SDS Call to Support and Take Action on March 4th

On March 4th, student groups and others across the country will be taking action to defend the right to education at all levels, from pre-K through 12, adult education, community colleges, to the university level. Budget cuts affect all, but especially the working class and oppressed nationality students that will be hit the hardest by further budget cuts that attack our right to education.

SDS supports the national call to action for actions on March 4th and is calling on all SDS chapters to take up the call to fight back and be a part of the nationwide resistance movement that is saying enough is enough – no more budget cuts on the backs of students and workers!  While this country is continuing to spend millions on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and giving our money to rich bankers, state universities are cutting scholarships for oppressed nationality and working students, and eliminating funding for women’s and cultural centers that focus on Black and Chican@ programming and education.

SDS works for the democratic transformation of education in this country through its national campaign, Student Power for Accessible Education. The goals of this campaign are:

1. Universal, free, equitably-funded schools at all levels
2. Schools run democratically by students, workers, teachers, and the local community
3. Debt cancellation of all student loans
4. Affirmative action and a focus on anti-oppression to end all forms of oppression in our schools and communities

We in SDS call on students across the country to stand up and take action against budget cuts at your university. Protest proposed budget cuts, sit-in at administrator or board of trustee meetings, call for walk-outs, host a teach-in, chalk or table on campus to educate your fellow students. Get out and make your voice heard against budget cuts and for accessible public education.

The national March 4th call states “Why March 4? On October 24, 2009 more than 800 students, workers, and teachers converged at UC Berkeley at the Mobilizing Conference to Save Public Education. This massive meeting brought together representatives from over 100 different schools, unions, and organizations from all across California and from all sectors of public education. After hours of open collective discussion, the participants voted democratically, as their main decision, to call for a Strike and Day of Action on March 4, 2010. All schools, unions and organizations are free to choose their specific demands and tactics — such as strikes, rallies, walkouts, occupations, sit-ins, teach-ins, etc. — as well as the duration of such actions. Let’s make March 4 an historic turning point in the struggle against the cuts, layoffs, fee hikes, and the re-segregation of public education.”

• To get involved, check out www.defendeducation.org

• To learn more about SDS, check out http://www.newsds.org

• To learn more about the SDS Student Power for Accessible Education campaign, email spfae@googlegroups.com for more information

News Bulletin Issue #7

IT’S HERE! …including articles on Collective Liberation, Student Power for Accessible Education and Chapter Reportbacks!
Check it out:

News Bulletin #7

electronic, color, version:
http://terpconnect.umd.edu/~rhayes/newsbulletin7_electronic.pdf

imposed, for printing on 11×17 papers, black and white:
http://terpconnect.umd.edu/~rhayes/newsbulletin7_imposed_for_printing.pdf

—————————————-
Send submissions for the 8th SDS New Bulletin here:

sds.bulletin@gmail.com

6th Issue!

Hey everyone! Sorry this is getting published here so late! Hopefully you’ve all seen this already!

http://newsds.org/bulletinfiles/final_bulletin5.pdf

Generation

by Michael Merriweather

When I look at us
the people that I have known
the writers and the artists
I see a generation
I see the seed
and it blossoms into the bud of a thousand faces
I see a generation
I see the minds
as they break from New Jerusalem into diaspora

Poem

by Alex Niculescu

21st century monster
who rides the rails just before dark

with a warm heart and brittle nails
she welcomes
me, a coiffed stranger,
into her frictionless limbo
the place i call home

On the Streets

Summer in the City by Chloë Briedé
I went to New Jersey a bit cynical. It was about a month before I was scheduled to leave for Taiwan and at best seemed like a nice way to occupy myself before the real adventure started. I also went into it feeling pessimistic about my current situation, watching my Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) chapter fall apart and dreading the inevitably, large amount of effort that it will take to put it back together again. A task that at a large commuter/suitcase school seems more like a chore than something that I would take pleasure in. Going to Summer in the City, sponsored by the Empower Our Neighborhoods (EONS) Campaign and Tent State/SDS at Rutgers, New Brunswick, may not have brighten my outlook when it comes to George Mason but it definitely reminded me, again, why I organize.

Convention

So You Think You Can Convention? by Robin Markle and Alex Grosskurth, Philly SDS

Last summer’s national convention was a milestone for SDS in forming our identity as a national organization; we transformed from a haphazard collection of isolated chapters to a functioning national body. The conference calls to plan the 2007 National Convention were the first time many SDSers had talked to anyone in SDS from outside their state, the first time they had organized with SDSers outside their chapter.

In the process of planning and attending the convention SDSers had a chance to develop leadership and organizing skills together, to make mistakes and learn together, and to share some common experiences that united us as part of a national organization. We learned how to make decisions together, and put our values into practice. We developed a vision for our organization, including defining who we are and what we are building, an approach to collective liberation politics, a respect for local organizing, a commitment to solidarity with workers and communities on the front lines, and our principles of unity. We also defined what makes a member and a chapter, and debated long and hard what an appropriate national structure would be.

Affirmative Action

Midwest Youth Fight for Equal Opportunity:  Report on the battle over affirmative action in Nebraska by Alex Stamm, Nebraskans for Peace/SDS at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln

I view left-of-center politics as basically a double-helix, like a strand of DNA, with the two strands represented by liberals and radicals.  The two have space between them but are connected at many points, sometimes well-connected with stunning effect.  I believe we’ve created exactly such a connection here in Nebraska to oppose an out-of-state initiative effort attempting to change our state’s laws.

Antiwar Resolution

Rutgers Students Pressure New Brunswick City Council & Successfully Pass Antiwar Resolution by Timothy Horras, Tent State University SDS, Rutgers University – New Brunswick, NJ

Members of the New Brunswick City Council were visibly shocked when supporters of three Rutgers students charged for peacefully protesting the Iraq war packed the May 7th City Council meeting, demanding the Council pass a resolution opposing the US occupation of Iraq and supporting city residents working to end the war.
In attendance were students, community members, labor union organizers and peace activists, united in their desire to bring the troops home. Supporters filled the room to capacity, the crowd spilling out into the hallway.

Peace

Am I a Peace Activist by Rascal, Philly SDS

Violent and nonviolent organizing have been butting heads since the dawn of resistance. A question well worth examining, I find myself continually unsure of how to approach this thought. Being involved in a movement challenging the most violent system in existence, I sometimes wonder if we can ever make it out with less blood shed. Not only is the question of tactics for combating this system constantly in the air, but also handling the task of educating others and ourselves about what violence means is enormous. In my experience organizing with other SDSers, I’ve found the continual propelling away from any sort of stereotype about being a hippie, or connected to the movement of the 1960s/70s in any way. Just as many of us have learned by now, I understand that holding a peace sign at a mass anti-war protest does nothing, and that maintaining the mindset that everything we do to affect change must be peaceful to be productive is a myth. The problem is, we are scared. Even worse, who and what we are scared of are only illusions of power, greed, excess, wealth, and repression. I’m tired of being stereotyped as a peace activist, even if in the end I do want a peaceful world, because I understand that what it takes to build an entirely new society free from oppression from the ground up is a lot more than problem-solving conversations and civil disobedience. However, I am still not willing to fight violence with violence myself. Does this make my support of comrades such as the Zapatistas and Anti-Fascist/Anti-Racist activists all around the world contradictory or invalid? Everything holding me back is fear; fear of being hurt, being penalized, being outnumbered, ineffective, fear of being wrong, but recently I’ve realized that what we fear is only scary because we were taught this reality all our lives. Growing up in a wealthy white neighborhood, with conservative parents, I was always told that the law, the state, the politicians and cops, everything encompassed within such things, are to be respected and feared. If we all let go of these seemingly irrational fears, how much further along would our movement be? I’m still a kid, 19 years old, and already afraid of being shit broke, getting arrested, staying in school, having a place to call home. These fears and pressures we are taught to know and feel like the back of our hands are what keep us in the safe little box of hesitant, nonviolent organizing, even when we see other methods working, and even when many of us know those methods can only do so much. None of this means that I do not some day hope for a world free from all forms of violence, it only means that I don’t even understand the real impact of violence, especially while living in a country at war without having ever even felt the affects of it, while I know millions are dying elsewhere. So, when people ask me, ‘Are you a peace activist?’; all I can say is, I am acting, and I want peace, but how far are we willing to reach to achieve that?