Students for a Democratic Society: A Shiny New Student Group with an Old Familiar Name

Students for a Democratic Society is a name well-known, particularly to older generations of activists, as that of the largest radical student organization of the 1960s. Many may be surprised to learn, though, that a new effort has developed to refound a national multi-issue student activist group under the same banner.

Late last year, a Connecticut high school senior named Pat Korte got together with some old heads from the original SDS and announced to the world this last January that a new SDS was being born. Since then, over 1,000 members and over 150 campus chapters have signed up on-line for the new organization.

SDS chapters have already been engaged in a number of inspiring actions. For example:

• In New York City on March 5, Pace University SDS members disrupted a speech by Bill Clinton at a campus event featuring him. Two students stood up and denounced Clinton as a war criminal, citing the atrocities he was responsible for in Rwanda, Sudan, Iraq, Bosnia, etc. They were then removed by police, detained, and threatened by the Secret Service. The Pace administration subsequently threatened these two students with expulsion and attempted to prevent Pace SDS from meeting on the campus. The following week, one of the largest demonstrations the school has seen called for dropping the charges and upholding free speech on campus. The president of the university was also confronted during the demonstration. This was the first action in an extended campaign in defense of the students. The campaign has drawn support citywide and beyond from SDS members and other activists. It has forced the university to back down from its expulsion plans, but administrators are still cracking down on student free speech at Pace. So the campaign continues.

• In Washington State in May, students from Olympia SDS at Evergreen State College, as well as from Tacoma SDS, organized a series of militant actions against the deployment of the Army's First Stryker Brigade Combat Team to Iraq. This unit was to be transported on the USS Pomeroy from the Port of Olympia. Starting on May 22, less than a week after Olympia SDS's very first meeting as a group, members organized repeated mass blockades against brigade convoys. These actions continued for the next eight days and resulted in dozens of arrests, brutalization and pepper sprayings by police. While there were only minor delays in the mobilization of the brigade, the actions garnered international media coverage.

This spring, two regional SDS conferences were held, one in Delaware and one in Rhode Island. Both were attended by somewhere close to 100 students.

At the beginning of August, the first national convention took place in Chicago. It was attended by probably 150–200 people all told, although there were only 100 or so present at any one time. The attendance was probably held down due to its taking place in August and in Chicago, relatively far from any large concentration of SDS membership. The smallish size of the convention also shows that one of the main challenges facing SDS is to transform what is so far a largely virtual organization based on the internet into a real-world organization.

SDS chapters have already been engaged in a number of inspiring actions. For example:

• In Washington State in May, students from Olympia SDS at Evergreen State College, as well as from Tacoma SDS, organized a series of militant actions against the deployment of the Army’s First Stryker Brigade Combat Team to Iraq. This unit was to be transported on the USS Pomeroy from the Port of Olympia. Starting on May 22, less than a week after Olympia SDS’s very first meeting as a group, members organized repeated mass blockades against brigade convoys. These actions continued for the next eight days and resulted in dozens of arrests, brutalization and pepper sprayings by police. While there were only minor delays in the mobilization of the brigade, the actions garnered international media coverage.

This spring, two regional SDS conferences were held, one in Delaware and one in Rhode Island. Both were attended by somewhere close to 100 students.

SDS and race

One of the basic things to understand about the student movement is that it is a movement of movements. There are many different kinds of groups working on all kinds of issues, from sweatshops to racism to war. Oppressed-nationality students (students of color) often work in their own nationality-specific formations, such as Black student unions or MEChA groups; sometimes in broader multiracial people of color-based groups; and sometimes in groups that are not nationality-specific. This last category is called the “predominantly white section” of the student movement, because that is also where all the white students, who constitute the majority of the student movement, are to be found. This last is the section that SDS originates within, of course.

One of the more striking aspects of the national SDS convention was its whiteness. The proportion of oppressed-nationality attendees at the conference was ten percent or less of the overall total, and at the People of Color caucus, only two people actually identified as being members of SDS.

The consciousness of the white SDS members around matters of race and nationality was definitely on the low side. Left unchallenged, this low level of consciousness will tend to create a negative feedback cycle with the whiteness of the group and place a roadblock that hinders its development. However, the people of color at the event and a few of the more developed white activists made a good start at raising the consciousness of the SDS membership about the key importance of tackling race and racism in a serious way.

One of the main proceedings of the People of Color caucus was a collective statement that the caucus members produced and read aloud to the white students (who had been meeting to discuss SDS organizational structure while the caucus was going on). This statement was short but sweet:

We are the People of Color Caucus and some of us are members of SDS, some of us are not. As a community of people of color we are collectively penning a letter of constructive criticism regarding the accountability of SDS to their stated goals including real participatory democracy. We do this with respect and revolutionary love.

As People of Color, we have witnessed that being at this conference was an alienating experience, and this caucus is meant to change that dynamic. In our collective analysis, we have observed these points:

• SDS and much of the progressive left has been historically, a white-male dominated, heterosexist movement. While attempts have been made to challenge these realities, we recognize at this convention the domination of whiteness and everything that comes along with that social construct;

• SDS should engage in a cultural sensitivity that allows us to feel comfortable in this space;

• Sometimes as a white led organization, SDS is going to have to take a back seat and work in solidarity on issues that directly affect people of color;

• We as a community of color, come from a myriad of narratives and perspectives, but are united by our common oppression and need for liberation. A People of Color politic expresses an inclusive politic that struggles against all systems of oppression;

• SDS is supposed to be a group for the masses seeking to abolish oppression, but it is currently alienating for People of Color to engage SDS in this effort of movement building

We call upon like-minded individuals in SDS to work with us with an open heart, listen to our concerns as People of Color and work with us in solidarity to help achieve liberation for all peoples, while remembering to respect our space.

Needless to say, it will be a protracted struggle for SDS to start to get on top of such things, but it appears that the national convention was a bit of a wake-up call. While SDS will in all probability remain predominantly white due to the sheer demographics of US higher education, we can hope that it will at least start to become less overwhelmingly so and begin to tackle an increasing number of the issues that students of color are likely to move around.

There is a similar, but maybe less extreme, issue with male domination in SDS. Members report that there are many women active at the rank-and-file level of the local groups. However, the national convention was dominated by men in its attendance figures, and even more strongly dominated by men in terms of participation. The same problem is seen on an ongoing basis in the informal leadership of SDS. Fighting male supremacy within SDS will be another test of the organization’s progressive commitment.

Ideology in SDS

Given its existing composition, the politics represented within SDS are not too surprising. The biggest political trend present is anarchism in various flavors, some more clearly defined than others. One of the clearest ideological presences is the pro-working class politics of the Industrial Workers of the World. Marxist-identified students and non-ideological radicals are smaller trends at this point. As is almost always the case in the student movement, a strong decentralist outlook is overwhelmingly predominant.

Ideological contention at the national convention was mainly limited to small amounts of arrogant behavior on the part of a few of the more sectarian anarchists. If history is any indication, however, ideology is likely to be a future point of antagonism unless the majority in SDS maintain a strong political commitment to political diversity. The future broadening of the organization along race and class lines probably also depends on maintaining that political commitment.

The overall revolutionary commitments of the core of SDS right from the start is something for members to be conscious about. One of the problems of the original SDS was that of the leadership politically outstripping the base and turning the group into something that met their own political needs but no longer met the needs of those students just getting involved. This problem, often called “slamming the door behind you,” has been seen repeatedly over the years in the student movement. The new incarnation would be well advised to keep a close eye on tendencies toward slamming the door and to make sure there is always a great deal of political space for new activists whose politics have not yet developed in a hard-core revolutionary direction.

Generational challenges

The involvement of previous generations of SDS members is a two-edged sword. On the one hand, some from the older generation have played a very positive role in terms of both practical work in getting the new group off the ground and also in imparting important lessons from the efforts the first time ’round. On the other hand, the older generation needs to be careful that they don’t get in the way of the new generation of students as they seek to support them. If the students feel, even unconsciously, like they don’t have ultimate control, their growth and development as student movement leaders will be inhibited, and SDS will fail to become what it otherwise might.

So far this problem seems to be mainly expressing itself in online discussions. SDS has a putative non-student wing called MDS, or Movement for a Democratic Society. So far, MDS is in part a mixture of two things: a formalization of the welcome role of some original SDS members acting as trusted advisors, and a name being thrown around by various other non-students in order to gain standing within SDS. Unfortunately, certain of the latter MDS-identified people are overwhelming the online discussions set up for SDS. This so far seems to be tending to squelch a lot of the student voices. Less-experienced activists (especially women) who are still tentative in a lot of their ideas don’t want to get jumped on by a squad of know-it-alls when they venture an opinion. This is a problem that will have to be solved for SDS to develop a positive internal culture.

A related problem is confusion about the difference between the student movement and other sectors. A positive sentiment on the part of SDS activists to want to relate to activists in other sectors tends to blur into thinking that organizing in different sectors can all be done together in one big undifferentiated mix. This bad line of thinking is unfortunately encouraged by some of the more troublesome MDS hangers-on. Hopefully, as SDS members gain experience, the differences between student and non-student organizing will start to become clearer in people’s heads.

It’s all about the possibilities

The fact that students are making a serious effort to build organization on a national level is one thing that makes the development of the new SDS potentially very exciting. Movements always become far more powerful when they are able to come together to organize and focus their actions on a larger scale than that of the individual local group. Even while the student movement can always be expected to be very decentralized and network-structured, national organization can bring organized forces to bear in common campaigns like nothing else can.

Another key feature of SDS is that it’s a multi-issue organization. New political issues spring up in society all the time, and the ones that students move around can shift from moment to moment. Having a multi-issue character gives SDS the ability to shift with the motion of the masses of students and turn that spontaneous motion, wherever it may be, into a more permanent force.

There seems to be a lot of potential for SDS to spark a new upsurge in student activism in this period, but SDS also has a lot of basic learning to go through due to the newness of most of its activists and the lack of continuity with previous generations of the student movement. If SDS can find ways to absorb some of the key lessons about race, class and gender, nonsectarianism, and the like, the predominantly white section of the student movement just might see a new explosion of activity.