HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was a national student activist organization in the
United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...
during the 1960s, and was one of the principal representations of the
New Left The New Left was a broad political movement mainly in the 1960s and 1970s consisting of activists in the Western world who campaigned for a broad range of social issues such as civil and political rights, environmentalism, feminism, gay rights ...
. Disdaining permanent leaders, hierarchical relationships and parliamentary procedure, the founders conceived of the organization as a broad exercise in "
participatory democracy Participatory democracy, participant democracy or participative democracy is a form of government in which citizens participate individually and directly in political decisions and policies that affect their lives, rather than through elected repr ...
". 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 The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vie ...
and Black Power. A new national network for left-wing student organizing, also calling itself Students for a Democratic Society, was founded in 2006.


History


1960–1962: The Port Huron Statement

SDS developed from the youth branch of a socialist educational organization known as the
League for Industrial Democracy The League for Industrial Democracy (LID) was founded as a successor to the Intercollegiate Socialist Society in 1921. Members decided to change its name to reflect a more inclusive and more organizational perspective. Background Intercollegiate So ...
(LID). LID itself descended from an older student organization, the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, founded in 1905 by
Upton Sinclair Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. (September 20, 1878 – November 25, 1968) was an American writer, muckraker, political activist and the 1934 Democratic Party nominee for governor of California who wrote nearly 100 books and other works in sever ...
,
Walter Lippmann Walter Lippmann (September 23, 1889 – December 14, 1974) was an American writer, reporter and political commentator. With a career spanning 60 years, he is famous for being among the first to introduce the concept of Cold War, coining the te ...
,
Clarence Darrow Clarence Seward Darrow (; April 18, 1857 – March 13, 1938) was an American lawyer who became famous in the early 20th century for his involvement in the Leopold and Loeb murder trial and the Scopes "Monkey" Trial. He was a leading member of t ...
, and
Jack London John Griffith Chaney (January 12, 1876 – November 22, 1916), better known as Jack London, was an American novelist, journalist and activist. A pioneer of commercial fiction and American magazines, he was one of the first American authors to ...
. Early in 1960, to broaden the scope for recruitment beyond labor issues, the Student League for Industrial Democracy was reconstituted as SDS. They held their first meeting in 1960 on the
University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...
campus at Ann Arbor, where
Alan Haber Robert Alan Haber (born July 29, 1936) is an American activist. He was the first president of Students for a Democratic Society (1960 organization), Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), a U.S. radical student activism, student activist organiza ...
was elected president. The SDS manifesto, known as the
Port Huron Statement 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 ...
, was adopted at the organization's first convention in June 1962, based on an earlier draft by staff member
Tom Hayden Thomas Emmet Hayden (December 11, 1939October 23, 2016) was an American social and political activist, author, and politician. Hayden was best known for his role as an anti-war, civil rights, and intellectual activist in the 1960s, authoring t ...
. Under
Walter Reuther Walter Philip Reuther (; September 1, 1907 – May 9, 1970) was an American leader of organized labor and civil rights activist who built the United Automobile Workers (UAW) into one of the most progressive labor unions in American history. He ...
's leadership, the UAW paid for a range of expenses for the 1962 convention, including use of the UAW summer retreat in Port Huron. The
Port Huron Statement 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 ...
decried what it described as "disturbing paradoxes": that the world's "wealthiest and strongest country" should "tolerate anarchy as a major principle of international conduct"; that it should allow "the declaration 'all men are created equal...'" to ring "hollow before the facts of Negro life"; that, even as technology creates "new forms of social organization", it should continue to impose "meaningless work and idleness"; and with two-thirds of mankind undernourished that its "upper classes" should "revel amidst superfluous abundance". In searching for "the spark and engine of change" the authors disclaimed any "formulas" or "closed theories." Instead, "matured" by "the horrors of a century" in which "to be idealistic is to be considered apocalyptic", Students for a Democratic Society would seek a "new left . . . committed to deliberativeness, honesty ndreflection." The Statement proposed the university, with its "accessibility to knowledge" and an "internal openness", as a "base" from which students would "look outwards to the less exotic but more lasting struggles for justice." "The bridge to political power" would be "built through genuine cooperation, locally, nationally, and internationally, between a new left of young people and an awakening community of allies." It was to "stimulating this kind of social movement, this kind of vision and program in campus and community across the country" that the SDS were committed. For the sponsoring League for Industrial Democracy there was an immediate issue. The Statement omitted the LID's standard denunciation of communism: the regret it expressed at the "perversion of the older left by Stalinism" was too discriminating, and its references to Cold War tensions too even handed. Hayden, who had succeeded Haber as SDS president, was called to a meeting where, refusing any further concession, he clashed with Michael Harrington (as he later would with Irving Howe). As security against "a united-front style takeover of its youth arm" the LID had inserted a communist-exclusion clause in the SDS constitution. When in 1965 those who considered this too obvious a concession to the Cold-War doctrines of the right succeeded in removing the language, there was a final parting of the ways. The students' tie to their parent organization was severed by mutual agreement. In drafting the Port Huron Statement, Hayden acknowledged the influence of a Bowdoin-College German-exchange student, Michael Vester. He encouraged Hayden to be more explicit about the contradictions "between political democracy and economic concentration of power,” and to take a more international perspective. Vester was to be the first of a number of close connections between the American SDS and the West German SDS ('' Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund''), a student movement that was to follow a similar trajectory.


1962–1964: Organize your own

In the academic year 1962–1963, the President was 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 New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
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 had not developed, and was never to develop, a strong central directorate. National Office staffers worked long hours for little pay to service the local chapters, and to help establish new ones. Following the lead of the
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, often pronounced ) was the principal channel of student commitment in the United States to the civil rights movement during the 1960s. Emerging in 1960 from the student-led sit-ins at segreg ...
(SNCC), most activity was oriented toward the
civil rights Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from infringement by governments, social organizations, and private individuals. They ensure one's entitlement to participate in the civil and political life ...
struggle. By the end of the academic year, there were over 200 delegates at the annual convention at
Pine Hill, New York Pine Hill is a hamlet (and census-designated place) in the western part of the town of Shandaken in Ulster County, New York, United States. As of the 2020 census, the CDP had a total population of 275. History Pine Hill became an important to ...
, from 32 different colleges and universities. The convention chose a confederal structure. Policy and direction would be discussed in a quarterly conclave of chapter delegates, the National Council. National officers, in the spirit of "participatory democracy", would be selected annually by consensus. Lee Webb of
Boston University Boston University (BU) is a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. The university is nonsectarian, but has a historical affiliation with the United Methodist Church. It was founded in 1839 by Methodists with its original cam ...
was chosen as National Secretary, and Todd Gitlin of
Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of highe ...
was made president. In 1963 "racial equality" remained the cause celebre. In November 1963 the
Swarthmore College Swarthmore College ( , ) is a private liberal arts college in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1864, with its first classes held in 1869, Swarthmore is one of the earliest coeducational colleges in the United States. It was established as ...
chapter of SDS partnered with
Stanley Branche Stanley Everett Branche (July 31, 1933 – December 22, 1992) was an American civil rights leader from Pennsylvania who worked as executive secretary in the Chester, Pennsylvania branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored P ...
and local parents to create the Committee for Freedom Now which led the
Chester school protests The Chester school protests were a series of demonstrations that occurred from November 1963 through April 1964 in Chester, Pennsylvania. The demonstrations focused on ending the de facto segregation that resulted in the racial categorization of ...
along with the
NAACP The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is a civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E.&n ...
in
Chester, Pennsylvania Chester is a city in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, United States. Located within the Philadelphia Metropolitan Area, it is the only city in Delaware County and had a population of 32,605 as of the 2020 census. Incorporated in 1682, Chester i ...
. From November 1963 through April 1964, the demonstrations focused on ending the de facto segregation that resulted in the racial categorization of Chester public schools, even after the landmark Supreme Court case '' Brown v. The Board of Education of Topeka''. The racial unrest and civil rights protests made Chester one of the key battlegrounds of the
civil rights movement The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement throughout the Unite ...
. However within the
Congress of Racial Equality The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) is an African-American civil rights organization in the United States that played a pivotal role for African Americans in the civil rights movement. Founded in 1942, its stated mission is "to bring about ...
, and within the SNCC (particularly after the 1964
Freedom Summer Freedom Summer, also known as the Freedom Summer Project or the Mississippi Summer Project, was a volunteer campaign in the United States launched in June 1964 to attempt to register as many African-American voters as possible in Mississippi. ...
), there was the suggestion that white activists might better advance the cause of civil rights by organising "their own." At the same time, for many, 1963-64 was the academic year in which white poverty was discovered. Michael Harrington's '' The Other America'' "was the rage". Conceived in part as a response to the gathering danger of a "white backlash," and with $5000 from
United Automobile Workers The International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace, and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, better known as the United Auto Workers (UAW), is an American labor union that represents workers in the United States (including Puerto Rico) ...
, Tom Hayden promoted an Economic Research and Action Project (ERAP). SDS community organizers would help draw neighbourhoods, both black and white, into an "interacial movement of the poor". By the end of 1964 ERAP had ten inner-city projects engaging 125 student volunteers.
Ralph Helstein Ralph Helstein (11 December 1908 - 14 February 1985) was an American trade unionist and labour leader best known for leading the United Packinghouse Workers of America The United Packinghouse Workers of America (UPWA), later the ''United Packin ...
, president of the United Packinghouse Workers of America, arranged for Hayden and Gitlin to meet with Saul Alinsky who, with twenty-five years experience in Chicago and across the country, was the acknowledged father of community organizing. To Helstein's dismay Alinsky dismissed the SDSers' venture into the field as naive and doomed to failure. Their view of the poor and of what could be achieved by consensus was absurdly romantic. Placing a premium on strong local leadership, structure and accountability, Alinsky's "citizen participation" was something "fundamentally different" from the "participatory democracy" envisaged by Hayden and Gitlin. With the election of new leadership at the July 1964 national SDS convention there was already dissension. With the "whole balance of the organisation shifted to ERAP headquarters in Ann Arbor", the new National Secretary, C. Clark Kissinger cautioned against "the temptation to 'take one generation of campus leadership and run!' We must instead look toward building the campus base as the wellspring of our student movement." Gitlin's successor as president, Paul Potter, was blunter. The emphasis on "the problems of the dispossessed" had been misplaced: "It is through the experience of the middle class and the anesthetic of bureaucracy and mass society that the vision and program of participatory democracy will come—if it is to come." Hayden, who committed himself to community organizing in Newark (there to witness the "race riots" in 1967) later suggested that if ERAP failed to build to greater success it was because of the escalating U.S. commitment in Vietnam: "Once again the government met an internal crisis by starting an external crisis." Yet there were ERAP volunteers more than ready to leave their storefront offices and heed the anti-war call to return to campus. Tending to the "less exotic struggles" of the urban poor had been a dispiriting experience. However much the volunteers might talk at night about "transforming the system," "building alternative institutions," and "revolutionary potential", credibility on the doorstep rested on their ability to secure concessions from, and thus to develop relations with, the local power structures. Regardless of the agenda (welfare checks, rent, day-care, police harassment, garbage pick-up) the daytime reality was of delivery built "around all the shoddy instruments of the state." ERAP had seemed to trap the SDSers in "a politics of adjustment". Lyndon B. Johnson's landslide in the November 1964 presidential election swamped considerations of Democratic-primary, or independent candidature, interventions—a path that had been tentatively explored in a Political Education Project. Local chapters expanded activity across a range of projects, including University reform, community-university relations, and were beginning to focus on the issue of the draft and
Vietnam War The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vie ...
. They did so within the confines of university bans on on-campus political organization and activity. While students at Kent State, Ohio, had been protesting for the right to organize politically on campus a full year before, it is the televised birth of the
Free Speech Movement The Free Speech Movement (FSM) was a massive, long-lasting student protest which took place during the 1964–65 academic year on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley. The Movement was informally under the central leadership of Be ...
at the
University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant un ...
that is generally recognized as the first major challenge to campus governance On October 1, 1964, crowds of upwards of three thousand students surrounded a police cruiser holding a student arrested for setting up an informational card table for the
Congress of Racial Equality The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) is an African-American civil rights organization in the United States that played a pivotal role for African Americans in the civil rights movement. Founded in 1942, its stated mission is "to bring about ...
(CORE). The sit-down prevented the car from moving for 32 hours. By the end of the year, demonstrations, meetings and strikes all but shut the university down. Hundreds of students were arrested.


1965–1966: Free Universities, and the Draft

In February 1965, President Johnson dramatically escalated the war in Vietnam. He ordered the bombing of North Vietnam (
Operation Flaming Dart Operation Flaming Dart was a U.S. and South Vietnamese military operation, conducted in two parts, during the Vietnam War. Background United States President Lyndon B. Johnson in February 1965 ordered a series of reprisal air strikes after seve ...
) and committed ground troops to fight the
Viet Cong , , war = the Vietnam War , image = FNL Flag.svg , caption = The flag of the Viet Cong, adopted in 1960, is a variation on the flag of North Vietnam. Sometimes the lower stripe was green. , active ...
in the South. Campus chapters of SDS all over the country started to lead small, localized demonstrations against the war. On April 17 the National Office coordinated a march in Washington. Co-sponsored by
Women Strike for Peace Women Strike for Peace (WSP, also known as Women for Peace) was a women's peace activist group in the United States. In 1961, nearing the height of the Cold War, around 50,000 women marched in 60 cities around the United States to demonstrate a ...
, and with endorsements from nearly all of the other peace groups, 25,000 attended. The first teach-in against the war was held in the
University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...
, followed by hundreds more across the country. The SDS became recognized nationally as the leading student group against the war. The National Convention in Akron (which FBI Director
J. Edgar Hoover John Edgar Hoover (January 1, 1895 – May 2, 1972) was an American law enforcement administrator who served as the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). He was appointed director of the Bureau of Investigation  ...
reported was attended by "practically every subversive organization in the United States") selected as President
Carl Oglesby Carl Preston Oglesby (July 30, 1935 – September 13, 2011) was an American writer, academic, and political activist. He was the President of the leftist student organization Students for a Democratic Society Students for a Democratic Socie ...
(Antioch College). He had come to SDSers' attention with an article against the war, written while he had been working for a defense contractor. The Vice President was Jeff Shero from the increasingly influential University of Texas chapter in Austin. Consensus, however, was not reached on a national program. At the September National Council meeting "an entire cacophony of strategies was put forward" on what had clearly become the central issue, Vietnam. Some urged negotiation, others immediate U.S. withdrawal, still others Viet-Cong victory. "Some wanted to emphasize the moral horror of the war, others concentrated on its illegality, a number argued that it took funds away from domestic needs, and a few even then saw it as an example of 'American imperialism.' This was Oglesby's developing position. Thereafter, on November 27, at an anti-war demonstration in Washington, when Oglesby suggested that U.S. policy in Vietnam was essentially imperialist, and then called for an immediate ceasefire, he was wildly applauded and nationally reported. The new, more radical, and uncompromising anti-war profile this suggested, appeared to drive the growth in membership. The influx discomfited older members like Tom Gitlin who, as he later conceded, simply had no "feel" for an anti-war movement No consensus was reached as to what role the SDS should play in stopping the war. 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. SDS chapters continued to use the draft as a rallying issue. Over the rest of the academic year, with the universities supplying the Selective Service Boards with class ranking, SDS began to attack university complicity in the war. 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 war, however, was not the only issue driving the newfound militancy. There were new and growing calls to seriously question a college experience that the Port Huron Statement had described as "hardly distinguishable from that of any other communications channel--say, a television set." Students were to start taking responsibility for their own education. By the fall of 1965, largely under SDS impetus, there were several "free universities" in operation: in Berkeley, SDS reopened the New School offering "'Marx and Freud,' 'A Radical Approach to Science,' 'Agencies of Social Change and the New Movements'; in Gainesville, a Free University of Florida was established, and even incorporated; in New York, a Free University was begun in Greenwich Village, offering no fewer than forty-four courses ('Marxist Approaches to the Avant-garde Arts,' 'Ethics and Revolution,' 'Life in Mainland China Today'); and in Chicago, something called simply The School began with ten courses ('Neighborhood Organization and Nonviolence,' 'Purposes of Revolution'). By the end of 1966 there were perhaps fifteen. Universities understood these organizations as a serious threat, and soon began to offer seminars run on similar student-responsive lines, successfully undermining the radical ideology of the free universities with more mainstream liberalism. The summer convention of 1966 was moved farther west, to Clear Lake,
Iowa Iowa () is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States, bordered by the Mississippi River to the east and the Missouri River and Big Sioux River to the west. It is bordered by six states: Wiscon ...
. Nick Egleson was chosen as president, and Carl Davidson was elected vice president. Jane Adams, former Mississippi Freedom Summer volunteer and SDS campus traveler in Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, and Missouri, was elected Interim National Secretary. That fall, her companion Greg Calvert, recently a History Instructor at Iowa State University, became National Secretary. The convention marked a further turn towards organization around campus issues by local chapters, with the National Office 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. 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. One description of the convening of an enthusiastically supported student strike suggests the distance travelled from both the Left, and the civil rights, roots of earlier activism. Over "a sea of cheering bodies" before the Union building a twenty-foot banner proclaimed "Happiness Is Student Power." A booming address announced:
We’re giving notice today, all of us, that we reject the notion that we should be patient and work for gradual change. That’s the old way. We don’t need the Old Left. We don’t need their ideology or the working class, those mythical masses who are supposed to rise up and break their chains. The working class in this country is moving to the right. Students are going to be the revolutionary force in this country. Students are going to make the revolution because we have the will.
After a three-hour open mike meeting in the Life Sciences building, instead of closing with the civil-rights anthem "We Shall Overcome," the crowd "grabbed hands and sang the chorus to 'Yellow Submarine'". SDSers understanding of their "own" was increasingly colored by the country's exploding
countercultural A counterculture is a culture whose values and norms of behavior differ substantially from those of mainstream society, sometimes diametrically opposed to mainstream cultural mores.Eric Donald Hirsch. ''The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy''. Ho ...
scene. There were explorations—some earnest, some playful—of the anarchist or libertarian implications of the commitment to participatory democracy. At the large and active University of Texas chapter in Austin, ''
The Rag ''The Rag'' was an underground newspaper published in Austin, Texas from 1966–1977. The weekly paper covered political and cultural topics that the conventional press ignored, such as the growing antiwar movement, the sexual revolution, gay ...
'', an underground newspaper founded by SDS leaders
Thorne Dreyer Thorne Webb Dreyer (born August 1, 1945) is an American writer, editor, publisher, and political activist who played a major role in the 1960s-1970s counterculture, New Left, and underground press movements. Dreyer now lives in Austin, Texas, wh ...
and Carol Neiman has been described as 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." Inspired by a leaflet distributed by some poets in San Francisco, and organized by the Rag and the SDS in the belief that "there is nothing wrong with fun", a "Gentle Thursday" event in the fall of 1966 drew hundreds of area residents, bringing kids, dogs, balloons, picnics and music, to the UT West Mall. A summary ban by the UT administration ensured an even bigger, more enthusiastic, turnout for the second Gentle Thursday in the spring of 1967. Part of "Flipped Out Week," organized in coordination with a national mobilization against the war, it was a more defiant and overtly political affair. It included appearances by Stokley Carmichael, beat-poet
Allen Ginsberg Irwin Allen Ginsberg (; June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet and writer. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of the Beat Gener ...
, and anti-war protests at the Texas State Capitol during a visit by Vice-President
Hubert Humphrey Hubert Horatio Humphrey Jr. (May 27, 1911 – January 13, 1978) was an American pharmacist and politician who served as the 38th vice president of the United States from 1965 to 1969. He twice served in the United States Senate, representing ...
. The example set a precedent for campus events across the country


1967–1968: Stop the War

The winter and spring of 1967 saw an escalation in the militancy of campus protests. Demonstrations against military-contractors and other campus recruiters were widespread, and ranking and the draft issues grew in scale. The school year had started with a large demonstration against
Dow Chemical Company The Dow Chemical Company, officially Dow Inc., is an American multinational chemical corporation headquartered in Midland, Michigan, United States. The company is among the three largest chemical producers in the world. Dow manufactures plastics ...
recruitment 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 nationwide 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 protest. 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. The
Federal Bureau of Investigation The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice ...
(FBI), mainly through its secret
COINTELPRO COINTELPRO ( syllabic abbreviation derived from Counter Intelligence Program; 1956–1971) was a series of covert and illegal projects actively conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveilling, infiltrati ...
(COunter INTELligence PROgram) and other law enforcement agencies were often exposed as having spies and informers in the chapters. FBI Director Hoover's general COINTELPRO directive was for agents to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize" the activities and leadership of the movements they infiltrated. The National Office sought to provide greater coordination and direction (partly through ''New Left Notes'', its weekly correspondence with the membership). 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, and on April 18 in a one-day strike. About a million students stayed away from classes that day, the largest student strike to date. But it was the student shutdown of Columbia University in New York that commanded the national media. Led by an inter-racial alliance of Columbia SDS chapter activists and Student Afro Society activists, it helped make the SDS a household name. Membership again soared in the 1968–69 academic year. More important for thinking within the National Office, Columbia and the outbreak of student protest which it symbolized seemed proof that "long months of SDS work were paying off." As targets students were "picking war, complicity, and racism, rather than dress codes and dorm hours, and as tactics sit-ins and takeovers, rather than petitions and pickets." Yet Congressional investigation was to find that most chapters continued to follow their own, rather than a national, agenda. In the fall of 1968 their issues fell into one or more of four broad categories: (1) war-related issues such as opposition to ROTC, military or CIA recruitment, and military research, on campus; (2) student power issues including requests for a pass-fail grading system, beer sales on campus, no dormitory curfews, and a student voice in faculty hiring; (3) support for university employees; and (4) support for black students. The December 1967 convention took down what little suggestion there was of hierarchy within the structure of the organisation: it eliminated the Presidential and Vice-Presidential offices. They were replaced 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 delegates did manage to pass strong resolutions on the draft, resistance within the Army itself, and for an immediate withdrawal from Vietnam.


Women and SDS

There was no women's-equality plank in the Port Huron Statement. Tom Hayden had started drafting the statement from a jail cell in Albany, Georgia, where he landed on a Freedom Ride organized by Sandra "Casey" Cason (
Casey Hayden Sandra Cason "Casey" Hayden (born October 31, 1937), was an American radical student activist and civil rights worker in the 1960s. Recognized for her defense of direct action in the struggle against racial segregation, in 1960 she was an early ...
). It is Cason that had first led Hayden into the SDS in 1960. Although herself regarded as "one of the boys," her recollection of those early SDS meetings is of interminable debate driven by young male intellectual posturing and, if a woman commented, of being made to feel as if a child had spoken among adults. (In 1962 she left Ann Arbor, and Tom Hayden, to return to the SNCC in Atlanta). Seeking the "roots of the women's liberation movement" in the New Left, Sara Evans argues that in Hayden's ERAP program this presumption of male agency had been one of the undeclared sources of tension. Confronted with the reality of a war-heated economy, in which the only unemployed men "left to organize were very unstable and unskilled, winos, and street youth," the SDSers were disconcerted to find themselves having to organize around "nitty-gritty issues"—welfare, healthcare, childcare, garbage collection—springing "in cultural terms . . . from the women’s sphere of home and community life." In December 1965 the SDS held a "rethinking conference" at the University of Illinois. One of the papers included in the conference packet, was a memo Casey Hayden and others had written the previous year for a similar SNCC event, and published the previous month in ''Liberation'', the bi-monthly of the War Resisters League, under the title "Sex and Caste." As "the final impetus" for organizing a "women's workshop," Evans suggest it was "the real embryo of the new feminist revolt." But this was a revolt that was to play out largely outside of the SDS. When, at the 1966 SDS convention, women called for debate they were showered with abuse, pelted with tomatoes. The following year there seemed to be a willingness to make some amends. The Women's Liberation Workshop succeeded in having a resolution accepted that insisted that women be freed "to participate in other meaningful activities" and that their "brothers" be relieved of "the burden of male chauvinism." The SDS committed to the creation of communal childcare centers, women's control over reproduction, the sharing of domestic work and, critically for an organization whose offices were almost entirely populated by men, to women participating at every level of the SDS "from licking stamps to assuming leadership positions." However, when the resolution was printed in the NO's ''New Left Notes'' it was with a caricature of a woman dressed in a baby-doll dress, holding a sign "We want our rights and we want them now!" Little changed in the two years that followed. By and large the issues that were spurring the growth of an autonomous women's liberation movement were not considered relevant for discussion by SDS men or women (and if they were discussed, one prominent activist recalls, "separatism" had to be denounced "every five minutes") Over the five tumultuous days of the final convention in June 1969 women were given just three hours to caucus and their call on women to struggle against their oppression was rejected. Inasmuch as women felt both empowered and thwarted in the movement, Todd Gitlin was later to claim some credit for SDS in engendering
second-wave feminism Second-wave feminism was a period of feminist activity that began in the early 1960s and lasted roughly two decades. It took place throughout the Western world, and aimed to increase equality for women by building on previous feminist gains. ...
. Women had gained skills and experience in organising but had been made to feel keenly their second-class status.


Secession and polarization

At the 1967 convention in Ann Arbor there was another, perhaps equally portentous, demand for equality and autonomy. Despite the winding down of SDS leadership support for ERAP, in some community projects struggles against inequality, racism and police brutality had taken on a momentum of their own. The projects had drawn in white working class activists. While open in acknowledging the debt they believed they owed to SNCC and to the Black Panthers, many were conscious that their poor white, and in some cases southern, backgrounds had limited their acceptance in "the Movement." In a blistering address, Peggy Terry announced that she and her neighbors in uptown, "Hillbilly Harlem", Chicago, had ordered student volunteers out of their community union. They would be relying on themselves, doing their own talking, and working only with those outsiders willing live as part of the community, and of "the working class", for the long haul. With what she regarded as an implicit understanding for Stokely Carmichael's call for black people to define their own goals, to lead their own organizations, Terry argued that "the time has come for us to turn to our own people, poor and working-class whites, for direction, support, and inspiration, to organize around our own identity, our own interests." Yet as Peggy Terry was declaring her independence from the SDS as a working-class militant, the most strident voices at the convention were of those who, jettisoning the reservations of the Port Huron old guard, were declaring the working class as, after all, the only force capable of subverting U.S. imperialism and of effecting real change. It was on the basis of this new Marxist polemic that endorsements were withheld from the mass demonstrations called by the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam to coincide with the August
1968 Democratic National Convention The 1968 Democratic National Convention was held August 26–29 at the International Amphitheatre in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Earlier that year incumbent President Lyndon B. Johnson had announced he would not seek reelection, thus maki ...
in Chicago. In the event, under a mandate to recruit and to offer support should the Chicago police "start rioting" (which they did), national SDSers were present. On August 28 national secretary
Michael Klonsky Michael Klonsky (born 1943) is an American educator, author, and political activist. He is known for his work with the Students for a Democratic Society, the New Communist Movement, and, later, the small schools movement. Political activism Kl ...
was on Havanna radio: "We have been fighting in the streets for four days. Many of our people have been beaten up, and many of them are in jail, but we are winning." But at the first national council meeting after the convention (University of Colorado, Boulder, October 11–13), the
Worker Student Alliance The Worker Student Alliance (WSA) in the United States was the section of Students for a Democratic Society led by the Progressive Labor Party. The WSA argued that the best way to build a movement in the working class, like SDS wanted, was for ...
had their line confirmed: attempts to influence political parties in the United States fostered an "illusion" that people can have democratic power over system institutions. The correct answer was to organize people in "direct action." "The 'center' has proven its failure . . . it remains to the left not to cling to liberal myths but to build its own strength out of the polarization, to build the left 'pole'".


1969–1970: splintering and dissolution

The Worker Student Alliance (WSA) was a front organization for the Progressive Labor Party (PLP), whose delegates had first been seated in the 1966 SDS convention. The PLP was Maoist, but was sufficiently old-school that it viewed policy and action not only from the perspective of class, but also from the perspective ''of'' "the class." The PLP condemned the protest in Chicago not only because there had been the "illusion" that the system could be effectively pressured or lobbied, but because, in their view, the "wild-in-the-streets" resistance estranged "the working masses" and made it more difficult for the left to build a popular base. It was an injunction that the PLP appeared to carry across a range of what they regarded as the wilder, or for the working man more challenging, expressions of the movement. These included feminists (those who want to "organize women to discuss their personal problems about their boyfriends"), the counter-culture, and long hair. At a time when the ''New Left Notes'' could describe the SDS as "a confederation of localized conglomerations of people held together by one name", and as events in the country continued to drift, what the PLP-WSA offered was the promise of organizational discipline and of a consistent vision. But there was a rival bid for direction and control of the organization. At a national council held at the close of 1968 in Ann Arbor (attended by representatives of 100 of the reputed 300 chapters), a majority of national leadership and regional staffs pushed through a policy resolution written by national secretary
Michael Klonsky Michael Klonsky (born 1943) is an American educator, author, and political activist. He is known for his work with the Students for a Democratic Society, the New Communist Movement, and, later, the small schools movement. Political activism Kl ...
titled "Toward a revolutionary youth movement."  The SDS would transform itself into a revolutionary movement, reaching beyond the campus to find new recruits among young workers, high school students, the Armed Forces, community colleges, trade schools, drops outs, and the unemployed. Like the PLP-WSA, this Revolutionary Youth Movement (RYM) faction was committed to an anti-capitalist analysis that privileged the working class. But RYM made at least two concessions to the broader spirit of the times. First it outbid the PLP-WSA in accommodating black and ethnic mobilization by embracing the legitimacy within "the class" of "Third World nationalisms." "Oppressed colonies" in the United States had the right "to self-determination (including the right to political secession if they desire it)" Second, as a ''youth'' movement, the RYM allowed that—if only in solidarity with others of their generation—students could have ''some'' agency.   Yet neither tendency was an open house to incoming freshmen or juniors awakening to the possibilities for political engagement. Sale observes that "at a time when many young people wanted some explanations for the failure of electoral politics, SDS was led by people who had long since given up caring about elections and were trying to organize for revolution." To students "just beginning to be aware of their own radicalization and their potential role as the intelligentsia in an American left," the SDS was proposing that the "only really important agents for social change were the industrial workers, or the ghetto blacks, or the Third World revolutionaries." For students willing to "take on their ollegeadministrations for any number of grievances," SDS analysis emphasized "'de-studentizing,' dropping out, and destroying universities.* To those seeking to "supplant the tattered theories of corporate liberalism, SDS had only the imperfectly fashioned tenets of a borrowed Marxism and an untransmittable attachment to the theories of other revolutionaries" As for women wishing to approach the SDS with their own issues, the RYM faction was scarcely more willing than the PLP-WSA to accord them space. At a time when young people in the
Black Panthers The Black Panther Party (BPP), originally the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, was a Marxist-Leninist and black power political organization founded by college students Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton in October 1966 in Oakland, Califo ...
were under vicious attack, they deemed it positively racist for educated white women to focus on their own oppression. The Port Huron vision of the university as a place where, as "an adjunct" to the academic life, political action could be held open to "reason", and the Gentle Thursday openness to a range of expression, had been cast by the new revolutionary polemic onto "the junk heap of history." In the new year the WSA and RYM began to split national offices and some chapters. Matters came to a head in the summer of 1969, at the SDS's ninth national convention held at the
Chicago Coliseum Chicago Coliseum was the name applied to three large indoor arenas in Chicago, Illinois, which stood successively from the 1860s to 1982; they served as venues for sports events, large (national-class) conventions and as exhibition halls. The ...
. The two groups battled for control of the organization throughout the convention. The RYM and the National Office faction, led by
Bernardine Dohrn Bernardine Rae Dohrn (née Ohrnstein; born January 12, 1942) is a retired law professor and a former leader of the left-wing radical group Weather Underground in the United States. As a leader of the Weather Underground in the early 1970s, Dohrn ...
, finally walked several hundred people out of the Colosseum. This NO-RYM grouping reconvened themselves as the official convention near the National Office. They elected officers and they expelled the PLP. The charge was twofold: (1) "The PLP has attacked every revolutionary national struggle of the black and Latin American peoples in the U.S. as being racist and reactionary", and (2) the "PLP attacked Ho Chi Minh, the NLF, the revolutionary government of Cuba--all leaders of the people’s struggles for freedom against U.S. imperialism." The 500-600 people remaining in the meeting hall, dominated by PLP, declared itself the "Real SDS", electing PLP and WSA members as officers. By the next day, there were in effect two SDS organizations, "SDS-RYM" and "SDS-WSA." SDS-RYM broke up soon after the split. In a decision to effectively dissolve the organization ("marches and protests won't do it"), a faction including Dohrn resolved upon armed resistance. In alliance with "the Black Liberation Movement", a "white fighting force" would "bring the war home" On October 6, 1969, the Weathermen planted their first bomb, blowing up a statue in Chicago commemorating police officers killed during the 1886 Haymarket Riot. Others were to follow Michael Klonsky into the New Communist Movement. After the break-up of its rival and before dissolving in 1974 into the Committee Against Racism, the WSA continued on campuses as "the SDS". Functioning to recruit for PLP, it was a centralized, disciplined organization quite distinct from the original Port Huron movement.


New SDS

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 (including Alan Haber, the organization's first president) and to build a new generation SDS. The new SDS held their first national convention in August 2006 at the University of Chicago. They describe themselves as a "progressive organization of student activists" intent on building "a strong student movement to defend our rights to education and stand up against budget cuts," to "oppose racism, sexism, and homophobia on campus" and to "say NO to war." They report chapters in 25 states with some thousands of supporters.


References


Further reading


Books

* Adelson, Alan. ''SDS''. New York, Charles Scribener's Sons, 1972 . * * Davidson, Carl, editor. ''Revolutionary Youth and the New Working Class: The Praxis Papers, the Port Authority Statement, the RYM Documents and the Lost Writings of SDS'' . Pittsburgh: Changemaker, 2011 * Evans, Sara. ''Personal Politics: The Roots of the Women's Liberation Movement in the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left''. Alfred Knopf. 1979. * Elbaum, Max. ''Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao and Che''. London and New York: Verso, 2002 . * Frost, Heather. ''An Interracial Movement of the Poor: Community Organizing and the New Left in the 1960s.'' New York: New York University press, 2001 . * Heath, G. Louis, ed. ''Vandals in the Bomb Factory: The History and Literature of the Students for a Democratic Society.'' Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1976 . *Hogan, Wesley C.,
Many Minds, One Heart: SNCC's Dream for a New America.
Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2007 . * Isserman, Maurice. ''If I Had a Hammer: the death of the old left and the birth of the new left''. New York: Basic Books, 1987. . * Klatch, Rebecca E. ''A Generation Divided: The New Left, the New Right, and the 1960s.'' Berkeley : University of California Press, 1999 . * Miller, James. ''Democracy is in the Streets: From Port Huron to the Siege of Chicago''. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994 . * Pardun, Robert. "Prairie Radical: A Journey Through the Sixties" Shire Press, 2001 . * Sale, Kirkpatrick, ''SDS: The Rise and Development of The Students for a Democratic Society''. Random House (1973), Hardcover, Vintage Books. 1973.


Articles

* Alper, Mark
''The Legacy of S.D.S. and Its Relevance to Today's Activists''
''Electronic Worker''. Direct Action Tendency,
Socialist Party USA The Socialist Party USA, officially the Socialist Party of the United States of America,"The article of this organization shall be the Socialist Party of the United States of America, hereinafter called 'the Party'". Art. I of th"Constitution o ...
. Retrieved April 12, 2005. * Bailey, Geoff.
The Rise and Fall of SDS
" ''International Socialist Review'', issue 31, September–October, 1983. * Bookchin, Murray
''Anarchy and Organization: A Letter To The Left''
Reprinted from ''New Left Notes.'' January 15, 1969. Retrieved April 12, 2005. ''"The essay originally was written in reply to an attack by Huey Newton on anarchist forms of organization."'' * Maines, Billy
''Second Coming : The Infamous SDS is Back, and Now It's Local''
''Orlando Weekly''. November 23, 2006.
SDS in the 1960s: From A Student Movement to National Resistance, The Indypendent

SDS: The signature organization of the 1960s student left has been reborn, The Indypendent

Tom Hayden, "The Future of 1968's 'Restless Youth'"
in: Martin Klimke and Joachim Scharloth
1968 in Europe
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 325–331.
''Who Are The Bombers?''
SDS-WSA pamphlet, 1972, attacking terrorism, including ''Weatherman'' terrorism.



Series of 12 articles originally published in ''Challenge-Desafio'', biweekly newspaper o
The Progressive Labor Party
January - July 2007.

essay by
Mark Rudd Mark William Rudd (born June 2, 1947) is an American political organizer, mathematics instructor, anti-war activist and counterculture icon who got involved with the Weather Underground in the 1960s. Rudd became a member of the Columbia Univer ...
.
"Thorne Dreyer: As Port Huron Turns 50,"
an interview with Tom Hayden, The Peace and Justice Resource Center, January 26, 2012.


SDS publications

* Davidson, Carl. ''Toward a Student Syndicalist Movement or University Reform Revisited.'' Chicago: Students for a Democratic Society. ca. 1967. Mimeographed. 7 p. * Gilbert, David and David Loud. ''U. S. Imperialism.'' Chicago: Students for a Democratic Society, 1968. Wraps. 33 p. * Haber, Al and Dick Flacks. ''Peace, Power and the University: Prepared for Students for a Democratic Society and the Peace Research and Education Project.''Ann Arbor: Peace Research and Education Project, 1963. Mimeographed. 12p. * Hayden, Tom
''Student Social Action''.
Chicago: Students for a Democratic Society, 1966. * Hayden, Tom, and Carl Wittman.
An Interracial Movement of the Poor?
" SDS Economic Research and Action Project, 1963. 27 p. * James, Mike. ''Getting Ready for the Firing Line: Join Community Union''. Chicago: Students for a Democratic Society, March 1968. Stapled softcover. 8p. Photos by Nancy Hollander, Tom Malear of the Chicago Film Coop, Todd Gitlin & Les Jordan, SCEF. Reprinted from "The Activist," Spring 1967. Introduction for this pamphlet by Mike James. * Lemisch, Jessie. ''Towards a Democratic History.'' Ann Arbor & Chicago: Radical Education Project/Students for a Democratic Society, (1967). Radical Education Project Occasional Paper. 8 p. * Lynd, Staughton
''The New Radicals and "Participatory Democracy".''
Chicago: Students for a Democratic Society, 1965. 10 p. ::Reprinted from ''
Dissent Dissent is an opinion, philosophy or sentiment of non-agreement or opposition to a prevailing idea or policy enforced under the authority of a government, political party or other entity or individual. A dissenting person may be referred to as ...
'', Vol. 12, No. 3, July 1965. * Oglesby, Carl.
The Speech given by Carl Oglesby, President, Students for a Democratic Society, at the Nov. 27, 1965 March on Washington to End the War in Vietnam
'' Chicago: Students for a Democratic Society, ca. 1965. 8 p. * Olinick, Michael. ''The Campus Press.'' Distributed by Students for a Democratic Society for the Liberal Study Group,
National Student Association The United States National Student Association (NSA) was a confederation of college and university student governments that was in operation from 1947 to 1978. Founding and early years The NSA was founded at a conference at the University of Wis ...
, 1962. 13 p. * Oppenheimer, Martin. ''Alienation or Participation: The Sociology of Participatory Democracy''. Students of a Democratic Society, 1966. 7 p. * Rosenthal, Steven J
''Vietnam Study Guide and Annotated Bibliography.''
Chicago: Students for a Democratic Society, 1965. * Students for a Democratic Society
''National Vietnam Examination''.
Chicago: Students for a Democratic Society and Inter-University Committee for Debate on Foreign Policy, 1966. * Students for a Democratic Society

Based on Draft by
Tom Hayden Thomas Emmet Hayden (December 11, 1939October 23, 2016) was an American social and political activist, author, and politician. Hayden was best known for his role as an anti-war, civil rights, and intellectual activist in the 1960s, authoring t ...
, revised by SDS National Convention, Port Huron, Michigan, June 11–15, 1962. * Students for a Democratic Society.
SDS: An Introduction
'. 1968. * Students For A Democratic Society. ''Fight Racism!'' Boston: Students for a Democratic Society, n.d. 969 28pp. 1st edition. Stapled softcover. * Students for a Democratic Society. ''New Left Notes''. Chicago. Vol. 1 # 1 1965 - Vol. 4 # 31 October 2, 1969. * Students for a Democratic Society rogressive Labor ''SDS New Left Notes'', Vol. 5, No. 15, July 6, 1970 - Boston, 1970.


United States Government publications

* U.S. House of Representatives. ''Investigation of Students for a Democratic Society, Part 2 (Kent State University): Hearings Before the Committee on Internal Security, House of Representatives; 91st Congress, 2nd Session, June 24 and 25, 1969''. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1969. * U.S. House of Representatives. ''Investigation of Students for a Democratic Society, Part 3-A (George Washington University); Hearings Before the Committee on Internal Security, House of Representatives; 91st Congress, 2nd Session, July 22, 1969''. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1969. * U.S. House of Representatives. ''Student Views Toward U.S. Policy in Southeast Asia; Hearings Before an Ad Hoc Committee of Members of the House of Representatives; 91st Congress, 2nd Session, July 22, 1969''. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1969. * U.S. president. ''Commission on Campus Unrest''. Report. This publication is often referred to as the ''Scranton Report'', issued in 1970.


External links


New Left Archive at NLN
SDS and Weather Underground Documents compiled by Next Left Notes, a journal edited by several former and current SDS members
SDS Historical Documents and other links
* Includes Port Huron Statement, "SDS: The Last Hurrah" (an account of Chicago 1969 written by an undercover federal agent), and the Revolutionary Youth Movement mission statement.
University of Washington Libraries Digital Collections – Vietnam Era Ephemera
This collection contains leaflets and newspapers that were distributed on the University of Washington campus during the decades of the 1960s and 1970s. They reflect the social environment and political activities of the youth movement in Seattle during that period. *
Photos and Documents: SDS News at UW
from the Pacific Northwest Antiwar and Radical History Project *''Students for a Democratic Society (S.D.S.), Records, 1965-74''. May 4 Collection—Box 107.
Kent State University Kent State University (KSU) is a public research university in Kent, Ohio. The university also includes seven regional campuses in Northeast Ohio and additional facilities in the region and internationally. Regional campuses are located in ...
Libraries and Media Services. Department of Special Collections and Archives
Online guide retrieved September 28, 2012
*''Students for a Democratic Society Period : 1962–1970''. Period : 1962–1970. Total Size : 0.5 m. International Institute of Social History

{{Authority control 1960 establishments in Michigan 1974 disestablishments in the United States American democracy activists Anti–Vietnam War groups COINTELPRO targets Defunct American political movements Direct action History of youth Left-wing organizations in the United States New Left Organizations based in Ann Arbor, Michigan Organizations disestablished in 1974 Social movement organizations Student organizations established in 1960 Student political organizations in the United States Youth rights organizations based in the United States