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

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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?

Open Letter

Dear SDS members and supporters,

As many of you have heard, three SDS members (Jeremy Miller of UNC-Asheville, and Christine Jackson and Alyse Deller of Tuscaloosa) and Jason Hurd, president of the Asheville chapter of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) were arrested last March after a mock-raid at the University of Alabama.

Hurd was invited down by our chapter to speak about his experiences in occupied Iraq. To advertise for the talk that was scheduled for that evening, our chapter did guerrilla theater in the Student Center, which was meant to dramatize the effects of the U.S. Occupation on the Iraqi people.  The “soldiers” wore Hurd’s which are old military-issued clothes, the “Iraqi civilians” wore kaffiyehs*.  The demonstration was a success, and we left the building as onlookers clapped.

A few minutes later, four of the protesters were surrounded by campus police, and, after being questioned, were taken into an isolated room on campus and interrogated. After four hours with no outside contact, the four were charged with disorderly conduct and hauled away to jail in handcuffs, their bail set to a total of $2,500.