The rising generation is reaching back to the vision and ideals of the New Left for future guidance. In January, an up-and-coming group of student activists announced the return of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), described by Wikipedia as, “The organizational high point for student radicalism in the United States during the 1960s.” Since then, about 25 new chapters have sprung up, according to New York regional SDS organizer Thomas Good.
Brown University professor Paul Buhle, an active SDS member in the 1960s, recalls it as the only organization at the time that reached “hundreds and hundreds of campuses” — everywhere but the South — and which was able to inspire students to do something “other than serving other people’s purposes.” SDS’s work understood the connection between the campus and social movements, Buhle says, identifying the ivory tower in the context of the political and economic circumstances of the time, and thus as a legitimate site of struggle — whether challenging the influence of corporations or the military on campus or the “bureaucratic university.”
At its height, SDS organized “10 Days of Resistance” leading up to the largest student strike in US history, in 1968. A year later, SDS held its ninth convention in Chicago, drawing about 2000 people, before later disintegrating because of internal factions. This collapse notwithstanding, the legacies of SDS remain present in how campus activists wield similar ideals and strategies. Although Brown student Sharon Mulligan, who is active in the Student Labor Alliance, says she has never thought about it “in terms of SDS,” direct action, participatory democracy, and student power are still relevant.
Today’s SDS is a multigenerational crew. At one end is Pat Korte, a 17-year-old high school senior in Stonington, Connecticut. At the other end is Alan Haber, who served as SDS’s first president, from 1960-1962, along with others who jokingly call themselves “Seniors for a Democratic Society.” Korte reached out to these SDS veterans to “help ground the project and provide logistical support.”
SDS’s leading manifesto, the Port Huron statement, remains the group’s rallying cry. “Sexist pronouns aside,” Good says, “I think the document stands the test of time pretty well,” although organizers continue to debate whether (and how) to update the document.
Korte and other new SDS members stress the group’s importance as a venue for students to have a say in evolving radical movements. As the young activist says, “The un-ending ‘war on terror,’ the damage that the US government is reaping right now, is something we’ll have to deal with and that we’ll have to change.”
The group plans to stage this summer the first national SDS convention since 1969. The preliminary Northeast regional meeting will likely be held at Brown University, on April 22.
Of course, at a time when many students are disengaged even from mainstream politics, organizing an effective radical student movement remains nothing less than a major challenge.
