Join one - Join all. SDA rises again!
Visit www.studentsforademocraticsociety.org for more information mand/or to
join the "new" SDS.
There is also a new listserv for the L.A. Chapter of SDS.
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To join the L.A. SDS listserv go to:
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Students for a Democratic Society chapters to form national organization.
Several chapters of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) announced today,
Monday, January 16, 2006, their intent to form a national organization and
hold the first SDS national convention since 1969. "It seemed appropriate to
make this announcement today, on the observed Martin Luther King day", said
SDS regional organizer Thomas Good. "We have an anti-war movement that is
addressing the issue of stopping the bloodletting in Iraq but the civil
rights issue remains unaddressed", he added. The national convention is
scheduled for Summer 2006 and will be preceeded by a series of regional
conferences occurring on the Memorial Day weekend.
The newly formed SDS national organization was the idea of a student
anti-war activist who contacted other student and veteran organizers. Good
joined SDS when Stonington High School (Connecticut) senior Pat Korte
contacted him with the idea of linking nascent SDS chapters into a national
structure.
"Although I have been an active participant in the anti-war and student
activist movement, I have become frustrated with the groups collective
inability to unify enough people under a common goal/vision to address the
overall problems with our society. Historically, SDS was able to address
many of the issues pertinent at the time through Tom Hayden's Port Huron
Statement. This document has stood the test of time, thus several fellow
activists from across the country and myself decided to form a national SDS
movement, only to discover that chapters already exist! Because of this we
decided to hold a national conference", said Korte.
At his request, members of Korte's informal network of student activists
from across the country began contacting Good and very quickly the informal
network was replaced by a national structure that now includes a website,
discussion forum and mailing list, all of which are now based at
studentsforademocraticsociety.org.
Korte, realizing that the original SDS suffered from not having alot of
veteran activists, WHO UNDERSTOOD THE IDEA OF STUDENT POWER, reached out to
some older activists, including several members of the 1960s era student
organization, to help ground the project and provide logistical support.
The first original SDSer to come on board was Alan Haber, president of SDS
1960-62. Haber speaks of "re-membering SDS" rather than eulogizing it. Never
giving up on the Dream, Haber is looking forward to the "the next meeting of
SDS". And the next meeting will be a national event linking any and all SDS
chapters interested in taking part.
Today chapters exist at Salve Regina University in Newport, Rhode Island, at
the New School in New York City, at the University of Michigan and at
Eastern Michigan University. In the western part of the US chapters that
sprang up independently in Santa Ana, California and at Reigs University in
Denver, Colorado have signed on to the national organization. Connecting
these chapters and their organizers proved less difficult than Korte and
Good initially thought. Technology was the key.
"We should reconnect our networks. We should reassert the continuity of the
radical movements in American politics. The new technologies of
communication and independent media make this more possible than ever", said
Alan Haber. Korte and Good took this advice and ran with it.
As the project coalesced, Good, a member of the Industrial Workers of the
World (IWW) contacted labor historian Paul Buhle, co-editor of a graphic
history of the IWW ("Wobblies") and former SDSer from the Madison,
Wisconsin, chapter. The timing was right on. Buhle, who teaches at Brown in
Rhode Island, is working on a new project: a graphic (i.e. comic bok)
history of SDS from the perspective of the individual chapters. Working with
artist Gary Dumm, Buhle looks to avoid the usual history of the SDS national
office by focusing on the street activists and their local branches. Buhle
is asking that members of the original SDS with stories to tell contact him
via e-mail at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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