, and now SDS types involved, at least in New York." - [33]

 ”

Now calling itself simply SDS, SDS-WSA continued to publish the newspaper New Left Notes. It held a convention in Boston in 1971, at which a striking General Motors worker was a featured speaker.

In 1972, SDS-WSA demonstrated at the Democratic National Convention in Miami against Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern's retreating from his original stronger campaign positions against the Vietnam War. Several hundred SDS members staged a sit-in at the Doral Hotel as McGovern and his staff met upstairs with protesting members of Grassroots McGovern Volunteers and sympathizers angry over the same issues.

In Newark, New Jersey, SDS-WSA demonstrated against Anthony Imperiale and his North Ward Citizens' Council which was opposing the construction of Kawaida Towers, a building complex sponsored by a community organization led by Black nationalist and poet Amiri Baraka (formerly Leroy Jones) (New York Times January 3, 1973, p. 84)

SDS joined with PLP and others to protest the writings of Arthur Jensen, William Shockley, and Richard Herrnstein, all of whom promoted the notion that there might be a genetic component to the observed below-average performance of black people on IQ tests. In October 1973, SDS-WSA, PLP, and others organized a convention at the Loeb Student Center of New York University dedicated to opposing academic racism. SDS circulated a petition entitled "A Resolution Against Racism" that was published in the New York Times on October 28, 1973 (p. 211). Out of this convention the Committee Against Racism (CAR) was formed to continue the fight against racism. CAR later changed its name to International Committee Against Racism (InCAR), when some chapters were formed in Canada.

In 1974, National SDS(-WSA) voted to dissolve as a separate organization and reform as chapters of InCAR. However, individual chapters of SDS continued to exist for some time. A chapter at Purdue University was active as late as 1976.

All references to contemporary activities of SDS in sources such as the New York Times after early 1970 are to SDS-WSA. For example, SDS confronted Indiana Senator Vance Hartke at an antiwar rally in New York City in 1971 (New York Times July 3, 1971, p. 3 and July 4, 1971, p. 3). SDS denounced liberal Democrats as having been the authors of the Vietnam War in the first place. SDS demonstrated against the Republican National Convention in Miami Beach, Florida in August 1972 (New York Times August 21, 1972, p. 20; August 22, 1972, pp. 1,36; August 23, 1972, pp. 1, 28).

Unlike SDS-RYM and the Weathermen, SDS-WSA strongly opposed bombing and terrorism. In 1971, SDS-WSA published a pamphlet titled Who Are The Bombers?.[34] It warned readers against police agents sent into the anti-Vietnam War movement to foment violence to justify police attacks. It also sharply criticized the Weathermen, which had begun its campaign of bombings.

On June 26, 1972, the US Supreme Court gave a unanimous opinion, in the case Healy v. James, stating that members of the SDS had been unconstitutionally deprived of their First Amendment right to freedom of assembly when a group was denied permission to form on the campus of Central Connecticut State College in New Britain, Connecticut.[35]

A few early SDS leaders went on to careers as Democratic Party politicians, including Tom Hayden, who is still active in politics and writing. Hayden is a former member of the legislature of the state of California and is well known as the former husband of actress Jane Fonda, a prolific author, and a former candidate for offices such as Governor of California, Mayor of Los Angeles, and US Senator.

The New SDS: 2006 and later

A new incarnation of SDS was founded on January 16, 2006, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and by 2010 had grown to over 150 chapters around the United States.[36] It has held five national conventions to date, including the fifth in 2010 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.[37]

References

  1. ↑ Neier, Aryeh (2003). Taking Liberties: Four Decades in the Struggle for Rights. Cambridge, MA: Public Affairs/Perseus Books. pp. Introduction:xx. ISBN 1586482912. As director of LID, I decided to try to invigorate its student division. One step in that direction was to rename it.
  2. ↑ Frum, David (2000). How We Got Here: The '70s. New York, New York: Basic Books. p. 8. ISBN 0465041957.
  3. 1 2 Kirkpatrick Sale, SDS, pp. 159-163. Random House (1973), Hardcover, Vintage Books (January 1, 1974). ISBN 0394478894
  4. ↑ Gitlin, Todd. "The Sixties", Bantam; Revised edition (July 1, 1993) ISBN 0-553-37212-2
  5. ↑ Tom Hayden and Dick Flacks, ‘The Port Huron Statement at 40’ in The Nation, 5 August 2002
  6. ↑ Todd Gitlin later acknowledged that LID President Tom Kahn, "to his eternal credit", was correct in opposing that deletion, which helped Marxist Leninists to take over SDS: Todd Gitlin, p. 88, in discussion with Irving Howe: Politics and the Intellectual: Conversations with Irving Howe. John Rodden, Ethan Goffman, eds. Purdue University Press 06/30/2010 series: Shofar Supplements in Jewish Studies ISBN 978-1-5575-3551-1
  7. ↑ Kirkpatrick Sale, SDS, pp. 157-159. Random House (1973), Hardcover, Vintage Books (January 1, 1974). ISBN 0394478894
  8. ↑ http://isreview.org/issues/31/sds.shtml
  9. ↑ Mario Savio, "Berkeley Fall: The Berkeley Student Rebellion of 1964" (June, 1965). Calisphere. University of California archive.
  10. ↑ Kirkpatrick Sale, SDS, pp. 134; 204-205. Random House (1973), Hardcover, Vintage Books (January 1, 1974). ISBN 0394478894
  11. ↑ Page 85, Flying Close to the Sun, Cathy Wilkerson, Seven Stories Press (2007), hardcover, 422 pages
  12. ↑ Kirkpatrick Sale, SDS, p. 138. Random House (1973), Hardcover, Vintage Books (January 1, 1974). ISBN 0394478894
  13. ↑ Pages 83 and 84, Flying Close to the Sun, Cathy Wilkerson, Seven Stories Press (2007), hardcover, 422 pages.
  14. ↑ Kirkpatrick Sale, SDS, pp. 157. Random House (1973), Hardcover, Vintage Books (January 1, 1974). ISBN 0394478894
  15. ↑ "Rebels with a Cause". Sdsrebels.com. 1965-11-27. Retrieved 2009-06-28.
  16. ↑ Page 93-97, Ravens in the Storm, Carl Oglesby, Scribner (2008), hardcover, 336 pages.
  17. ↑ "Tales of the Lavender Menace". Nytimes.com. Retrieved 2014-01-12.
  18. ↑ Kirkpatrick Sale, SDS, pp. 204-205 and pp. 163-164. Random House (1973), Hardcover, Vintage Books (January 1, 1974). ISBN 0394478894
  19. ↑ Pages 103 and 104, Ravens in the Storm, Carl Oglesby, Scribner (2008), hardcover, 336 pages.
  20. ↑ Kirkpatrick Sale, SDS, p. 320. Random House (1973), Hardcover, Vintage Books (January 1, 1974). ISBN 0394478894
  21. ↑ Peck, Abe, Uncovering the Sixties: The Life and Times of the Underground Press, Pantheon Books, 1985; p. 58.
  22. ↑ Tishcler, Barbara L., Editor, Sights on the Sixties, Rutgers University Press, 1992; “Gentle Thursday: An SDS Circus in Austin, Texas, 1966-1970,” By Glenn W. Jones, pp. 75-85.
  23. ↑ “A History of Student Activism at the University of Texas at Austin,” by Beverly Burr, Thesis, Spring 1988, University of Texas, p. 22.
  24. ↑ Schneir, Miriam. "An SDS Statement on the Liberation of Women." 1994. Feminism in Our Time: The Essential Writings, World War II to the Present. New York: Vintage, 1994. 103-07. Print.
  25. 1 2 "On the Origins of Social Movements". Jofreeman.com. Retrieved 2014-01-12.
  26. ↑ Introductory Essay to The San Francisco State College Strike Collection - by Helene Whitson, San Francisco State University Library
  27. ↑ Sale, Kirkpatrick (1973). SDS p. 566
  28. ↑ Rudd, M. (2009). Underground: my life with sds and the weatherman. New York, NY: HarperCollins. pgs. 185-193.
  29. 1 2 clarissakennedyjacob (2013-05-06). "Susan Faludi on Shulamith Firestone, The New Yorker | The Women & Film Project". Womenandfilmproject.wordpress.com. Retrieved 2014-01-12.
  30. ↑ Dan Berger (2006). Outlaws of America: The Weather Underground and the Politics of Solidarity. AK Press. p. 365. ISBN 978-1-904859-41-3.
  31. 1 2 Doug Rossinow (January 1998). The Politics of Authenticity: Liberalism, Christianity, and the New Left in America. Columbia University Press. p. 441. ISBN 978-0-231-11057-0.
  32. ↑ Gessen, Keith (2012-09-26). "n+1: On Shulamith Firestone, Part One". Nplusonemag.com. Retrieved 2014-01-12.
  33. ↑ The Haldeman Diaries: Inside the Nixon White House, by H.R. Haldeman, Berkley Books, New York, 1995, p. 169.
  34. ↑ "Who Are The Bombers?
  35. ↑ Healy v. James 408 U.S. 169 (1972)
  36. ↑ Students for a Democratic Society - History
  37. ↑ Gold, Mike (24 October 2011). "SDS Holds 5th National Convention, Lays Plans to Build Student Movement". FightBack!News. Retrieved 30 September 2011.

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