Students for a Democratic Society

American student activist organization (1960–1974)

This article is about the 1960s organization. For the more recent organization, see Students for a Democratic Society (2006 organization).

Students for a Democratic Society

Cover of SDS pamphlet c. 1966

Predecessor| Student League for Industrial Democracy
Successor| New Students for a Democratic Society (unofficial)
Formation| 1960
Founded at| Ann Arbor, Michigan
Dissolved| 1974
Purpose| Left-wing student activism
Location|

* United States

Secessions| New American Movement
Revolutionary Youth Movement
Weather Underground
Affiliations| Venceremos Brigade
Part of the Politics series on

Students' rights

History

* 2024 Bangladesh quota reform movement
* 2021 Boğaziçi University protests
* 2021 Columbia University strike
* 2020 Thai protests
* School strike for climate
* 2018 Bangladesh quota reform movement
* 2018 Bangladesh road safety protests
* 2018 "March for Our Lives"
* 2017–18 Mahatma Gandhi Central University protests
* 2017–18 Iranian protests
* 2017 Jallikattu protests
* 2015 "Fees Must Fall"
* 2015 University of Missouri protests
* 2015 Bangladesh student protests
* 2015 University of Amsterdam Bungehuis and Maagdenhuis Occupations
* 2014 Jadavpur University protests
* 2014 Hong Kong student protest for democracy
* 2014 Sunflower Student Movement
* 2014 Iguala mass kidnapping
* 2013 Bangladesh quota reform movement
* 2012 Quebec student protests
* 2011 student protests in Chile
* 2010 University of Puerto Rico Strike
* 2010 UK student protests
* 2008 Greek riots
* 2007 Dutch pupil strike
* 2006 student protests in Chile
* 2006 student uprising in Iran
* 2005 Quebec student protests
* July 1999 Iran student protests
* 1996–1997 protests in Serbia
* 1996 Quebec student protests
* 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre
* 1989 Anti-SAP riots
* 1980 student protests in Kabul
* 1978 "Ali Must Go" protests
* 1976-77 Soweto uprising
* November 1973 Athens Polytechnic uprising
* 1971 Diliman Commune – Philippines
* 1970-1972 Huelga schools, Houston – United States
* 1970 Student Strike
* 1968 Protests
* 1968–69 Japanese university protests
* Third World Liberation Front strikes of 1968-
* 1968 student demonstrations in Yugoslavia
* May 1968 uprisings

*     * Mexican Movement of 1968

*     * 1968 protests in Poland
* 1968 East L.A. walkouts
* 1965 Anti-Hindi agitations of Tamil Nadu
* 1964-65 U.C. Berkeley Free Speech Movement
* 1960 Anpo protests
* 1956 Bucharest student movement
* Września children strike
* Butter rebellion
* 1229 University of Paris strike

Concepts and theory

* Authentic assessment
* Anarchistic free school
* Democratic education
* Democratic schools
* Freedom of speech
* Hidden curriculum
* Minimally invasive education
* Sudbury school
* Student activism
* Student bill of rights
* Student-centred learning
* Student protest
* Student riot
* Students' union
* Student voice
* Unschooling

Issues

* Alternative school
* Censorship of student media
* Compulsory education
* Ordinance of Student Rights
* School corporal punishment
* School discipline
* School district drug policies
* School speech
* School-to-prison pipeline
* Zero tolerance

Organizations

* European Students' Union
* Hong Kong Federation of Students
* Rouge Forum
* RMIT University Student Union
* Scholarism
* Students for a Democratic Society (1960)
* Students for a Democratic Society (2006)
* Student Press Law Center
* Worker Student Alliance
* UP Diliman University Student Council
* PUP SPEAK

Related

* Animal rights
* Anti-racism
* Feminism
* Labor rights
* LGBTQ student movement
* Socialism
* Youth rights

* Society portal

* v
* t
* e

Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was a national student activist organization in the United States during the 1960s and was one of the principal representations of the New Left. Disdaining permanent leaders, hierarchical relationships and parliamentary procedure, the founders conceived of the organization as a broad exercise in "participatory democracy". 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 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

[edit]

### 1960–1962: The Port Huron Statement

[edit]

Main article: Port Huron Statement

This article is part of a series on

Socialism
in the United States

History

Utopian socialism

* Bishop Hill Commune
* Brook Farm
* Icarians
* Jonestown
* Looking Backward
* New Harmony
* Oneida Community

Progressive Era

* 1877 St. Louis general strike
* 1912 Lawrence textile strike
* Catholic Worker Movement
* Green Corn Rebellion
* Labor unionization
* Haymarket affair
* May Day
* Women's suffrage

Repression and persecution

* American Defense Society
* American Protective League
* Communist Party USA and African Americans
* Communist Party USA in the labor movement
* 1919–1937
* 1937–1957
* Espionage Act of 1917
* First Red Scare
* John Birch Society
* McCarthyism
* Seattle General Strike
* Smith Act
* Smith Act trials

Anti-war and civil rights movements

* Black power movement
* COINTELPRO
* "I Have a Dream"
* March on Washington
* New Left
* Poor People's Campaign

Contemporary

* 1999 Seattle WTO protests
* 2007–2008 financial crisis
* Occupy Wall Street

People

* Abern
* Alston
* Andrews
* Avrich
* Balagoon
* Bellamy (Edward)
* Bellamy (Francis)
* Berger
* Berkman
* Bookchin
* Bowman
* Bruenig (Elizabeth)
* Bruenig (Matt)
* Brisbane
* Brooks
* Browder
* Bush
* Butler
* Cabet
* Cannon
* Cantor
* Carmichael
* Chomsky
* Clark
* Cockburn
* Davis (Angela)
* Davis (Mike)
* Day
* Dean
* Debs
* De la Cruz
* De Leon
* Dennis
* Dixon
* Dreiser
* Du Bois
* Ehrenreich
* Ervin
* Fearing
* Feinberg
* Flynn
* Ford
* Foster
* Fourier
* Gilmore
* Gitlow
* Goldman
* Graeber
* Greene
* Guthrie
* Hall
* Hammett
* Hampton
* Harburg
* Harrington
* Harrison
* Hay
* Haywood (Bill)
* Haywood (Harry)
* Hawkins
* Hedges
* Heywood (Angela)
* Heywood (Ezra)
* Hill
* Hillquit
* Hoan
* Hoffman
* Jameson
* Jones
* Keller
* King
* Labadie
* La Guardia
* London
* Lovestone
* Lum
* Marcy
* McReynolds
* Mitchell
* Moore
* Morello
* Most
* Newton
* Noyes
* Ocasio-Cortez
* Ochs
* Panken
* Parenti
* Parsons (Albert)
* Parsons (Lucy)
* Piker
* Piven
* Randolph
* Reed
* Ripley
* Robbins
* Robinson
* Rocha
* Rocker
* Roediger
* Rustin
* Ruthenberg
* Sacco and Vanzetti
* Sandburg
* Sanders
* Sawant
* Seale
* Seeger
* Seidel
* Shachtman
* Shakur
* Stone
* Sunkara
* Sweezy
* Tankian
* Thomas
* Tlaib
* Turner
* West
* Wolff
* Wood
* Wright
* Zeidler
* Zerzan
* Zinn

Active organizations

* Antifa
* Black Riders Liberation Party
* Black Socialists in America
* Communist Party USA
* Democratic Socialists of America
* Freedom Party of New York
* Freedom Road Socialist Organization
* Freedom Socialist Party
* Green Mountain Peace and Justice Party
* Green Party of the United States
* Industrial Workers of the World
* Legal Marijuana Now
* National Progressive Party
* New Afrikan Black Panther Party
* Party for Socialism and Liberation
* Peace and Freedom Party
* Progressive Dane
* Progressive Labor Party
* Redneck Revolt
* Revolutionary Communist Party, USA
* Socialist Action
* Socialist Alternative
* South Carolina Workers Party
* Social Democrats, USA
* Socialist Equality Party
* Socialist Party USA
* Socialist Rifle Association
* Socialist Workers Party
* Solidarity
* Spark
* Spartacist League
* Working Families Party
* Workers World Party
* Working Class Party
* World Socialist Party of the United States

Inactive or defunct organizations

* American Indian Movement
* American Labor Party
* American Union of Associationists
* American Workers Party
* Black Panther Party
* Citizens Party
* Communist League of America
* Communist League of Struggle
* Communist Workers' Party
* Democratic Socialist Federation
* Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee
* Farmer–Labor Party
* Human Rights Party
* Independent Socialist League
* International Socialists
* International Socialist Organization
* International Workingmen's Association
* Justice Party
* Labor Party of the United States
* Labor Party
* Maoist Internationalist Movement
* Red Guards
* Red Guard Party
* New American Movement
* New Party
* Nonpartisan League
* Patriot Party
* People's Party
* Proletarian Party of America
* Revolutionary Socialist League
* Revolutionary Youth Movement
* Social Democracy of America
* Social Democratic Federation
* Social Democratic Party of America
* Socialist Labor Party of America
* Socialist Party of America
* SDS
* Weather Underground
* White Panther Party
* Workers Party of the United States
* Young Lords
* Young Patriots Organization

Literature

* Appeal to Reason
* Current Affairs
* Daily Worker
* Dissent
* International Socialist Review
* Jacobin
* The Jungle
* Looking Backward
* Monopoly Capital
* Monthly Review
* The Other America
* A People's History of the United States
* Settlers: The Mythology of the White Proletariat
* Voluntary Socialism
* Why Socialism?
* ZNetwork

Related topics

* American Left
* Anarchism (in the US)
* Anarcho-communism
* Anarcho-syndicalism
* Bill of Rights socialism
* Democratic socialism
* Green anarchism
* Individualist anarchism (in the US)
* Labor history
* Labor laws
* Labor unions
* Libertarian socialism
* Market socialism
* Marxism
* Marxism–Leninism
* Minimum wage
* Mutualism
* Progressivism
* Post-left anarchy
* Scientific socialism
* Social democracy
* Socialism
* Trotskyism
* Utopian socialism

* Socialism portal
* United States portal

* v
* t
* e

SDS developed from the youth branch of a socialist educational organization known as the League for Industrial Democracy (LID). LID itself descended from an older student organization, the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, founded in 1905 by Upton Sinclair, Walter Lippmann, Clarence Darrow, and Jack London. Early in 1960, to broaden the scope for recruitment beyond labor issues, the Student League for Industrial Democracy was reconstituted as SDS.[1] They held their first meeting in 1960 on the University of Michigan campus at Ann Arbor, where Alan Haber was elected president. The SDS manifesto, known as the Port Huron Statement, was adopted at the organization's first convention in June 1962,[2] based on an earlier draft by staff member Tom Hayden. Under Walter Reuther's leadership, the United Automobile Workers union (UAW) paid for a range of expenses for the 1962 convention, including use of the UAW summer retreat in Port Huron.[3]

The Port Huron Statement 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".[4]

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 [and] reflection."[4]

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.[4]

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).[5]

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.[6]: 29–132

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.[7] 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.[8]

### 1962–1964: Organize your own

[edit]

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 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 never would 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 (SNCC), most activity was oriented toward the civil rights struggle.

By the end of the academic year, there were over 200 delegates at the annual convention at Pine Hill, New York, 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 was chosen as national secretary, and Todd Gitlin of Harvard University was made president.

In 1963, "racial equality" remained the cause célèbre. In November 1963, the Swarthmore College chapter of SDS partnered with Stanley Branche and local parents to create the Committee for Freedom Now which led the Chester school protests along with the NAACP in Chester, Pennsylvania. 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.[9] The racial unrest and civil rights protests made Chester one of the key battlegrounds of the civil rights movement.[10]

However, within the Congress of Racial Equality, and within the SNCC (particularly after the 1964 Freedom Summer), there was the suggestion that white activists might better advance the cause of civil rights by organising "their own".[11] 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".[12][13]

Conceived in part as a response to the gathering danger of a "white backlash", and with $5,000 from United Automobile Workers union, Tom Hayden promoted an Economic Research and Action Project (ERAP).[14] SDS community organizers would help draw neighborhoods, both black and white, into an "interracial movement of the poor".[15] By the end of 1964, ERAP had ten inner-city projects engaging 125 student volunteers.[16]: 86–87

Ralph Helstein, president of the United Packinghouse Workers of America, arranged for Hayden and Gitlin to meet with Saul Alinsky who, with 25 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.[17]

With the election of new leadership at the July 1964 national SDS convention there was already dissent. Noting that the "whole balance of the organization [had] 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."[16]: 80–83 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."[18]

Hayden, who committed himself to community organizing in Newark (where he witnessed the "race riots" in 1967),[19] 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.[6]: 34–35 [20]

Kirkpatrick Sale noted that 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".[16]: 94

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. They did so within the confines of university bans on on-campus political organization and activity.[21]

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 at the University of California, Berkeley that is generally recognized as the first major challenge to campus governance.[22] 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 (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.[23]

### 1965–1966: Free Universities, and the Draft

[edit]

In February 1965, President Johnson dramatically escalated the war in Vietnam. He ordered the bombing of North Vietnam (Operation Flaming Dart) and committed ground troops to fight the Viet Cong 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, 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, followed by hundreds more across the country. The SDS became recognized nationally as the leading student group against the war.

SDS Free university button c. 1965

The National Convention in Akron (which FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover reported was attended by "practically every subversive organization in the United States")[6]: 84 selected as President Carl Oglesby (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.[24]

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'.[16]: 148 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.[16]: 159–163 [25]: 97–98

The new, more radical, and uncompromising anti-war profile this suggested, appeared to drive the growth in membership. The influx discomfited older members like Todd Gitlin who, as he later conceded, simply had no "feel" for an anti-war movement.[16]: 140 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.[16]: 204–205, 163–164 [25]: 103–104

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 the challenge, and soon began to offer seminars run on similar student-responsive lines, beginning what SDSers saw as a "liberal swallow-up".[16]: 176–178

The summer convention of 1966 was moved farther west, to Clear Lake, Iowa. 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.[26] 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 mic 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'".[27]

SDSers understanding of their "own" was increasingly colored by the country's exploding countercultural 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, an underground newspaper founded by SDS leaders Thorne Dreyer 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 mid-sixties was trying to develop."[28]

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, and anti-war protests at the Texas State Capitol during a visit by Vice-President Hubert Humphrey. The example set a precedent for campus events across the country.[29][30]

### 1967–1968: Stop the War

[edit]

Vietnam War protestors at the March on the Pentagon

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 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 (FBI), mainly through its secret COINTELPRO (COunter INTELligence PROgram) and other law enforcement agencies were often exposed as having spies and informers in the chapters.[31] 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.[32]

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.[16]: 297–298 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."[16]: 304 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.[6]: 86

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

[edit]

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). 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).[33]

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."[34]: 163 [35] Sexism was acknowledged as commonplace in the anti-war and New Left movement.[36]

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."[35]: 161–163 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.[37] 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!"[38]

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").[39] 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.[40] 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. Women had gained skills and experience in organising but had been made to feel keenly their second-class status.[41]

### Secession and polarization

[edit]

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".[42] 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 to live as part of the community, and of "the working class", for the long haul.[43]

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."[42]: 56 [44]

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 in Chicago.[6]: 83

In the event, under a mandate to recruit and to offer support should the Chicago police "start rioting" (which they did),[45] national SDSers were present. On August 28 national secretary Michael Klonsky was on Havana 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 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'".[46][6]: 84

### 1969–1970: splintering and dissolution

[edit]

Main articles: Revolutionary Youth Movement and Weather Underground

RYM call for national day of action in solidarity with Vietnam, 1969

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"),[40] the counterculture, and long hair.[16]: 369

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",[47] 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 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)."[48] 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 [college] administrations 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".[16]: 338

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 were under vicious attack, they deemed it positively racist for educated white women to focus on their own oppression.[49]

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. The two groups battled for control of the organization throughout the convention. The RYM and the National Office faction, led by Bernardine Dohrn, finally walked several hundred people out of the Colosseum.

Further information: 1969 Students for a Democratic Society National Convention

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."[50]

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".[16]: 392–400

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"[34]: 135 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.[51] 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.[52]

### New SDS

[edit]

Main article: Students for a Democratic Society (2006 organization)

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.[53][54]

## References

[edit]

1. ^ Neier, Aryeh (2003). Taking Liberties: Four Decades in the Struggle for Rights. Cambridge, MA: Public Affairs/Perseus Books. Introduction, p. xx. ISBN 1586482912. "As director of LID, I decided to try to invigorate its student division. One step in that direction was to rename it."
2. ^ Frum, David (2000). How We Got Here: The '70s. New York, New York: Basic Books. p. 8. ISBN 0465041957.
3. ^ Boyle, Kevin (1995-11-21). The UAW and the Heyday of American Liberalism, 1945–1968. Cornell University Press. p. 159\. ISBN 978-1-5017-1327-9.
4. ^ a b c "Port Huron Statement". www2.iath.virginia.edu. Retrieved 2019-12-07.
5. ^ Todd Gitlin (1993). The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage. Bantam. pp. 377–409. ISBN 9780553372120.
6. ^ a b c d e f Security, United States Congress House Committee on Internal Security (1970). Anatomy of a Revolutionary Movement: "Students for a Democratic Society". U.S. Government Printing Office.
7. ^ Klimke, Martin (2011). The Other Alliance: Student Protest in West Germany and the United States in the Global Sixties. Princeton University Press. pp. 21, 24. ISBN 9780691152462.
8. ^ Parker, Howard Brick and Gregory, ed. (2015). A New Insurgency: The Port Huron Statement and Its Times. doi:10.3998/maize.13545967.0001.001. hdl:2027/spo.13545967.0001.001. ISBN 978-1-60785-350-3.
9. ^ Mele, Christopher (2017). Race and the Politics of Deception: The Making of an American City. New York University Press. ISBN 978-1-4798-6609-0., p. 82
10. ^ "African American residents of Chester, PA, demonstrate to end de facto segregation in public schools, 1963-1966". www.nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu. Retrieved 26 October 2018.
11. ^ Clayborne Carson (1995). In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s. Harvard University Press
12. ^ Michael Harrington (1962). The Other America. Macmillan
13. ^ Rothstein, Richard. "A Short History of ERAP". content.cdlib.org. Retrieved 2019-12-07.
14. ^ New Left Notes, 10 June 1968; Anatomy of a Revolutionary Movement, p. 16.
15. ^ Heather Frost (2001). An Interracial Movement of the Poor: Community Organizing and the New Left in the 1960s. New York: New York University press. ISBN 0-8147-2697-6.
16. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Sale, Kirkpatrick (1973). SDS: The Rise and Development of the Students for a Democratic Society. New York: Random House. ISBN 9780394478890.
17. ^ Sanford Horwitt (1989) Let Them Call Me Rebel: The Life and Legacy of Saul Alinsky. New York. Alfred A. Knopf. p. 525
18. ^ Miller, James (1994), Democracy is in the Streets: From Port Huron to the Siege of Chicago. Harvard University Press. p. 196
19. ^ Tom Hayden (1967), Rebellion in Newark: Official Violence and Ghetto Response, Vintages Books
20. ^ "A Step into America". newpol.org. 10 February 2013. Retrieved Jan 26, 2023.
21. ^ "The Constitutional Right to Protest at Universities | Constitution Center". National Constitution Center – constitutioncenter.org. Retrieved 2025-02-13.
22. ^ Ken Heineman (1992). Campus Wars: The Peace Movement at American State Universities in the Vietnam Era. New York University Press
23. ^ Savio, Mario (1965). "Berkeley Fall: The Berkeley Student Rebellion of 1964". content.cdlib.org.
24. ^ Cathy Wilkerson (2007) Flying Close to the Sun, My Life and Times as a Weatherman. Seven Stories Press. pp. 83-85
25. ^ a b Carl Oglesby (2008), Ravens in the Storm, A Personal History of the 1960s Anti-War Movement. New York: Scribner.
26. ^ "Students for a Democratic Society Records, 1958-1970". Archival Resources in Wisconsin: Descriptive Finding Aids. Retrieved 2022-01-03.
27. ^ Sara Davidson (1977). Loose Change: Three Women of the Sixties. London: Collins. pp. 105–106
28. ^ Peck, Abe, Uncovering the Sixties: The Life and Times of the Underground Press, Pantheon Books, 1985; p. 58.
29. ^ Thorne Dreyer, ""Flipped-Out Week: A Time to Affirm Life," in Thorne Dreyer, Alice Embree and Richard Condale eds. (2016), Celebrating the Rag, Austin Iconic Underground Paper. Austin: New Journalism Project. pp. 37–41
30. ^ Tishcler, Barbara L., Editor, Sights on the Sixties, Rutgers University Press, 1992; "Gentle Thursday: An SDS Circus in Austin, Texas, 1966-1970," By Glenn W. Jones, pp. 75–85.
31. ^ Churchill, Ward; Vander Wall, Jim (1990). The COINTELPRO Papers: Documents from the FBI's Secret Wars Against Domestic Dissent. Boston: South End Press. ISBN 978-0896083608. OCLC 21908953.
32. ^ "COINTELPRO Revisited – Spying & Disruption – In Black & White: The F.B.I. Papers". What Really Happened. Archived from the original on 2008-05-16. Retrieved 2008-06-23.
33. ^ Smith, Harold L. (2015). "Casey Hayden: Gender and the Origins of SNCC, SDS, and the Women's Liberation Movement". In Turner, Elizabeth Hayes; Cole, Stephanie; Sharpless, Rebecca (eds.). Texas Women: Their Histories, Their Lives. University of Georgia Press. pp. 295–318. ISBN 9780820347905
34. ^ a b McDowell, Manfred (2013). "A Step into America: The New Left Organizes the Neighborhood". New Politics. Vol. XIV, no. 2\. pp. 133–141. Retrieved January 21, 2020.133-141&rft.date=2013&rft.aulast=McDowell&rft.aufirst=Manfred&rft_id=https://newpol.org/review/step-america/&rfr_id=info:sid/en.wikipedia.org:Students+for+a+Democratic+Society" class="Z3988">
35. ^ a b Sara Evans (1979), Personal Politics: The Roots of the Women's Liberation Movement in the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left. Alfred Knopf.
36. ^ "Learning about Racism: White Socialist Feminism and Bread and Roses". academic.oup.com. Oxford Academic.
37. ^ Hanson, Russell L. (14 July 2014). The Democratic Imagination in America: Conversations with Our Past. Princeton University Press. ISBN 9781400857852 - via Google Books.
38. ^ Miriam Schneir (1994) "An SDS Statement on the Liberation of Women." Feminism in Our Time: The Essential Writings, World War II to the Present. New York: Vintage, 1994. pp. 103–07. Print.
39. ^ "The Women's Movement and Women in SDS: Cathy Wilkerson Recalls the Tensions". historymatters.gmu.edu. Retrieved Jan 26, 2023.
40. ^ a b "SDS deals with the woman question". www.marxists.org. June 28, 1969. Retrieved 2019-12-07.
41. ^ "What Was the Protest Group Students for a Democratic Society? Five Questions Answered". Smithsonian Magazine. May 4, 2017.
42. ^ a b Amy Sony, James Tracy (2011), Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels, and Black Power: Community Organizing in Radical Times. Brooklyn, Melville House.
43. ^ "Telling It Like It Is. Speech to the SDS Convention", The Firing Line, January 16, 1968
44. ^ Jeffrey R. Henig (1982). Neighborhood mobilization: redevelopment and response. Rutgers University Press, p. 108
45. ^ Tourekwebsite=todayinclh.com, Mary (Aug 30, 2013). "Walker Report Finds 'Police Riot' at Democratic Party Convention". Retrieved Jan 26, 2023.
46. ^ New Left Notes, October 18, 1968. p. 3
47. ^ New Left Notes, June 24, 1968
48. ^ "SDS ousts PLP". www.marxists.org. Retrieved 2019-12-07.
49. ^ "The Women's Movement and Women in SDS: Cathy Wilkerson Recalls the Tensions". historymatters.gmu.edu. February 17, 1985. Retrieved 2019-12-07.
50. ^ "SDS ousts PLP". www.marxists.org. June 28, 1969. Retrieved 2019-12-07.
51. ^ Ron Jacobs (1997), The Way the Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground, Verso
52. ^ Levin, John F; Silbar, Earl (2019). You Say You Want a Revolution: SDS, PL, and Adventures in Building a Worker-Student Alliance. San Francisco: 1741 Press. ISBN 9780578406541.
53. ^ "SDS News: What Are We Up To?". Students for a Democratic Society. 2019-10-06. Archived from the original on 2020-02-02. Retrieved 2019-12-07.
54. ^ "Students for a Democratic Society at the University of Minnesota". gopherlink.umn.edu. Retrieved 2019-12-07.

## Further reading

[edit]

### Books

[edit]

* Adelson, Alan. SDS: A Profile. New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1972. ISBN 978-0684123936.
* Barber, David (2008). A Hard Rain Fell: SDS and Why it Failed. University Press of Mississippi. ISBN 978-1934110171.
* Berger, Dan (2006). "Shaking America's Moral Conscience: The Rise of Students for a Democratic Society". Outlaws of America: The Weather Underground and the Politics of Solidarity. AK Press. ISBN 978-1904859413.
* 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. ISBN 978-1-257-99947-7.
* Elbaum, Max. Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao and Che. London and New York: Verso, 2002. ISBN 978-1-85984-617-9.
* Evans, Sara. Personal Politics: The Roots of the Women's Liberation Movement in the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left. Alfred Knopf, 1979. ISBN 978-0394419114.
* Frost, Heather. An Interracial Movement of the Poor: Community Organizing and the New Left in the 1960s. New York: New York University press, 2001. ISBN 0-8147-2697-6.
* 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. ISBN 0-8108-0890-0.
* Hogan, Wesley C. Many Minds, One Heart: SNCC's Dream for a New America. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2007. ISBN 978-0-8078-3074-1.
* 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. ISBN 0-465-03197-8.
* Klatch, Rebecca E. A Generation Divided: The New Left, the New Right, and the 1960s. Berkeley : University of California Press, 1999. ISBN 0-520-21714-4.
* Miller, James. Democracy is in the Streets: From Port Huron to the Siege of Chicago. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994. ISBN 978-0-674-19725-1.
* Pardun, Robert. Prairie Radical: A Journey Through the Sixties. Shire Press, 2001. ISBN 0-918828-20-1.
* Pekar, Harvey. Students for a Democratic Society, a Graphic History. New York: Hill & Wang, 2009. ISBN 978-0809089390.
* Sale, Kirkpatrick. SDS: The Rise and Development of the Students for a Democratic Society. Random House, 1973. ISBN 0394478894.

### Articles

[edit]

* Alper, Mark. The Legacy of S.D.S. and Its Relevance to Today's Activists. Electronic Worker. Direct Action Tendency, Socialist Party USA. Retrieved April 12, 2005.
* Bailey, Geoff. "The Rise and Fall of SDS Archived 2010-02-21 at the Wayback Machine." 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.
* Setting The Record Straight: Progressive Labor & SDS
* "A Short History of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) and Its Activities in Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)" Series of 12 articles originally published in Challenge-Desafio, biweekly newspaper of The Progressive Labor Party January–July 2007.
* "The Death of SDS", essay by Mark Rudd.
* "Thorne Dreyer: As Port Huron Turns 50,"[permanent dead link‍] an interview with Tom Hayden, The Peace and Justice Resource Center, January 26, 2012.

### SDS publications

[edit]

* Davidson, Carl. Toward a Student Syndicalist Movement or University Reform Revisited. Chicago: Students for a Democratic Society. c. 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, 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, c. 1965. 8 p.
* Olinick, Michael. The Campus Press. Distributed by Students for a Democratic Society for the Liberal Study Group, National Student Association, 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. "The Port Huron Statement." Based on Draft by Tom Hayden, 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. [1969]. 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 [Progressive Labor]. SDS New Left Notes, Vol. 5, No. 15, July 6, 1970 – [?]. Boston, 1970.

### United States Government publications

[edit]

* 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.
* U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Internal Security, Anatomy of a Revolutionary Movement, Students for a Democratic Society, Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1970.

## External links

[edit]

Media related to Students for a Democratic Society at Wikimedia Commons

* 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
* "Shut It Down!". Archived from the original on November 4, 2009. Retrieved May 9, 2009. 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.
* Works by or about Students for a Democratic Society at the Internet Archive
* 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 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. Online guide retrieved April 12, 2005.

* v
* t
* e

Weather Underground

Background|

* Anti-Vietnam War movement
* Counterculture of the 1960s
* New Left (New Communist movement· Maoism)
* Students for a Democratic Society (Revolutionary Youth Movement)
* 1968 Democratic National Convention (riots)
* Flint War Council
* Domestic terrorism in the United States
* Women's Brigade of Weather Underground
* Seattle Weather Collective
* FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives, 1970s
* Bill Clinton pardon controversy
* Bill Ayers 2008 presidential election controversy

Members|

* Jane Alpert
* Bill Ayers
* Kit Bakke
* Alan Berkman
* Silas Bissell
* Kathy Boudin
* Scott Braley
* Judith Alice Clark
* Bernardine Dohrn
* Dianne Donghi
* Elizabeth Ann Duke
* Linda Evans
* Brian Flanagan
* Larry Grathwohl (informant)
* David Gilbert
* Ted Gold
* Phoebe Hirsch
* John Jacobs
* Naomi Jaffe
* Jeff Jones
* Michael Justesen
* Michael Kazin
* Sharon Krebs
* Nancy Kurshan
* Roger Lippman
* Howard Machtinger
* Eric Mann
* Sam Melville
* Mark D. Naison
* Diana Oughton
* Robin Palmer
* Eleanor Raskin
* Jonah Raskin
* Terry Robbins
* Susan Rosenberg
* Robert Roth
* Mark Rudd
* Matthew Steen
* Susan Stern
* Laura Whitehorn
* Cathlyn Platt Wilkerson

Attacks|

* Days of Rage (Weather High School Jailbreaks)
* Greenwich Village townhouse explosion
* Bombing of the National Guard
* Bombing of the Presidio of San Francisco
* Bombing of the Bank of America HQ
* Timothy Leary escape from California Men's Colony
* Bombing of Marin County Courthouse
* Bombing at Harvard University
* Bombing of the United States Capitol
* Bombings of the Office of California Prisons
* Bombing of the New York Department of Corrections
* Bombing of the Pentagon
* Brink's robbery
* 1983 United States Senate bombing (Resistance Conspiracy case)

Derivatives|

* Prairie Fire Organizing Committee (May 19th Communist Organization)

Associates|

* Seattle Liberation Front (Michael Lerner)

Media|

* The Weather Underground
* Katherine
* Underground
* The Company You Keep
* American Pastoral
* Osawatomie
* Mother Right
* Fugitive Days
* The Anarchist
* Columbus Free Press

See also|

* Protests of 1968
* Communist terrorism
* Yippies
* Rainbow Coalition
* John Brown Anti-Klan Committee
* Michael Klonsky and Communist Party (Marxist–Leninist)
* Tate–LaBianca murders (Charles Manson)
* Attica Prison riot
* Bob Dylan's Subterranean Homesick Blues
* Black Power movement
* Jewish left
* Student activism
* White privilege theory (Critical race theory)
* COINTELPRO

* v
* t
* e

Youth empowerment

Elements|

* Evolving capacities
* Free-range parenting
* Future generations
* Intergenerational equity
* Leaving the nest
* Student voice
* Youth-adult partnership
* Youth mainstreaming
* Youth rights
* Youth voice

Types|

* Anarchistic free school
* Community youth development
* Democratic education
* Popular education
* Positive youth development
* Student activism
* Student-centered learning
* Student rights
* Teen court
* Youth activism
* Youth council
* Youth engagement
* Youth leadership
* Youth-led media
* Youth organizations
* Youth participation
* Youth philanthropy
* Youth politics
* Youth service
* Youth suffrage
* Youth vote
* Youth work

Barriers|

* Adultcentrism
* Adultism
* Age restrictions
* Ageism
* Control freak
* Eleutherophobia
* Ephebiphobia
* Fear of children
* Gerontocracy
* Grounding
* Helicopter parent
* Infantilization
* Intrusiveness
* Narcissism
* Parental respect
* Paternalism
* Patriarchy
* School-to-prison pipeline
* Vicariousness
* Youth control complex
* Youth exclusion

Related topics|

* Age of candidacy
* Age-of-consent reform
* Age of criminal responsibility
* Beat Generation
* Beatnik
* The Catcher in the Rye
* Counterculture of the 1960s
* Greaser
* Hippies
* Hungry generation
* International Youth Year
* LGBTQ student movement
* Subcultures of the 1950s
* Taking Children Seriously
* The Teenage Liberation Handbook
* Teenage rebellion
* UK underground
* Voting age

* Index of youth rights–related articles

* v
* t
* e

Anti-war and peace movement

Peace advocates|

* Anti-nuclear organizations
* Anti-war movement
* Anti-war organizations
* Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions
* Coalition of Women for Peace
* Code Pink
* Conscientious objectors
* Counterculture
* Culture of Peace
* ECOPEACE Party
* Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp
* Iraq War resisters in Canada
* List of pacifist organisations
* List of peace activists
* New Socialist Party of Japan
* Pacifist Socialist Party
* Peace and conflict studies
* Peace camp
* Peace churches
* Peace commission
* Peace conference
* Peace congress
* Peace education
* Peace movement
* Peace psychology
* Peace treaty
* Peaceworker
* React, Include, Recycle
* Social Democratic Party (Japan)
* Unity
* The Women's Peace Crusade
* War resisters
* Women's International League for Peace and Freedom

Ideologies|

* Ahimsa
* Anarchism
* Anarcho-pacifism
* Anarcho-punks
* Christian anarchism
* Anti-imperialism
* Anti-nuclear movement
* Antimilitarism
* Appeasement
* Christian pacifism
* Deterrence theory
* Direct action
* Finvenkismo
* Green politics
* Hippie
* Isolationism
* Modern-war pacifism
* Non-interventionism
* Nonkilling
* Nonviolence
* Pacificism
* Pacifism
* Peace
* Satyagraha
* Soviet influence on the peace movement
* Testimony of peace
* World peace

Media and cultural|

* Art
* Books
* Concert Yutel for Peace
* Dances of Universal Peace
* Festival for Peace
* Films
* Imagine Piano Peace Project
* International Day of Non-Violence
* International Day of Peace
* Dialogue Among Civilizations
* List of peace prizes
* List of places named Peace
* Monuments and memorials
* Mother's Day Proclamation
* Nobel Peace Prize Concert
* Museums
* Peace & Love (festival)
* Peace journalism
* Peace News
* Promoting Enduring Peace
* Peace One Day
* Plays
* Promoting Enduring Peace
* Show of Peace Concert
* Songs
* Symbols
* The Non-Violence Project
* University for Peace
* World Peace Bell Association
* Japanese Peace Bell
* Women in Black
* World March for Peace and Nonviolence

Slogans and tactics|

* Bed-in
* Central Park be-ins
* Civil disobedience
* Conflict resolution
* Counter-recruitment
* De-escalation
* Demilitarisation
* Department of Peace
* Desertion
* Draft evasion
* Die-in
* Economic sanctions
* Flower power
* Global Day of Action on Military Spending
* Human Be-In
* Lesson of Munich
* "Make love, not war"
* Non-aggression principle
* Nonviolent resistance
* Non Violent Resistance (psychological intervention)
* Peace walk
* Peacebuilding
* Refusal to serve in the Israel Defense Forces
* "Soldiers are murderers"
* Swords to ploughshares
* Teach-in
* "The whole world is watching"
* Third Party Non-violent Intervention
* "Turn the other cheek"
* "Violence begets violence"
* War tax resisters

Opposition to specific
wars or their aspects|

* War of 1812 (UK; US)
* American Civil War
* Second Boer War
* World War I
* World War II
* Vietnam War
* list of protests
* War on Terror
* Iraq War
* Criticism
* Protests
* Afghanistan War
* Military action in Iran
* Sri Lankan Civil War
* 2011 intervention in Libya
* Anti-war protests in Russia (2014)
* 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine
* in Russia
* in Russian Far East
* Landmines
* Military taxation
* Nuclear disarmament
* International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons
* Nuclear weapons convention

Countries|

* Canada
* Costa Rica
* Germany
* Israel
* Japan
* Netherlands
* Spain
* Sudan
* Switzerland
* United Kingdom
* United States
* Peacebuilding in Jammu and Kashmir

* Category

* v
* t
* e

Opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War

Protests
and events|

| General|

* 1960s Berkeley protests
* Central Park be-ins
* Draft evasion in the Vietnam War
* Draft-card burning

|

Before 1967|

* Edmonton aircraft bombing
* 1965 March against the Vietnam War
* Alice Herz, Donald W. Duncan, Norman Morrison, Roger Allen LaPorte 1965 political self-immolations
* Fort Hood Three
* Human Be-In

1967|

* Angry Arts week
* "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence"
* Court-martial of Howard Levy
* April 15, 1967 Anti-Vietnam war demonstrations
* March on the Pentagon
* Flower Power photo
* The Ultimate Confrontation
* Nhat Chi Mai self-immolation

1968|

* 1968 Democratic National Convention protests
* "The whole world is watching"
* Columbia University protests of 1968
* Court-martial of Susan Schnall
* Presidio mutiny

1969|

* Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District
* Bed-in
* Chicago Seven
* Weather High School Jailbreaks
* Days of Rage
* Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam

1970|

* Greenwich Village townhouse explosion
* Free The Army tour
* Kent State shootings
* Fort Lewis Six
* Student strike of 1970
* Hard Hat Riot
* Sterling Hall bombing

1971|

* Winter Soldier Investigation
* 1971 May Day protests
* Clay v. United States
* FTA Show
* Pentagon Papers

People and
organizations|

* Chicago Seven
* Chicano Moratorium
* Concerned Officers Movement
* Donald W. Duncan
* Fifth Avenue Vietnam Peace Parade Committee
* Fort Hood Three
* GI's Against Fascism
* G.I. coffeehouses
* Intrepid Four
* Movement for a Democratic Military
* National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam
* Pacific Counseling Service
* Stop Our Ship (SOS)
* Students for a Democratic Society
* Terry Whitmore
* The Newsreel
* United States Servicemen's Fund
* Vietnam Veterans Against the War
* Weather Underground
* Yippies

Related|

* Counterculture of the 1960s
* Anti-war movement
* Protests of 1968
* Vietnam stab-in-the-back myth

* v
* t
* e

American New Left

Organizations and
movements|

| General|

* Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee
* Diggers
* Free Speech Movement
* George Jackson Brigade
* Maoist Internationalist Movement
* New Communist movement
* Peace and Freedom Party
* Progressive Labor Party
* Rainbow Coalition
* Red Guard Party
* SLATE
* Symbionese Liberation Army
* Up Against the Wall Motherfucker
* United Freedom Front
* Young Patriots Organization
* Youth International Party ("Yippies")

|

Students for a Democratic Society|

* New American Movement
* Revolutionary Youth Movement
* Venceremos Brigade
* Weather Underground
* Worker Student Alliance

Ethnic movements|

* American Indian Movement
* Antonio Maceo Brigade
* Black Liberation Army
* Black Liberators
* Black Panther Party
* Brown Berets
* I Wor Kuen
* Revolutionary Action Movement
* Sojourner Truth Organization
* White Panther Party
* Young Lords

People|

| Influences|

* Theodor W. Adorno
* Murray Bookchin
* Noam Chomsky
* Erich Fromm
* Paul Goodman
* Che Guevara
* Herbert Marcuse
* C. Wright Mills
* Ho Chi Minh
* Raymond Williams
* Erik Olin Wright
* Malcolm X
* Mao Zedong

|

Activists|

* Saul Alinsky
* Bob Avakian
* Bill Ayers
* Bernardine Dohrn
* David Gilbert
* Ted Gold
* Tom Hayden
* Abbie Hoffman
* John Jacobs
* Huey P. Newton
* Terry Robbins
* Jerry Rubin
* Bobby Seale

Publications|

* Berkeley Tribe
* Dissent
* Liberated Barracks
* National Guardian
* The Newsreel
* Radical America
* Ramparts
* Telos

Authority control databases

International|

* ISNI
* VIAF

National|

* United States
* France
* BnF data
* Czech Republic
* Norway
* Israel

Other|

* IdRef
* SNAC

*[c.]: circa
*[v]: View this template
*[t]: Discuss this template
*[e]: Edit this template