Students for a Democratic Society (2006 organization)
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U.S. progressive student organization
Students for a Democratic Society
Abbreviation
SDS
Formation
2006
Type
Student activist organization
Purpose
To build a fighting student movement against US wars and intervention, racist discrimination, police crimes, homophobic and transphobic attacks, attacks on women, attacks on reproductive rights, and more.
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), or New Students for a Democratic Society (New SDS) is a United Statesstudent activist organization founded in 2006 in response to the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan with the aim to rebuild the student movement.[1] It takes its name and inspiration from the original SDS of 1960–1969, then the largest radical student organization in US history. While working alongside such groups as the Freedom Road Socialist Organization,[2] the contemporary SDS is a distinct youth and student-led organization with chapters across the United States.[3][4][5]
SDS is a broadly progressive, multi-issue student and youth-led activist organization, which aims to rebuild the student movement through direct action campaigns on college, university, and high school campuses across the United States. While united by a commitment to direct action rather than any particular political ideology, SDS does release statements and resolutions standing against US wars and intervention, racist discrimination, police brutality, homophobic and transphobic attacks, attacks on women, attacks on reproductive rights, and other US and campus-based issues as they emerge.[1]
Re-formation
Beginning January 2006, a movement to revive the Students for a Democratic Society took shape. Two high school students, Jessica Rapchik and Pat Korte, decided to reach out to former members of the "Sixties" SDS, to re-establish a student movement in the United States.[3] Korte did this by contacting Alan Haber.[6] They called for a new generation of SDS, to build a radical multi-issue organization grounded in the principle of participatory democracy. Several chapters at various colleges and high schools were subsequently formed. On Martin Luther King Jr. Day of 2006, these chapters banded together to issue a press release that stated their intentions to recreate the national SDS organization.[7] In the press release, the SDS called for the organization's first national convention since 1969 to be held in the summer of 2006 and to have it preceded by a series of regional conferences occurring during the Memorial Day weekend. These regional conferences would also be the first of their kind since 1969. On April 23, 2006, SDS held a northeast regional conference at Brown University.
Since the third annual convention in 2008, the SDS has had significant involvement from the Freedom Road Socialist Organization,[8][9] with some SDS members such as Rachel Haut alleging that the organization has an "agenda" involved.[10][11]
Notable events
The new SDS has organized and participated in numerous actions against the Iraq War and made clear its opposition to any possible military action against Iran by the US. The Pace University chapter of SDS protested against a speech by Bill Clinton held at the University's New York City campus, prompting the university to hand over two students, Lauren Giaccone and Brian Kelly, to the United States Secret Service. After the threatened expulsion of the two protesters, Pace SDS began a campaign that helped pressure the President of Pace to resign.[12]
Beginning in March and continuing into April and May 2006, SDS chapters across the country participated in a series of actions supporting Immigrant Rights. SDS chapters, such as at Brandeis, Connecticut College, and Harvard coordinated with large coalitions of students to strike and walk out of their classes on May Day.
The newly formed SDS held its first national convention from August 4 to August 7, 2006 at the University of Chicago.[13]
On March 17, 2007, SDS groups from across the country met and participated in the March on the Pentagon, in which parts of the SDS contingent along with allies occupied a bridge near The Pentagon. Five demonstrators were arrested.
On March 20, 2007, 83 SDS chapters from around the country held coordinated actions against the Iraq war.[14] One such action in the Bay Area shut down the entrance to Chevron's World Headquarters.[15]
The Summer of 2007 was a critical turning point for SDS as a national organization. First, SDS fielded a large contingent at the first US Social Forum in Atlanta on June 27 – July 1. SDS found itself part of a national movement to change the US; at the forum, SDS members gave workshops, demonstrated, and formed bonds with members from across the country.
The second SDS National Convention took place July 27–30, 2007 at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. Approximately 200 members of SDS attended what was a constitutional convention. The primary focus of the convention was to democratically create a national structure and vision for the organization. These goals were achieved, though all decisions made at the convention will be sent back to the SDS chapters for a process of ratification which is currently under way.
The first national SDS Action Camps[16] took place from August 13–16 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The camp was hosted by the Lancaster chapter of SDS. It included anti-oppression/collective liberation trainings, and workshops about a variety of things – including media skills, meeting facilitation, and direct action. The camp was held in order to provide students with skills needed to become better organizers, and deepen the sophistication of their vision and strategy.
On September 15, 2007, SDS chapters from several colleges across the country (including Ohio, Indiana, Washington D.C., Harrisburg, PA and New York) gathered and marched in the ANSWER coalition march from the White House steps, to the Capitol building. The protest was estimated to include up 80,000 people. At least 150 were arrested, and there was at least one incident where police pepper-sprayed protesters.[17]
In early November 2007, SDS members were again present at a similar blockade at the Port of Olympia, Washington. The blockade was broken only after 67 arrests, as well as use of pepper spray, rubber bullets, and other crowd-control weapons. A similar confrontation had occurred in May 2006 at the Port of Olympia.
Members and Chapters around the US and Canada participated in a large series of semi-coordinated events and demonstrations between March 17 and March 21 to bring awareness to the 5th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq.[18]
The 2008 National Convention was held in College Park, Maryland. Members at the meeting decided on a national structure: the National Work Committee and a national campaign: Student Power for Accessible Education.
A "Funk the War" demonstration, organized by DC SDS.
In September, SDS chapters from around the country converged on St. Paul, Minnesota to participate in the four days of protests against the Republican National Convention.[19][20][21]
Members of Providence SDS took over a board meeting of the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority RIPTA to protest proposed route cuts. The group also argues that the RIPTA board is detached from its riders and doesn’t represent them.[22]
The University of North Texas and several other chapters opened. In 2008, the University of Houston opened a chapter and added to the efforts of immigrant rights actions that Texas Grassroots Leadership had begun in 2006,[23] holding many protests centered on detention centers in Texas, particularly the family detention center T. Don Hutto that incarcerated immigrant mothers with children in Taylor, the center in Raymondville and Houston's Processing Center who's in contract with ICE.[24] These efforts across Texas saw a big win when the T. Don Hutto detention center changed its policies and stopped incarcerating children in late 2009. SDS at the University of Houston in Houston, Texas has continued the protests of these detention centers and plans for more in 2010. New efforts in Texas SDS chapters are being made to support the DREAM Act, as well as 2010's May Day.
SDS at the University of Houston also participated in the March 4 National Day of Action to Defend Education,[25] along with SDS chapters nationwide,[26][27] as well as national anti-war,[28] anti-occupation and Israeli apartheid Week campaigns.
In March 2010, members of the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee's chapter of SDS staged a protest outside the Chancellor's building. The event, designed to protest rising tuition costs, was met with a police presence. Police began using pepper spray, and arrested sixteen members of the protest, including both SDS members and allied organizations on campus through the Education Rights Campaign.[29]
The Weather Underground was a far-left Marxist militant organization first active in 1969, founded on the Ann Arbor campus of the University of Michigan. Originally known as the Weathermen, the group was organized as a faction of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) national leadership. Officially known as the Weather Underground Organization (WUO) beginning in 1970, the group's express political goal was to create a revolutionary party to overthrow the United States government, which WUO believed to be imperialist.
The Port Huron Statement is a 1962 political manifesto of the American student activist movement Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). It was written by SDS members, and completed on June 15, 1962, at a United Auto Workers (UAW) retreat outside of Port Huron, Michigan, for the group's first national convention. Under Walter Reuther's leadership, the UAW paid for a range of expenses for the 1962 convention, including use of the UAW summer retreat in Port Huron. A state historical marker will be erected on the site in 2025.
The Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) is a communist political party in the United States. FRSO formed in 1985 as a merger of several Maoist-oriented New Communist movement organizations.
Bernardine Rae Dohrn is a retired American law professor and a former leader of the far-left militant organization Weather Underground in the United States. As a leader of the Weather Underground in the early 1970s, Dohrn was on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list for several years. She remained a fugitive, even though she was removed from the list. After coming out of hiding in 1980, Dohrn pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges of aggravated battery and bail jumping.
Robert Alan Haber is an American activist. In 1960 he was elected the first president of the now-defunct Students for a Democratic Society, a left-wing student activist organization. FBI files at the time indicated his official title as Field Secretary. Described variously at the time as "Ann Arbor's resident radical" and "reticent visionary", Haber organized a human rights conference in April of that year which "marked the debut of SDS" and invited four organizers of the 1960 NAACP sit-ins against segregated lunch counters in Greensboro, North Carolina.
Mark William Rudd is an American political organizer, mathematics instructor, anti-war activist and counterculture icon who was involved with the Weather Underground in the 1960s.
Theodore "Ted" Gold was a member of Weather Underground who died in the 1970 Greenwich Village townhouse explosion.
The Days of Rage were a series of protests during three days in October 1969 in Chicago, organized by the emerging Weatherman faction of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).
Campus Antiwar Network (CAN) is an American independent grassroots network of students opposing the occupation of Iraq and military recruiters in US schools. It was founded prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and claims to be the largest campus-based antiwar organization in the United States.
The Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA) is the youth section of the Democratic Socialists of America. The organization was known as Young Democratic Socialists (YDS) until 2017.
Terry Robbins was an American far left activist, a key member of the Ohio Students for a Democratic Society, and one of the three Weathermen who died in the Greenwich Village townhouse explosion.
Christopher Lynn "Kit" Bakke is an American activist. In the 1960s, she fought for women's rights and civil rights in addition to protesting the Vietnam War. In college, she helped to establish a new chapter of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). Later, she became a member of the Weathermen, also called the Weather Underground, a militant leftist group.
John Gregory Jacobs was an American student and anti-war activist in the 1960s and early 1970s. He was a leader in both Students for a Democratic Society and the Weatherman group, and an advocate of the use of violent force to overthrow the government of the United States. A fugitive after 1970, he died in 1997 in Canada.
Next Left Notes (NLN) is an independent radical publication and weblog connected to the 2006 re-incarnation of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). NLN began producing print versions in March 2008 - to mark its 4th anniversary.
Mark Naison is a professor of history at Fordham University, the Jesuit University of New York.
Robert Roth was an active member of the anti-war, anti-racism and anti-imperialism movements of the 1960s and 1970s and a key member of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) political movement in the Columbia University Chapter in New York, where he eventually presided. Later, as a member of the Weatherman/Weather Underground Organization he used militant tactics to oppose the Vietnam War and racism. After the war ended, Roth surfaced from his Underground status and has been involved in a variety of social causes.
The Southern Student Organizing Committee (SSOC) was a student activist group in the southern United States during the 1960s, which focused on many political and social issues including: African-American civil rights, opposition to the Vietnam War, workers' rights, and feminism. It was intended, in part, to be Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) for Southerners and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) for white students – at a time when it was dangerous for SDS to attempt to organize in the Deep South and when SNCC was starting to discuss expelling white volunteers. It was felt that students at the traditionally white and black colleges in the South could be more effectively organized separately than in an integrated student civil rights organization; however, this was controversial and initially opposed by advisors like Anne Braden. Sue Thrasher and Archie Allen of the Christian Action Fellowship were among the founders of the group, with the support of Bob Moses and others. At its inception, the group had close ties to controversial Louisville, Kentucky radicals Carl and Anne Braden and their organization, the Southern Conference Education Fund, but a deliberate effort was later made to put some distance between the SSOC and the Bradens to avoid the appearance that the SSOC was a Communist front.
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was a national student activist organization in the United States during the 1960s and was one of the principal representations of the New Left. Disdaining permanent leaders, hierarchical relationships and parliamentary procedure, the founders conceived of the organization as a broad exercise in "participatory democracy". From its launch in 1960 it grew rapidly in the course of the tumultuous decade with over 300 campus chapters and 30,000 supporters recorded nationwide by its last national convention in 1969. The organization splintered at that convention amidst rivalry between factions seeking to impose national leadership and direction, and disputing "revolutionary" positions on, among other issues, the Vietnam War and Black Power.
The New Left was a broad political movement that emerged from the counterculture of the 1960s and continued through the 1970s. It consisted of activists in the Western world who, in reaction to the era's liberal establishment, campaigned for freer lifestyles on a broad range of social issues such as feminism, gay rights, drug policy reforms, and gender relations. The New Left differs from the traditional left in that it tended to acknowledge the struggle for various forms of social justice, whereas previous movements prioritized explicitly economic goals. However, many have used the term "New Left" to describe an evolution, continuation, and revitalization of traditional leftist goals.
References
1 2 "Who Are New SDS?". Students for a Democratic Society. 14 August 2022. Retrieved 24 January 2023.
↑ Claire Provost (2007-11-19). "Why American students are hunger striking". New Statesman. Retrieved 2008-12-08. A call to relaunch the organization went out in January 2006, organized by high school students Jessica Rapchick and Pat Korte.
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