Documents from the SDS Northeast Regional Conference Brown University, Providence, RI - April 2006 | |
SDS Northeast Conference Report - The View From New Yorkby Thomas Good On the road I drove up to Providence with a bad head cold, a comrade from Bergen County SDS (Northern New Jersey), a trunk full of agit-prop and a growing sense of being involved something truly historic. I was excited about finally meeting Paul Buhle face to face - we had exchanged hundreds of emails and many phone calls since January when Paul joined the fledgling new SDS. I was concerned about Alan driving all the way from Ann Arbor and curious if Bernardine would really come: her appearance at the conference was the final sentence, almost an after thought, in Bert Garskof's press release. I was cautiously optimistic that we were going to experience something magical but as one of the organizers I shared Paul's anxiety - inevitable when the responsibility for any shortcomings falls partly on your shoulders. Of course, the event went flawlessly and Sunday, April 23 was a great day for SDS - for all of the members - past, present and future - of our truly beloved community. After leaving NYC I stopped in North Jersey to pick my comrade Doug Viehmeyer up at his place. As Doug threw his gear into the trunk of my Toyota I taped a big SDS poster to the inside of my rear window. Flying my middleaged freak flag I suppose...with that we were off.
A Great Day for SDS I polished my speech in the morning and headed over to the campus green around 10:15. Senia was already there and I ran into Brian Kelly of Pace SDS in the hallway of the Salomon Center. Brian gave me a hand schlepping my sds agit-prop into Salomon and before long we had the sds table all setup. Hearing a familiar voice I crossed the hall and said: "Hey buddy, I need an inscription on my copy of Wobblies". Paul laughed but eventually realized I was serious. I get that way occasionally. Very occasionally. We laughed about shared anxieties about the event but even as we chatted, laying out the freebie items on the sds table, the hall got loud as attendees rolled in. The Providence IWW setup a table, as did the Hartford based Clash Collective, Clay Colt, Max from Left Turn, the Rosenberg Fund for Children and a Trotskyist group called the Workers International League (we felt their table seemed really lonely as it got few visitors and was so much smaller than the others - the lit was setup on a TV table)...
My Remarks I followed Alana on the speakers' list and gave a report back on all that had transpired since Pat Korte, the Stonington Connecticut high school student who dreamt of a reborn sds, first contacted me...Pat contacted me in early December, a month later Paul came on board and on MLK Jr day (January 16th) we issued a call for a national organization. 3 months after the call we had gone from 3 chapters (Salve, Stonington, CT and Chapel Hill, NC) to 90 chapters with over 650 members joining at the national level and scores more joining at the chapter level. I also spoke about what the new SDS looked like today: 1 official website; 1 "very unofficial" organ - Next Left Notes; and 2 working groups: Movement for a Democratic Society for post grads and Radicals In The Professions for social workers, teachers, programmers, etc. I appealed for support for our newest initiative: the sds Legal Defense working group that Jim DeMaegt (LA SDS) and I had started. I asked for any attorneys, paralegals and legal observers in the audience to seek me out later explaining that we can't ask our people to risk arrest if we don't offer them any support. I noticed a fair number of comrades nodding in assent, including a woman sitting to the right of Alan - I squinted (old age!) and realized it was Bernardine (herself an attorney - and a founder of the Blum Legal Clinic in Chicago)... I smiled - Bert had nailed down the travel arrangements after all! Shifting gears I outlined all that has happened in the streets since we reformed as I am just astounded by this:
Pat Korte and the Chapter Report Backs Pat Korte spoke after I finished and he was excellent: discussing the need for a student powered, anti-authoritarian organization predicated on the struggle for radical democracy. Pat began by reading from the SDS membership card and concluded with a stanza from the Port Huron Statement. The sense of continuity, the continuation of the sds project, was palpable. No mere nostalgia trip here.
The next segment of the conference was facilitated by Liz Sperber, who is technically a Brown University student but we claim her as a New Yorker since she hails from Brooklyn. She facilitated a go round of chapter reps, each of whom took the podium to describe what was happening on their respective campuses. The sheer volume of speakers was impressive of itself: Davey Vacek of Pratt SDS; Daniel Meltzer of Connecticut College Left (SDS); Josh Russel and other students from the Brandeis Radical Student Alliance (now an SDS chapter); Rob Korobkin of Haverford College SDS; John Cronan of Pace SDS (New York); Leijia Hanrahan of New School SDS; members of Rhode Island College SDS; Drew Hannon of the Boston Metro Chapter; Matt McLaughlin from the Clash Collective (Hartford); Justin Jackson from Western Mass SDS (Amherst); Mike da Cruz and other students from McGill in Montreal, and; Michael Gould from Harvard SDS. Max Uhlenbeck from Left Turn and the War Resisters League also spoke on the subject of "Sir, No Sir" a film the WRL is promoting for its anti-militarism content. Keynote Speakers After the chapter reports concluded we took a break. During the break I tabled and a tall, thin fellow came over to buy an sds badge. As he pinned it on he said: "Hi, I'm Carl Oglesby..." We shook hands and I spoke to Carl briefly about his book on JFK, which for my money is the best of all of the assassination works especially as it includes a chronology of CIA misdeeds as its final chapter. Of the JFK murder Carl said: "It's an issue that seems to have been forgotten again"... After the break Bert Garskof, formerly an SDS faculty advisor at Michigan State University, introduced the keynote speakers. Bob Ross, a founding member of SDS, spoke at length about the pluses and minuses of SDS history and in so doing made some unfortunate comments that too easily lent themselves to interpretation as sectarian. I was probably more dismayed by the shots he took at Weather than the suggestion that practitioners of civil disobedience think the ONLY form of resistance is risking arrest. (If someone opposes CD on whatever grounds my answer is simple: don't do it but don't sit in judgement of those who use this tactic). It was my concern that the attacks on Weather would produce some factional backbiting at the conference. Fortunately this did not happen. It should be noted that Bob Ross' commentary included some great stuff about fighting sweatshops and this is what I chose to take away from his talk.
Bernardine Dohrn took the podium following an introduction from Bert Garskof. A class act, she did not respond to Bob Ross' comments and focused on the future of the new SDS. As eloquent as ever, she spoke of the need to learn from the past and keep SDS an anti-authoritarian organization. She spoke, as she often does, about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr and his "three great evils": racism, militarism and materialism - all of which must be combatted by today's activist. In her remarks she mentioned how much she enjoyed hearing about what SDS is doing today, in New York and elsewhere, and thanked the assembled activists for allowing her to be a part of this activism.
Carl Oglesby was also very gracious and spoke movingly about the loss he endured with the tragic deaths of Diana Oughton, Ted Gold and Terry Robbins - his "bosom friend" - in the Townhouse disaster. Carl personified dedication to the struggle and in his concluding remarks he expressed how fighting for justice leaves no room in one's life for ordinary comforts and any sort of predictable, planned existence. Nonetheless, he argued, one must seek out this chaos, this unordered existence, if there is to be any hope of a just, peaceful society. His fiery, defiant tone roused the audience and he left the stage to a sustained, standing ovation.
Ambre Ivol, a one time student of Paul Buhle who is now writing her thesis on Howard Zinn, spoke next about the French Students' Movement and the recent victory over the Government's attempt to make workers under 26 second class citizens (the First Employment Contract or CPE that SDS New York protested against). Ambre mentioned that the immigrants' rights marches in the US actually dwarfed the student resistance in France and this should give activists here hope.
Brian Kelly and Lauren Giaccone, of Pace SDS, spoke next - in turn - about: the ongoing free speech struggles at Pace where they were both harrassed by Secret Service after heckling Bill Clinton ("We must be doing something right" said Lauren); their facing expulsion (the charges were dropped after several protests at the Pace campus); the administration's continued refusal to recognize SDS as campus organization, and; the Pace bosses refusal to allow any students to flier without approving the fliers first. The struggle continues, said Brian who was recently charged again with the crime of fliering - this time for handing out fliers that stated "You have the right to hand out fliers". Although not approved by Pace administration the fliers were "approved by SDS" after Lauren obtained a rubber stamp so that SDS could approve their own materials. Brian and Lauren vowed to continue the fight to make Pace a "Free University In A Free Society".
Paul Buhle returned to the podium to introduce Senia Barragan, a Brown student and one of the event organizers. Senia, an SDS member, is also a Wobbly and she spoke convincingly of the need for SDSers to embrace the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) as the only union that would organize ALL workers: undocumented as well as documented. She spoke about the struggle for immigrant rights in Providence - something the IWW has taken up and an issue that SDS must embrace.
Alan Haber spoke at length about the need to avoid the pundits attempts to convert an organization of fighters into an historical artifact. He spoke, with a great deal of love and laughter, of the need to re-member SDS as our society desperately needs activists willing and able to "kick the ass of the ruling class" - a phrase that Alan illustrated with a sharp kick from the podium. Speaking on the evil of patriarchy, Alan exhibited the wisdom that has made him a beloved figure in the SDS community. Among the many gems offered us that day was the idea that SDS is a community of activists of all ages...the initial S can stand for many things he pointed out: students, seniors, seekers, soldiers and in his case "survivors for a democratic society". Alan stressed that we are not confronting "some liberal democracy gone wrong somehow" but that we are resisting "an emergent fascism".
Ending the keynote segment of the conference, Robbie Meeropol spoke about the Rosenberg Fund for Children, a wonderful organization that provides assistance to children of politically targeted activists and activists themselves who are targeted by the government. Robbie pointed out that SDS applications for assistance would be looked on very favorably as our organization is in the trenches.
A short break was called and I adjourned to the SDS table where I worked while the student activists discussed "theory and practice of participatory democracy", "sds and electoral politics", "goals of sds" and "how to organize a national structure" in individual workshops. During the workshops I heard occasional applause coming from the break out rooms and on breaks organizers who stopped at the sds table spoke about their accomplishments in positive tones - particularly about the new SDS resolution, passed unanimously, to support the general strike called for May Day. The workshops ended, attendees returned to the auditorium for closing remarks and I began to break down our table. Seeing Bernardine leaving to catch her plane back to Chicago I took the opportunity to speak with her, thanking her for coming and mentioning that one of my favorite quotes is something she said at NCOR in 2005: we must "be certain enough to doubt and to act". As we were talking Jim Russell came over and first iteration SDSer James Williamson said that Jim had an anecdote that would interest me, as editor of Next Left Notes: Jim had been the first editor of New Left Notes. He described the struggle to find a better name for the (then) SDS Bulletin. "We could legitimately claim the phase 'New Left'", he said, "but New Left Review was already taken". "I was reading Dostoevsky at the time...", he began and Bernardine completed the thought with a smile: "Notes from the underground!", she said. Jim smiled and nodded.
I was pleased to issue Jim a new SDS membership card as he showed me some of his sds button collection which he carries with him on suitable occasions. As we spoke things broke up and some very fired up SDSers began to filter out. It was hugs all around for many first iteration SDS (and "MDS types" like me)...my last hug of the day came from brother Alan Haber who can only be described as a gentle soul and fierce spiritual warrior. I traveled home somewhat stunned at what a great day for sds I had just witnessed. My comrade Doug agreed that it would take awhile for the reality of all that had transpired to sink in. Meanwhile, the thought of an upcoming street action, the April 29th anti-war march in New York City in which SDS will field a contingent, brought a broad grin to this activist's mug who came away from an amazing conference ready to renew the struggle. |
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