On Fri, Jul 9, 2021 at 12:22 PM Louis Proyect <[email protected]> wrote: > > Brings back memories when I was in Boston in 1971-1973. Pennington and > Jared Israel were in the leadership of SDS and we were determined to > build SDS-centric "anti-imperialist" actions on campus that was an > alternative to the antiwar coalition they regarded as "liberal" and that > had to be smashed. As SDS began to fall apart, the PL-led WSA became > more and more frantic, finally resorting to goon squad tactics at > rallies and conferences. I never ran into them when I was up in Boston > but their names and reputations haunted us.
Our small Logan, Utah Student Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam - in the beginning stages of building the regional Wasatch Peace Action Coalition and the largest anti-war demonstration in Utah (May 15, 1971) - sent Larry Monroe to represent us at the national SMC steering committee held in Boston May 24, 1970. Larry came back from the conference battered and bruised as he had been part of the conference defense from a Progressive Labor Party physical attack effort to disrupt the conference which was led by John Pennington. "PL-SDS and the politics of disruption" by Tony Thomas, The Militant, July 30, 1971 http://www.marxists.info/history/erol/1960-1970/militant-pl-disruption.pdf . . . "On May 24, a national steering com-mittee meeting of the SMC held in Boston was attacked by over 50 PLP and SDS members led by SDS Nationa! Secretary John Pennington. John McCann, an SWP member who was coordinator of the fight that led to the successful Massachusetts 1970 anti-war referendum, was savagely beaten at this meeting." . . . On Fri, Jul 9, 2021 at 12:22 PM Louis Proyect <[email protected]> wrote: > On 7/9/21 1:57 PM, Alan Ginsberg wrote: > John died on June 30. He had been an activist in Students for a > Democratic Society at Harvard, and a member of the Progressive Labor > Party. Upon the split in SDS, he became National Secretary of the SDS > organization aligned with the Worker-Student Alliance tendency and PL. Brings back memories when I was in Boston in 1971-1973. Pennington and Jared Israel were in the leadership of SDS and we were determined to build SDS-centric "anti-imperialist" actions on campus that was an alternative to the antiwar coalition they regarded as "liberal" and that had to be smashed. As SDS began to fall apart, the PL-led WSA became more and more frantic, finally resorting to goon squad tactics at rallies and conferences. I never ran into them when I was up in Boston but their names and reputations haunted us. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#9826): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/9826 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/84097134/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
