Archive for the ‘SDS’ Category

The normalcy bias refers to a mental state (head in the sand) people enter when facing a potential disaster.
It causes people to underestimate both the possibility of a disaster occurring and its possible effects.

This often results in situations where people fail to adequately prepare for a disaster, and on a larger scale, the failure of the government to include the populace in its disaster preparations.

The assumption that is made in the case of the normalcy bias is that since a disaster never has occurred that it never will occur. America will always be America – yeah right.

It also results in the inability of people to cope with a disaster once it occurs. People with a normalcy bias have difficulties reacting to something they have not experienced before. People also tend to interpret warnings in the most optimistic way possible, seizing on any ambiguities to infer a less serious situation.
Possible causes

The normalcy bias may be caused in part by the way the brain processes new data. Research suggests that even when the brain is calm, it takes 8–10 seconds to process new information. Stress slows the process, and when the brain cannot find an acceptable response to a situation, it fixates on a single solution that may or may not be correct. An evolutionary reason for this response could be that paralysis gives an animal a better chance of surviving an attack; predators are less likely to eat prey that isn’t struggling.

Effects
The normalcy bias causes people to drastically underestimate the effects of the disaster.
Therefore, they think that everything will be all right, while information from the radio, television, or neighbors gives them reason to believe there is a risk.
This creates a cognitive dissonance that they then must work to eliminate.
Some manage to eliminate it by refusing to believe new warnings coming in and refusing to evaluate (maintaining the normalcy bias), while others eliminate the dissonance by escaping the danger.

The possibility that some may refuse to evaluate causes significant problems in planning for the future.

Our present disaster is the Obama – Soros (Fabian Socialists) dumbing down of America, Making America a third world country. They are presently behind all the uprising in the middle East. The Fabian Socialists believe the smashing apart the World and rebuilding it in their elite One World Order image. It is easy to pick up their agenda. We write about it every day at our website – www.itmakessenseblog.com It is time to wake up your neighbors and your children.

Sad to say my grown children get their news from the comedy channel, the food channel, the travel channel and believe that somehow the world will stay the same.
Let’s try to get their heads out of Normalcy bias. – The Meister

By Michelle Malkin  •  February 22, 2011 09:36 AM

“To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.” – Thomas Jefferson

Since my days as a columnist for the Seattle Times, I’ve profiled courageous public school educators who have challenged the compulsory dues racket of their teachers’ unions. Here’s my 1999 column on how public school teachers in Washington state challenged their union over their political dues power grab. Here are your rights as a union worker. Here is abackgrounder on the permissible use of forced dues. As I wrote onLabor Day last year, free speech not only means the freedom to voice your political views, but also the freedom from being forced to pay for someone else’s. U.S. Supreme Court precedent established by the D.C.-basedNational Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation guarantees the right to full financial disclosure from a union and a right to challenge the figures in court if they disagree.

On Sean Hannity’s Fox News television show last night, one of those brave teachers from the state of Ohio exposed how her union siphoned off her dues ($700 a year) to attack her husband, a GOP state legislative candidate whom the left-wing Ohio Education Association opposed:

“To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.” – Thomas Jefferson

Since my days as a columnist for the Seattle Times, I’ve profiled courageous public school educators who have challenged the compulsory dues racket of their teachers’ unions. Here’s my 1999 column on how public school teachers in Washington state challenged their union over their political dues power grab. Here are your rights as a union worker. Here is abackgrounder on the permissible use of forced dues. As I wrote onLabor Day last year, free speech not only means the freedom to voice your political views, but also the freedom from being forced to pay for someone else’s. U.S. Supreme Court precedent established by the D.C.-basedNational Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation guarantees the right to full financial disclosure from a union and a right to challenge the figures in court if they disagree.

On Sean Hannity’s Fox News television show last night, one of those brave teachers from the state of Ohio exposed how her union siphoned off her dues ($700 a year) to attack her husband, a GOP state legislative candidate whom the left-wing Ohio Education Association opposed:

You’ll recall that I shared Thompson’s plight last October:

I’m Jade Thompson and my husband, Andy Thompson, is running for the Ohio House of Representatives. I am a teacher at Marietta High School. Imagine my chagrin when my friends and colleagues began showing me the awful attack ads against my husband which they had received in the mail. Now imagine my dismay when I saw that those defamatory mailers were paid for by the Ohio Education Association – my teachers’ union. In effect, they are using my union dues to attack my husband! This is a new low, even for the OEA.

There was a recent letter to the editor about AEP withdrawing its support from the Ohio Chamber of Commerce because the chamber made a political endorsement. The writer found it “inappropriate and shameful” for that organization to ignore its members. I wonder if she would say the same for the OEA, an organization that endorses the most liberal candidates in the field and which month after month promotes progressive causes and programs in its member newsletter. Are Ohio’s teachers that unanimously liberal or does our union simply not represent our views at all? If teachers are representative of the larger voting public then you would expect that our political views would be just as diverse.

Teachers should be free to spend their hard-earned dollars to contribute to the candidates and causes they actually support. The OEA and its parent organization, the NEA, refuse to acquiesce because they have an obvious agenda. After all, as the general counsel for the NEA once said in federal court, “if you take away payroll deduction, you won’t collect a penny from these people, and it has nothing to do with voluntary or involuntary. I think it has to do with the nature of the beast, and the beasts who are our teachers … (They) simply don’t come up with the money regardless of the purpose.” Teachers, this is what your union thinks of you.

Jade Thompson is not alone. Across the country, there are thousands and thousands of teachers disgusted with the monopoly power-tripping of public employee unions whose politics they abhor.

Reader and teacher Mike Bennett of California writes:

Dear Michelle,

I am a public school teacher for the Yucaipa/Calimesa School District in Southern California.

Since November of 2008 I have been trying to get some answers from the California Teachers Association as to how my dues are spent and why they continue to support the Democratic Party and paganistic liberal causes and propositions. I have been promised both responses from the President and Controller of the CTA yet have never received any!

I have continued to complain to my local union president and she keeps forwarding my complaints to the CTA. I have e-mailed the CTA asking what are the salaries of the employees of the CTA?

Again I get no response.

I have just sent a letter of complaint to the state controller (endorsed by the CTA), asking him to investigate the CTA. I don’t know if I will get much help from him either.

I wanted you to know that there are many teachers who do not want their money funneled from their check to support causes they are diametrically opposed to.

Reader and teacher Sondra Barnes shared her letter to Wisconsin GOP Gov. Scott Walker:

Dear Gov. Walker:

I am so sorry you are getting pounded by those teachers, students and unions. As a teacher in California, I got into trouble with the unions myself when I only asked a simple question.

I repeatedly tell everybody I know that they are crazy to give any more money to education/teachers/teacher’s unions. Here in Los Angeles, all we do is throw money at education and here we are at the bottom in the country. We only graduate 40% of our high school students and they can’t even read, do not know history or math, and more importantly cannot do any critical thinking.

What I see in the Los Angeles classrooms is pretty much just ideological brainwashing by a huge majority of their teachers– and yes, teaching their students to protest and to march. In my humble opinion, this is child abuse.

Please stand strong and do not let these union thugs beat you down. So many of us stand behind you.

Sondra Barnes, Van Nuys, CA

I saw a political cartoon today that has Patrick Henry saying, “Give me liberty or give me civility.” The apparent point being that civility is a limit on liberty. There is a saying that people in the old west tended to be rather polite, because everybody was armed; to the degree that is true, people voluntarily limited the offensiveness of their speech as a matter of prudence. The reality is that anything that governs any action is a limit on liberty, which is why the Founding Fathers held the idea of limited government as a basic tenet of the foundation of our republic.

There is a balance that should be maintained between complete freedom to say and behave in any way a person chooses and in civility and polite behavior. Politeness and civility come from a person’s upbringing and the social culture of society.

When I was a child, in the 1950’s, society was considerably more polite than it is today, not only in speech, but in grooming, dress, and general behavior. Men were careful of their personal appearance, were chivalrous, tipping their hats (everyone wore a hat), stepping aside to allow others to pass on the sidewalk, holding doors for women, children, and the elderly, and watching their language in public.

The big change to this came from the younger members of my generation in the late sixties and seventies. Inspired by left-leaning professors, it started with college students who refused to honor the draft, developed into opposition to the Viet Nam war; running counter to traditional patriotic support of our soldiers during time of war. This bloomed into the hippy era, drug culture, free love, abortion rights, women’s rights, environmentalism, and a general anti-establishment philosophy. They rose up in a mass rebellion against pretty much every social and moral more of the time.

From the close of World War II, the Soviet Union was very actively working to foment this type of unrest through agents and contacts in the American Communist Party, the Socialist Party, labor unions, the universities, and the media. These have elevated extremism to mainstream politics via left wing groups from followers of Alinsky, SDS, Acorn, and various other “community organizations” and radical groups.

The McCarthy hearings of the early fifties identified some of this activity, but concentrated most on the film industry, where they were fairly successful in disarming that propaganda effort. The irony of the Soviet success in placing socialist plants and creating civil unrest was that, while they ended up succeeding beyond their original hope, it did not cause a push for Soviet style communism, but instead a push toward greater liberty; almost, but not quite, an anarchy type of freedom.

There were some very good things that came from all this. Freedom of speech and expression were given a greater emphasis than ever before. Women gained equality in the workplace and a greater say in the political and civic arena. Citizens became openly hostile toward public corruption and cronyism. Industrial pollution and toxic waste has been reduced by probably 90%.

Business has been changed from the type X labor/management conflict model to a more win/win approach. Families have switched from a rigid patriarchal style, to more of a partnership with greater parental involvement with children. All these are examples of the good that came out of this period of unrest.

However, there were almost an equal number of bad things that came from this period; it was a sort of a “throwing the baby out with the bathwater” situation. The polite civility of our parent’s generation didn’t completely disappear, but it was badly damaged and greatly reduced.

The use of slang, poor grammar, and of aggressive, offensive, and threatening language greatly increased. Self-discipline and personal accountability have been replaced with selfish hedonism and victimization. The concept of earning respect was replaced with deserving respect. Our children have been raised to believe that competing is bad, and winning isn’t important; everybody deserves the same reward regardless of personal effort and performance.

Political correctness has created a society unable to address differences between cultures, races, or other social distinctions, while at the same time destroying the concept of the American social “melting pot.” We now have Afro-, Hispano-, Asian-, etc. Americans who believe the culture and values of their homeland or racial group is more important than their identity as Americans. We have inadvertently created a new type of segregation.

So in addition to the many good things, the history of the Baby Boomers and their children has created all kinds of bad fall-out. Examples are extremely high rates of birth out of wedlock, huge numbers of abortions, huge numbers of single parent families, widespread use of drugs, illogical environmental and social laws, great loss of heavy industry, tremendous growth in government and the taxes required to support it, and a less civil, more crude society.

A second irony is the left accusing the right of using violent rhetoric when the use of extreme aggressive violent language, hyperbole, rhetoric , and imagery has been an invention and mainstay of the left; they are now accusing a much more mild right, in particular the Tea Party and talk radio, of abusing freedom of speech with excessive use of violent language. For any liberal to make such an accusation is not only ironic, but also hypocritical.

Personally, I would like for people on all sides of the political spectrum to avoid aggressive language and instead endeavor to express their ideas and opposition with more accuracy and less emotion. I don’t think this will really happen, because the left is steeped in the concept of using every crisis to drive an emotional following to a loud attack on their opposition.

I recently stated that I dislike seeing the Republicans “playing nice” with the Democrats; and I definitely feel that way. I think the Republicans need to respect the right of the Democrats to their opinions, but I also think Republicans need to strongly counter those damaging and anti-American ideas.

Modern politics is more clearly than ever aligned between not just conservative and liberal, but right and wrong. The conservatives are simply right, and the liberals are simply wrong, and there is nothing in that to compromise. I would rather see congress unable to ever pass another law than to pass one more law that will hurt our country.

An example of left-wing civility

400 Leftist organizations involved in destroying our country  are marching in the One Nation Rally on Saturday, 10.02.10.

Posted on Wednesday, September 29, 2010 1:13:04 AM by Art in Idaho

Glen Beck had a segment today on the upcoming One Nation rally and described many organizations sponsoring it including communist party usa. I did some research and found on the Communist Party USA site, a link to Political Affairs at the top of the CPUSA home page. Click that and in the middle of the site is a story “March on Washington for Freedom and Jobs”. Click that and you go to a page devoted to the 10.2.10 March on Washington. Then click on One Nation and voila’, you’re at the main One Nation Page. There you can Find a Ride. You can also click the News and Updates Link and click this Link Liberal Groups plan One Nation rally in D.C. There you can click 300 Progressive Groups and you’ll go to Endorsing organizations. At that site it says, wait, not 300 organizations, but 400 organizations: “These are some of the more than 400 organizations, representing tens of thousands of individuals who have endorsed the One Nation Working Together campaign.”

Wait until you see the List. I didn’t know there were so many leftist/marxist/socialist/communist organizations in the United States. Check out the names.

If you got lost in my listed urls, just go Here That’s where The List is. An eye opening experience. Keep in mind I started at the Communist Party USA site and just kept clicking from their site to find the list.

It appears communist are very well organized, must network extensively and have been working infiltration for decades. They are ‘on the march’ as it were. Well, so are we.

We’ve all seen the 1963 congressional record list of the communist goals. A scary list which reveals their decades long struggle to infiltrate, brainwash and eventually take over. Education of Truth is our key. Is the Cold War over? . It never ended.

I hope people go to the rally and document as much as possible. Go in groups and remember these people are brainwashed, unstable but dedicated. If you go, go in small groups and hang tight.

On a personal note, I had 8 people I knew: one family member, close friends, and acquaintances, die in Vietnam. We were told we were fighting communism. We still are. We need to unite and continue this fight or we are going to be overrun from within. This isn’t a college discussion anymore. They are going for total control, and soon. They smell victory. They must be stopped.

The Democrats are showing signs of desperation as Election Day gets closer and closer. They fear that if you and I succeed in repealing the Pelosi Congress in 2010, we will be able to stop President Obama’s and the congressional Democrats’ drive toward bigger government, out-of-control spending and less individual freedom in its tracks.

We both know that America can’t take much more liberal Democrat control of both the White House and Congress. That’s why I’m asking for your support today. Democrats would relish nothing more than to defeat me or, at the very least, keep me tied up with my own campaign so I have less time to help elect other worthy conservative candidates. That’s why your support is so vital to help me prepare for anything the liberals throw against usthis fall.

by Brenda J. Elliott

In his September 21, 2008, article Meet the Movement for a Democratic Society, Trevor Loudon of The New Zeal, wrote:
Movement for a Democratic Society (MDS) held its first national convergence at Loyola University, from November 8 through 11 (2007) with the participation of the newly inspired SDS, Students for a Democratic Society.
RBO, never to let rocks remain unturned for long, poked around here and prodded a bit there and, along the way, came across the MDS Austin website, which helps to fill in some gaps.
In MDS Austin’s report on the Convergence, it is clearly stated that MDS was formed in August 2006 in Chicago, hometown of veteran SDSers Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, Mike Klonsky, Carl Davidson, and Marilyn Katz, to name a few.
In an undated article on The Center for Labor Renewal website, veteran SDSer Paul Buhle wrote (emphasis added):
The new [SDS] organization of several thousand members and perhaps 200 locals, active or seeking to set down roots, is vastly more working class, in the broadest sense, than its precursor. No longer the “Brightest and Best,” it seems to be appealing to the very rungs of the working class struggling to hold their own amid am imperiled empire. How to make the most of this prospect alongside an institutional labor movement seemingly headed ever downward, is a good and valuable question. The role of a vital Movement for a Democratic Society (whose ruling Board includes Jerry Tucker and Bill Fletcher, Jr, but also a host of older, Movement notables like Manning Marable, Angela Davis and Mark Rudd) may be the answer “if we can get it together.”
The MDS – SDS Relationship
The first item on the MDS Austin web page is a statement that describes the relationship between MDS and SDS:
The Movement for a Democratic Society (MDS) is a multi-issue activist organization affiliated with the newly revived [see below] Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). Many of its members are veterans of the New Left in the 60′s and 70′s.
A second mission statement, found among the online pages of the SDS publication The Rag, comes from the March 2007 “MDS Call” signed by Alice Embree and David Hamilton, both of MDS Austin.
Many of us came of age in the sixties, inspired by the activism of that era. Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the largest student organization at that time, was based on a vision of participatory democracy – the radical idea that people should have control over the decisions and resources that affect their lives. A younger generation is organizing SDS chapters on high school and college campuses today. [...]
We hope to build a diverse movement and encourage leadership from all who participate.
RESIST – Movement for a Democratic Society – November 9, 2007
The “newly revived” Students for a Democratic Society
Christopher Phelps wrote April 3, 2007, in Wiretap magazine:
The notion of re-creating SDS was the brainchild of Jessica Rapchik and Pat Korte, high school students in North Carolina and Connecticut, respectively, who met on an antiwar phone hookup in the fall of 2005. Upon discovering their mutual dissatisfaction with the existing left, they hit upon the notion of reviving SDS.
The “newly revived” Students for a Democratic Society was announced January 16, 2006, by veteran SDSers Thomas Good and Paul Buhle and Stonington, Conn., highschool senior Pat Korte in a press release which stated:
Several chapters of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) announced today, Monday, January 16, 2006, their intent to form a national organization and hold the first SDS national convention since 1969. “It seemed appropriate to make this announcement today, on the observed Martin Luther King day”, said SDS regional organizer Thomas Good (right). “We have an anti-war movement that is addressing the issue of stopping the bloodletting in Iraq but the civil rights issue remains unaddressed”, he added. The national convention is scheduled for Summer 2006 and will be preceded by a series of regional conferences occurring on the Memorial Day weekend. [...]
At his request, members of Korte’s informal network of student activists from across the country began contacting Good and very quickly the informal network was replaced by a national structure that now includes a website, discussion forum and mailing list, all of which are now based at studentsforademocraticsociety.org.
The “new” SDS was quickly assisted by veteran SDSers (emphasis added):
Korte, realizing that the original SDS suffered from not having alot of veteran activists, WHO UNDERSTOOD THE IDEA OF STUDENT POWER, reached out to some older activists, including several members of the 1960s era student organization, to help ground the project and provide logistical support.
The first original SDSer to come on board was Alan Haber (left, with Pat Korte), president of SDS 1960-62. [...] Connecting these chapters and their organizers proved less difficult than Korte and Good initially thought. Technology was the key. [...] The new technologies of communication and independent media make this more possible than ever”, said SDS founder Alan Haber. Korte and Good took this advice and ran with it.
As the project coalesced, Good, a member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) contacted labor historian Paul Buhle, co-editor of a graphic history of the IWW (“Wobblies”) and former SDSer from the Madison, Wisconsin, chapter.
Here we have explained the clear line of highschool student anti-war activists who reached out to veteran SDSer Tom Good connected to the creation and expansion of the “new” SDS, which was assisted and supported by veteran SDSers Alan Haber and Paul Buhle, followed by the January 2006 news release. Within a few short months, in August 2006, MDS, a support organization made up of veteran SDSers, emerged to support the “new” SDS.
st National Convention of “new” SDS
Alexander Knight reported September 8, 2006, in ZMag on the first national convention of the “reborn” SDS held August 4 -7, 2006, at the University of Chicago, “attended by an estimated 200 students and activists” from across the country.
Knight wrote:
One person contacted early on who proved to be instrumental to the group’s success was Tom Good, a gray-haired Wobbly who had been too young to join the original SDS. When Tom got on board with the new SDS, he set about creating a website (newsds.org), listserv and other networking tools to bring together SDSers from around the country. The internet proved itself as a “terrific organizing tool,” and the group’s membership exploded. Within six months over 1,000 members had joined SDS via the website, representing 150 chapters around the country. Many of those who initially joined were former members of the original group during the Sixties, while most others were inspired by the group’s history from the Sixties. As Tom put it, “the name recognition [of SDS] is huge.”
Knight emphasized the intergenerational nature of the SDS gathering, as well as the role MDS was playing (emphasis added):
One of the first, most unique features that one notices about the new SDS is its intergenerational character. In every SDS gathering, amidst the students and youth you will find a healthy representation of “first generation SDSers,” friendly people who insist they are not trying to guide or lead the new organization, but are present to provide help and experience whenever necessary. In fact, SDS is organized into two distinct components, the student and youth component, Students for a Democratic Society, and MDS, or Movement for a Democratic Society, which is a vehicle for original SDS members and other non-students. The two groups appear to coexist harmoniously, as the older folks, while providing much-needed financial aid and some lengthy motivational speeches, seemed content to spend most of the convention manning tables and occasionally leading panel discussions, while largely allowing the younger members to be the loudest and most decisive voices. Save a few examples, most members, young and old alike, viewed the intergenerational nature of SDS as a strength.
Once again, we have verification that MDS acts as both mentor and financial support for the “new” SDS.
What about the “new” SDS?
Christopher Phelps added April 3, 2007, in Wiretap magazine that some 1960s SDS veterans like sociologist Todd Gitlin, SDS president from 1963 to 1964, were skeptical: “‘What was often brilliant about SDS,’ he says, ‘was that it was attuned to its moment. It didn’t recycle the Old Left. It was the New Left.’”
Additionally, Phelps wrote:
Race today is not quite the study in black and white that it was in the ’60s. Now as then, there are few African-Americans in SDS, but proportions vary. Of the five who started Wayne State’s chapter in Detroit, two were African-American, one Asian and one Latina, says Carmen Mendoza-King, 21. If SDS is not as heavily white as it was in the ’60s, this is mostly a result of subsequent waves of Asian and Latin American immigration. [...]
SDS is loose, more movement than organization. Anyone can sign up online. The group now claims more than 2,000 members, but it is hard to tell what that means. There are no dues, and therefore no funds, no staff, no office and no national publication apart from the website. The group has no elected national leaders and no basis for national decision-making. Paradoxically, these weaknesses provide some strength. The very elan of SDS is anti-bureaucratic. SDS enables regional and national linkages while preserving local control. Its appeal is that it is self-creating, do-it-yourself, free from centralized discipline or external control.
This explains why SDS displays such variety and vitality at the chapter level.
More on the MDS mission
On August 17, 2007, prior to the first MDS Chicago Convergence to be held in November, Thomas Good wrote in Radical America, the online magazine he and Paul Buhle edit (emphasis added):
The project known as Movement for a Democratic Society has a number of faces. We initially formed to offer support to SDS but we also exist as an activist organization in our own right.
Here, from the pen of one of its members, we have confirmation that MDS was “initially formed” as a support organization for the “new SDS.”
Good, however, expressed dissatisfaction with the coverage the MSM had given to MDS. All that began to change on March 19, 2007, when “a number of MDS activists participated in the Wall Street civil disobedience”:
… three MDS activists were arrested along with 40 other activists. Four days later three more MDS activists were arrested for occupying the office of chickenhawk Congressman Vito Fossella – in an action that involved several organizations working together.
The press coverage, Good wrote, “was excellent.” The campaign was named the “Fossella Five” and, Good added,
MDS remains at the heart of this effort to force Congressman Fossella to meet with peace activists. See fossellafive.org for more about this campaign which is being coordinated by several organizations: Peace Action Staten Island, MDS and World Can’t Wait.
he November 2007 MDS Chicago Convergence
Further down on the MDS Austin website is a lengthy account, including “some impressions” by Thorne Dreyer (left), David Hamilton (center), and Jim Retherford (right), who represented Austin MDS in Chicago.
On the “Positive” side, the trio reported:
It was a great opportunity to network with veteran movement activists. In various workshops we heard from Carl Davidson, Kathy Kelly (Voices for Creative Non-Violence), Bill Ayers, Mark Rudd, Paul Buhle, Penelope and Franklin Rosemont, Mike James, Al Haber, Bob Brown (ex-SNCC) and several others. Most of the above were major figures in sixties SDS. Haber was the co-author of The Port Huron Statement.
On the “down side,” they reported
… there were only about 100 people total participating, mainly from Chicago, but also from NYC, Austin, Baltimore, Florida and a few other places, including several local SDS folks. This reflects organizational infancy. We’re not yet a national organization. That means, like SDS of old, the action will be local and the national affiliation will be largely symbolic, but useful for such purposes as the positives listed above.
Another observation was that
The famed MDS “Board” (Chomsky, et al) is very largely window dressing. Four of them (out of about 50) were there and three of those have full plates in other movement activities that seem to take precedence over building MDS. We can’t say if the board luminaries lack commitment or if MDS hasn’t found appropriate ways to utilize them. If MDS is to develop into an important element in the US left, it will be from the ground up, not from the top down. This is really not a negative so much as a realization, but more national structure and direction should clearly be a goal.
They also provided an overview of the various workshops.
Muhammad Ahmad who had earlier in the day been interviewed by Michael James for Heartland radio did a workshop which centered on the experiences of the Black [Power] Movement in the 60s. In 1968 Ahmad then Max Stanford was in jail facing serious charges. He stayed in jail for a year before his attorney was able to get the charges dismissed. Michael Klonsky, Mark Rudd, Bruce Rubenstein, and Penelope Rosemont discussed the implications for the movement of the persecution of black radicals with Ahmad.
Another, which sounds more like a discussion or a roundtable, included Bill Ayers:
Thomas Good, Bill Ayers , Elaine Brower, Alan Haber, David Hamilton, Devra Morice and others representing New York, Chicago, Austin, Ann Arbor, etc. discussed current forms of popular resistance against the war and then joined by others began a necessary and long needed discussion of the future of MDS.
At yet another session:
Carl Davidson explained the political means of ending the war by cutting the funding to the war budget and urged voting for peace candidates. He also noted there was plenty of room for work on Civil Disobedience, GI resistance, and that a popular upsurge of sentiment against the war was necessary.
Another interesting comment was about Mike Klonsky, a familiar name to regular RBO readers:
Michael Klonsky recounted the first days of his arrival in Chicago as National Secretary of SDS as the West side erupted in flames and fury after the assassination of Martin Luther King. He mentioned that none of us expected to live to see 30. Klonsky has a forthcoming book on those days.
As Paul Buhle wrote at The Center for Labor Renewal blog:
New SDS is mirrored–for those looking in the mirror after their SDS youth and seeing their aging selves–by the Movement for a Democratic Society (MDS). It was a good idea of 1970 that, like so many other good ideas of that year, never actually happened. Not everyone in MDS, an avuncular relative to New SDS, was actually in the old organization. Many a middle aged labor radical can trace a youngster’s background there, along with the civil rights movement, and some, of course, not nearly so radical anymore.

Another perspective – look at it from all angles –The Meister

• Seeks to bring about a “revolutionary transformation” of American society
• Identifies capitalism as the root cause of such evils as “racism and white supremacy,… patriarchy, heterosexism and transphobia, authoritarianism and imperialism”

Founded in January 2006, the “new” Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) derives its name, inspiration, and mission from the original SDS of the 1960s. The new SDS consists of more than 150 chapters based in high schools, colleges, universities, and cities across the United States.

Describing itself as “a radical, multi-issue student and youth organization,” SDS’s goal is to initiate “a broad-based, deep-rooted, and revolutionary transformation” of an American society that currently “depends upon multiple and reciprocal systems of oppression and domination for its survival.” Among those systems, according to SDS, are: “racism and white supremacy, capitalism, patriarchy, heterosexism and transphobia, authoritarianism and imperialism.” Asserting that “another world is possible,” SDS aims to “amplif[y] the voices of oppressed communities and their allies,” and to turn America into a “society of justice-making, solidarity, equality, peace and freedom … a world beyond oppression, beyond domination, beyond war and empire.”

To achieve these objectives, SDS seeks to overhaul school curricula at every level of the education system — and to thereby radically transform the worldview and character of America’s younger generations. Toward this end, the organization “affirm[s] the necessity of Ethnic, Women’s, Queer, and African/a studies departments as correctives to the historical bias of academia.”

Asserting that “[a]ccess to education and higher education … are not privileges but rights,” SDS’s Student Power for Accessible Education campaign advocates “reparations [i.e., affirmative action] for bias in admissions owing to [longstanding] systems of oppression.” According to SDS, every American student should have access to “universal, free, equitably-funded schools at all levels.” As SDS sees things, schools should not be places “of merely getting skills and training for future jobs,” but should provide students with opportunities to engage in activist projects where they “can participate in making our society better.”

Unlike its ideological forebears of the 1960s, the new SDS eschews a militant approach to advancing its revolutionary aims. Rather than engage in unruly street confrontations replete with images of counterculture defiance, SDS members have elected, in the tradition of Saul Alinsky, to “present ourselves and our ideas in a way that captivates the political mainstream, instead of alienating it and marginalizing ourselves.” They view such an approach as the “tactic” or “strategic action” that will best facilitate their quest to “build a million student movement.”

The idea to re-create SDS originated with two high-school students — Jessica Rapchik of North Carolina and Pat Korte of Connecticut — who first met on an antiwar phone hookup in the autumn of 2005. Korte solicited the help of some older activists, including several members of the original SDS, to provide logistical support for the new group. The first original SDSers to answer the call were Alan Haber (who served as president of the group from 1960-62), Thomas Good (who was also a member of the Industrial Workers of the World, or IWW), and Paul Buhle (a labor historian co-edited a history of the IWW). On January 16, 2006, Korte, Good, and Buhle announced the creation of the new SDS in a press release that quoted Good saying: “It seemed appropriate to make this announcement today, on the observed Martin Luther King day. We have an anti-war movement that is addressing the issue of stopping the bloodletting in Iraq but the civil rights issue remains unaddressed.”

The new SDS is “entirely student- and youth-led,” with the vast majority of its members being under the age of 30. Some members are older than that, but they are permitted only to “vote on the chapter level” and “cannot be considered for any positions in SDS other than at [that] level.”

In April 2006, former Weather Underground leader Bernardine Dohrn was invited to speak at the first new SDS conference (held in Providence, Rhode Island), where she received a rousing ovation. Four months later, the first SDS national convention (in Chicago) opened its proceedings with a written greeting from Dohrn.

SDS’s Anti-War Working Group (AWWG) has organized and participated in numerous actions against the Iraq War, against the possibility of a U.S. military strike in Iran, and against military recruitment efforts. By means of leaflet/flyer campaigns and campus demonstrations, AWWG works “against the violent tactics used by the United States government to repress and exploit people around the world.” In a number of its efforts, SDS has worked collaboratively with International ANSWER.

SDS also has set up a number of caucuses and auxiliary groups that work, on behalf of designated victim groups, against “institutional oppression in our society.” Among these entities are the People of Color Caucus, the White Privilege Working Group, the Womyn’s Caucus, the Queer Caucus, the Trans/Genderqueer Caucus, Hetero Allies, the Working Class Caucus, and the Class Privilege Working Group. Moreover, SDS works in favor of expanded rights and amnesty for illegal immigrants.

In August 2007, SDS launched its first National Action Camps in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. These camps featured workshops in such disciplines as: “anti-oppression/collective liberation,” “media skills,” “meeting facilitation,” “direct action,” “organizing basics,” and “campaign strategy.”

SDS receives tactical guidance and financial support from the Movement for a Democratic Society (MDS). Through its MDS connection, SDS is closely tied to such high-profile radicals as Paul Buhle, Noam Chomsky, Carl Davidson, Angela Davis, Bernardine Dohrn, Barbara Ehrenreich, Tom Hayden, Jeff Jones, Marilyn Katz, Michael Klonsky, Manning Marable, Frances Fox Piven, Cornel West, and Howard Zinn.

It is important that you recognize the Communists in our midst and know the danger in what they are teaching our children – the Meister

Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) is a United States Communist student organization representing left wing beliefs. It takes its name and inspiration from the original SDS of the 1960s, the largest radical student organization in US history, but the contemporary SDS is a distinct youth and student-led organization with over 120 chapters world wide
Re-formation
Beginning January 2006, a movement to revive 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, to re-establish a student movement in the United States. Korte did this by contacting Alan Haber. They called for a new generation of SDS, to build a radical Communist multi-issue organization grounded in the principle of participatory democracy in the style of Marxism. Several chapters at various colleges and high schools were subsequently formed. On Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of 2006, these chapters banded together to issue a press release that stated their intentions to reform the national SDS organization. In the press release, the SDS called for the organization’s first national convention since 1969 to be held in the summer of 2006 and to have it preceded by a series of regional conferences occurring during the Memorial Day weekend. These regional conferences would also be the first of their kind since 1969, and on April 23, 2006, SDS held a northeast regional conference at Brown University.
Within its first year and a half, the new SDS has grown to include hundreds of chapters and thousands of members. SDS has built an extensive list of ally organizations, with which it works on issues locally ranging from Worker’s rights to Climate Change. The organization has developed a deep commitment to strategy, mentorship and peer training, which has focused a new generation of student radicals on the fundamentals of movement building and Marxism.
2006
The new SDS has organized and participated in numerous actions against the Iraq War and made clear its opposition to any possible military action against Iran by the US. The Pace University chapter of SDS protested against a speech by Bill Clinton held at the University’s New York City campus, prompting the university to hand over two students, Lauren Giaccone and Brian Kelly, to the United States Secret Service. After the threatened expulsion of the two protesters, Pace SDS began a campaign that helped pressure the President of Pace to resign.
On March 19, 2006, the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq by the US, SDS co-sponsored a march in New York City against the war. Seventeen people were arrested at the Times Square Recruitment Center, including several SDS members. On March 28, 2006, the New School University SDS chapter joined other New York SDSers to support the French students fighting the First Employment Contract and released a statement of solidarity.
Beginning in March and continuing into April and May 2006, SDS chapters across the country participated in a series of actions supporting Immigrant Rights. SDS chapters, such as at Brandeis, Connecticut College, and Harvard coordinated with large coalitions of students to strike and walk out of their classes on May Day.
The newly formed SDS held its first national convention from August 4 to August 7, 2006 at the University of Chicago.

2007
In early March 2007, SDS members and allies in Tacoma, Washington led a blockade of the Port of Tacoma, where the US military was loading Stryker vehicles onto ships to be transported to Iraq. After confrontations every night for a week, the police broke the human blockade through the use of rubber bullets and pepper spray.
On March 12, 2007, one week before the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq by the US, the New School chapter of SDS held a Campus Moratorium against the Iraq War. Students left classes and proceeded down 5th Avenue to the Chambers Street military recruitment center where they met with the Pace University chapter of SDS. The students entered the Recruitment Center, barricaded the door and held a nonviolent sit-in, effectively closing the recruitment center for about two hours. Twenty members of SDS were arrested and charged with criminal trespassing, a misdemeanor.
On March 17, 2007, SDS groups from across the country met and participated in the March on the Pentagon, in which parts of the SDS contingent along with allies occupied a bridge near The Pentagon. Five demonstrators were arrested.
On March 20, 2007, 83 SDS chapters from around the country held coordinated actions against the Iraq war. One such action in the Bay Area shut down the entrance to Chevron’s World Headquarters.
The Summer of 2007 was a critical turning point for SDS as a national organization. First, SDS fielded a large contingent at the first US Social Forum in Atlanta on June 27-July 1. SDS found itself part of a national movement to change the US; at the forum, SDS members gave workshops, demonstrated and formed bonds with members from across the country.
The 2nd SDS National Convention took place from July 27-30, 2007 at Wayne State University in Detroit, MI. Approximately 200 members of SDS attended what was a constitutional convention. The primary focus of the convention was to democratically create a national structure and vision of Marxism and communist ideas for the organization. These goals were achieved, though all decisions made at the convention will be sent back to the SDS chapters for a process of ratification which is currently under way.
The first National SDS Action Camps took place from August 13-16 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The camp was hosted by the Lancaster chapter of SDS. It included anti-oppression/collective liberation trainings, and workshops about a Marxism and Communists ideas – including media skills, meeting facilitation, and direct action. The camp was held in order to provide students with skills needed to become better organizers, and deepen the sophistication of their vision and strategy.
On September 15, 2007, SDS chapters from several colleges across the country (including Ohio, Indiana, Washington D.C., Harrisburg, PA and New York) gathered and marched in the ANSWER coalition march from the White House steps, to the Capitol building. The protest was estimated to include up 80,000 people. At least 150 were arrested, and there was at least one incident where police pepper sprayed protesters.
In early November 2007, SDS members were again present at a similar blockade at the Port of Olympia, Washington. The blockade was broken only after 67 arrests, as well as use of pepper spray, rubber bullets, and other crowd control weapons. A similar confrontation had occurred in May 2006 at the Port of Olympia.
2008
Members and Chapters around the US and Canada participated in a large series of semi-coordinated events and demonstrations between March 17 and March 21 to bring awareness to the 5th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq.
The 2008 National Convention was held in College Park, Maryland. Members at the meeting decided on a national structure: the National Work Committee and a national campaign: Student Power for Accessible Education.
A “Funk the War” demonstration, organized by DC SDS.
In September, SDS chapters from around the country converged on St. Paul, Minnesota to participate in the four days of protests against the Republican National Convention.
Members of Providence SDS took over a board meeting of the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority RIPTA to protest proposed route cuts. The group also argues that the RIPTA board is detached from its riders and doesn’t represent them.
The University of North Texas and several other chapters opened. In 2008, the University of Houston opened a chapter and added to the efforts of immigrant rights actions that Texas Grassroots Leadership had began in 2006 , holding many protests centered around detention centers in Texas, particularly the family detention center T. Don Hutto that incarcerated immigrant mothers with children in Taylor, the center in Raymondville and Houston’s Processing Center who’s in contract with ICE . These efforts across Texas saw a big win when the T. Don Hutto detention center changed its policies and stopped incarcerating children in late 2009. SDS at the University of Houston in Houston, Texas has continued the protests of these detention centers and plans for more in 2010. New efforts in Texas SDS chapters are being made to support the DREAM Act as well as 2010′s May Day.
2009 – 2010
The fourth annual National Convention was held in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, in July 2009.
SDS at the University of Houston also participated in March 4th National Day of Action to Defend Education along with SDS chapters nationwide as well as national anti-war, anti-occupation and Israeli apartheid Week campaigns.
In March of 2010, members of the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee’s chapter of SDS staged a protest outside of the Chancellor’s building. The event, designed to protest rising tuition costs, was met with a police presence. Police began using pepper spray, and arrested sixteen members of the protest.
These students are anti American and very misguided. They believe in Marxism and Communist ideas. Out of SDS came the organization of Acorn and other leftist groups.