Students For a Democratic Society - An Update

The New Students for a Democratic Society is a paradox. It benefits from a huge name appeal that is attracting a considerable number of new people and groups, but it also hurts from nasty organizational in-fighting and from a lack of structure.

This past summer, the new SDS held its first national conference. However, they chose to not develop a national structure or values - leaving that up for the next national conference (which I expect in the summer of 2007, or perhaps that fall). In the mean time, SDS has organized several regional conferences.

For instance, the SDS 2007 Northeast Regional Conference sounds particularly impressive according to Thomas Good's account. Getting 90 people from around 20 chapters is impressive for a new organization without a budget or staff. Particularly if these chapters actually hold regular meetings and aren't just paper chapters. It's also impressive that groups are starting with the SDS name.

This weekend there was a high school SDS conference at Haverford (outside of Philadelphia), and there has also been a SDS conference in Nov 2006 in the Northwest. Another SDS conference is planned for the Mid-East in April.

If SDS continues to organize regular regional conferences and chapters are active in starting and winning local campaigns (not just getting arrested doing direct action - which one of the temptations facing new SDSers), then it should have an excellent basis for starting a more structured national organization at a founding conference and having some staying power. Having regular national conference calls to build community and start discussion on organizational and campaign issues would be Extremely Helpful. United Students Against Sweatshops was able to do very well in its initial year or so without any office or full-time staff, using regular conference calls and the email list.

On the other hand, SDS faces a large amount of historical baggage. The new organization has large differences from the old. Student politics (and politics in general) are dramatically different. I presume the new SDS is going to be a mixture of progressives, radicals, anarchists, greens, and democratic socialists. There will be some more Leninist and Trotskyite members, and possibly some very nasty and unecessary fights over finer points of political philosophy, but I suspect that these more old left groups will fare very poorly. Particularly so long as the largest traditional left student organization, the International Socialist Organization (trotskyite), remains so committed and involved in supporting the Campus Anti-War Network.

So hopefully the SDS will be able to stay out of tricky issues like Democrats versus Greens in electoral politics and manage a broad left coalition that includes everyone from the liberal democrats to greens, socialists, anarchists, and trotskyites.

SDS is likely to be racked with historical debates over quaint issues like The Weatherman, however some of these issues should be seen through modern eyes. It is one thing to advocate for violent revolution in 1970 (much greater chance of success, even though in historical retrospect it was a stupid idea), it is another to do it today. I don't know anyone in SDS that advocates Weatherman type tactics today.

Perhaps the greatest problem SDS faces is the actions of several people that have led to personal and organizational conflict. People need to learn how to communicate without offending each other and to build trust, instead of tearing each other down. The levels of conflict have almost killed SDS. The level of conflict was so bad that Alan Haber, original SDS leader and active in founding the new SDS, felt obliged to provide a balanced view of the conflict in an must-read email.

I'm hoping that a lot of conflict is centered among the older people who are active in Movement for a Democratic Society (the new older wing of Students for a Democratic Society, for non-students) and that SDS will be sheltered from it.

The conflict got to the point where a significant part of SDS passed a resolution critiquing the actions of several members, and at the end of the resolution actually told them to "Fuck off". That's a terrible way of building an organization.

MDS recently had a founding meeting in New York City. I'm glad to see that it attracted a decent audience and that they got a new board, replacing the MDS board members who had been involved and responsible for causing organizational conflict.

My Recommendations for SDS
1. Civil email list discussion. Email lists should be moderated by good-willed neutral people who aren't on any side of a SDS conflict. The moderators should apply simple rules to first give people a warning and, if necessary, remove them for any personal attack or expression of non-progressive values (eg racism, sexism, militarism, conservativism, etc), or for excessively posting. Having an unmoderated list for people who want that could be done too (though personally I'd urge people not to join that list).

2. Regular conference calls. However the tricky part is to have conference calls that aren't just organizational bickering. So either having general campus report backs, so people can follow what is going on with each others' chapters, or campaign-specific calls (ex. an anti-war call). Having conference calls to plan regional and national conferences is a good idea too.

3. Regional conferences. Good work. Keep them up.

4. A national conference. Draw up basic organizational principles and a coordinating committee with limited powers.

5. A coordinating committee.
The goal of the coordinating committee would be to run things like the website, email lists, help organize conferences, organize conference calls, develop/promote materials, and possibly raise and spend money. So long as SDS doesn't have any money or paid staff, the role of the coordinating committee is likely to be very limited.

6. Principles.
I think one or two or three small groups of people should develop proposals for SDS organizational basic principles. I'd keep things broad to provide chapters a significant degree of autonomy.

I suggest that using the Student Environmental Action Coalition's list of organizational principles would be a good starting point:

1. Fight environmental degradation.
2. Recognize the impact of the environment on human individuals and communities.
3. Support human rights
4. Support animal rights
5. Demand corporate responsibility
6. Fight class inequalities
7. Fight racism
8. Fight sexism
9. Fight homophobia and heterosexism
10. Fight imperialism and militarism
11. Have a diverse membership
12. Develop an activist rather than a volunteer approach.
13. Link our issues to local, community concerns.
14. SEAC National exists to empower the grassroots through training and education. We view national campaigns as one of the tools to accomplish these goals.

I'd rearrange the list to not have environmental issues first. You might want to drop animal rights. Using more positive language would be nice (eg women's liberation instead of fighting sexism), but not critical. I'd suggest adding a principle about "Promoting Grassroots Democracy" (or Participatory Democracy").

A mission statement isn't necessary as these organizational principles cover it. Though you can write a relatively short one if you want. Don't write a new Port Huron Statement - that'd be a massive waste of time. Win a campaign first and then write from experience.

Organizations can get mired down in figuring out structure. SDS is more likely to have this problem because of its organizational history and its focus on democracy. I hope that new SDSers will recognize that democracy is not an endless meeting. An endless meeting is controlled by those who have privilege (class, race, gender, sexual orientation, etc) and the time to participate. Democracy is about empowering people, and you just need a simple structure that gets the job done. Perhaps the most critical component of empowerment is involving people in fighting and winning campaigns, outside of meetings. Empowering new activists to write leaflets, speak at meetings, speak at rallies, recruit their friends, represent ideas and a represent your organization, take on power elites - and *winning* a campaign (critical so that people don't grow cynical and feel powerless) is more important than having well-run meetings. That said, well-run meetings are critical, but meetings are much easier to run when you are all working on a campaign or two and share a common focus (instead of wondering "what shall we do next week?").

7. Have semi-formalized campaigns. Pick a couple (but not too many) campaigns that chapters are doing. Produce campaign materials, have campaign-specific email lists, organize campaign events (ex. days of action), ensure that you have workshops about the campaign at all your conference, perhaps have a couple travelling campaign organizers, and organize campaign conference calls.