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SDS Conventions, Past and Future
By Paul Buhle
SDS National Convention 2006 - Illustration by Geoff White, SDS Tucson
Like any SDS loyalist who joined in the middle 1960s or later, I've always regretting missing the Port Huron Convention. Heck, I was only 17 and didn't hear about the organization for three more years. Port Huron, in its collective insight drawn from experiences in the civil rights movement, from campus involvements and from a widening perspective on American life, provided us a document (smoothed and rewritten by Tom Hayden) that is still the best SDS has produced. It remains an inspiration.
Most conventions aren't like that, of course. Political or unpolitical, reformers or 4-H'ers, they are mini-pageants to pump up the base of any organization, give out-of-towners a chance to revel (in the case of the Chamber of Commerce or the AFL, to hit the nearest topless bars), and applaud raucously to leading figures' oration, broken up by spells of entertainment. They aren't democratic, and they make history only when a big faction-fight makes a stink or changes the nature of the particular movement.
The SDS conventions that I attended between 1965 and 1969 were somewhere between this high and these lows. Mostly, they were great for another reason: during workshops and informal meetings, people from across the country got to meet each other, exchange experiences, become pals (yes, sometimes become lovers, even future spouses), and begin to think hard about what it would mean to apply various lessons to their own campuses.
Unlike traditional Marxist parties, Socialist, Communist, Trotskyist, etc., which for more than a century have held extensive pre-convention discussions and preparations for resolutions to be voted upon, the main question for SDS convention organizers has seemed to be, Will there be enough beds and classrooms? Put differently: how many people are coming (since so many students decided at the last moment)? And as today, what are some workshops that could be usefully arranged ahead of time, who will be responsible to run them or at least be on hand, etc.?
In just about all these Marxist movements, as in Democratic or Republican parties, the decisions have been pretty much made in advance, the leadership is set (often by the simple fact that not that many people can take really low salaries and/or live in the city with the National Office) and unless there are several power blocs fighting, things operate smoothly. Too smoothly. Students are always the youth contingent, naturally. If they work hard enough and stay in line, individuals can hope to move upward into senior leadership someday.
SDS is different, but with problems that tend to show themselves at conventions, most clearly in the catastrophic convention of 1969.
The process had been somewhat less than democratic, all along. This is a sensitive point, and rightly so. A hard-pressed National Office, always underfunded and increasingly besieged by the demands of new chapters (not to mention harassed by authorities), looked to its closest contacts, especially those in prestigious chapters or those folks who had dropped out and became full-timers at regional offices or as travelers. A caucus set out the leadership slate for the next year. Ordinary chapter people like me never got invited to these meetings, although like everyone else at the convention, we could vote on their choices, i.e., between a couple of alternatives, sometimes marking a difference in personality and approach, sometimes more. "Big Resolutions," likewise voted on, tended to get longer, more complicated, and more argued about, the more SDS was ridden with factions and personality clashes. These arguments vividly demonstrated our movement weak points to anyone who was watching, because the details argued about weren't going to make that much difference after the conventions anyway.
This whole procedure would have been resented more if most local SDSers cared. They didn't. And a considerable majority of students who became very active in SDS never even bothered to join. The convention was also unrepresentative by its nature, because the trek halfway across the country (for all but Midwesterners) demanded a special commitment. Sectarians along with idealists had and no doubt still have that special commitment, and Old SDS should have made some early decision against "bloc voting" by vanguard groups, but encouraging non-voting guests from all manner of student and youth radical organizations.
Are there absolute answers for these structural problems (or for that matter, did they lead to the collapse of SDS in the first place)? I don't know and I am skeptical about formulaic solutions, although suggestions of all kinds are always in order and may be tremendously useful. Often the best suggestions come from SDS chapters trying to work out practical problems.
So, folks: come to Chicago, have a great time, don't drink as much as I did at night because hangovers can ruin morning workshops; flirt if you want to but try to save most of it for social hours; and most of all, don't be afraid to assert yourselves. You, at the local level, are the most important part of New SDS. In the deepest sense, you are also the brains, because you will see what works.
I had gripes before, during and after SDS conventions. But they offered some of the most exciting and inspiring moments of my political (or any other) life. They made me realize that we weren't alone in our local chapters, weak or strong, and that young people really can change the world.
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