Dick J. Reavis on Mark Rudd's 'Underground,' and the 1969 SDS Split

Bernardine Dohrn, of the Radical Youth Movement faction of SDS -- and later of Weatherman -- addresses the SDS convention in Chicago in 1969, at which the Progressive Labor Party was "expelled." Mark Rudd, author of Underground, is to Dohrn's right.

Within weeks of the collapse of SDS, Rudd, like most of the leadership of RYM, wound up in the bomb-making Weathermen claque. He regrets it: 'Much of what the Weathermen did,' he writes, 'had the opposite effect of what we intended.'

By Dick J. Reavis / The Rag Blog / April 30, 2009

[The Rag Blog has run several articles inspired by Mark Rudd’s new memoir, Underground: My Life with SDS and the Weathermen. Dick J. Reavis adds an interesting element to the discussion: he addresses Rudd’s account of the 1969 split within the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) that led to the formation of Weatherman – and the eventual demise of SDS -- from the perspective of a participant. Links to additional Rag Blog treatment of Rudd’s book follow this article.}

Mark Rudd was the best-known leader of the brief 1968 takeover of Columbia University by its students. He was nationally notorious for a fleeting span of time, and for several years, was on the lam, wanted by the FBI. He has belatedly written a memoir, Underground, which I think deserves a read by all of us who were seriously involved in the Students for a Democratic Society during the group’s waning days.

Rudd’s chief historical contribution, in my view, is a chapter entitled “SDS Split,” his account of the group’s death throes. I have not read all books about the rise and fall of SDS, but I’ve read a few, and Rudd’s work is the first that fully explains what happened there -- in accord with my memory as one who was present, anyway.

Rudd admits that from the podium where he stood, he and his cronies estimated that the Progressive Labor Party faction had a majority or near-majority of delegates. The incumbents with whom he ran, most members of the faction that then called itself the Revolutionary Youth Movement, responded by “expelling” the PLers in a fashion which troubles him yet.

“The long-feared split had occurred without any full debate by the whole organization, without any vote taken,” he writes. “It was a fait accompli, a coup of sorts, presented by the RYM faction.”

In other words, those who claimed -- some of whom still claim -- to have represented the “real” SDS, refused to accede to a changing of the leadership by democratic, if “manipulative” means. They were the tyrants, if any there were, unless “manipulation” is verboten.

As a former member of the PL faction, I could not be honest without admitting that PL manipulated -- played by the rules, but played to win -- in SDS. But politics, on its face, is nothing but the manipulation of other peoples’ behavior. To whimper about it as Rudd occasionally does in deconstructing SDS factional conflicts is to ask for an organization whose soul would have been naiveté.

Rudd is not a poetic writer, but his memoir is highly readable in part because of its humility. It’s a work of self-doubt and self-criticism. He does not repudiate his opposition to the Vietnam War or savage capitalism, but he does confess, time and again, that he and its other leaders were out of their league. Reading the book made me feel sorry for Mark because he blames himself too much.

Within weeks of the collapse of SDS, Rudd, like most of the leadership of RYM, wound up in the bomb-making Weathermen claque. He regrets it: “Much of what the Weathermen did,” he writes, “had the opposite effect of what we intended. We deorganized SDS while we claimed we were making it stronger; we isolated ourselves from our friends and allies as we helped split the larger antiwar movement around the issue of violence. In general, we played into the hands of the FBI -- our sworn enemies. We might as well have been on their payroll.”

PL’s student leaders of the era, who perhaps should speak on the question, haven’t been heard from in 30 years, as far as I know. Nobody I know, including a dozen ex-PLers, has any idea about what has become of them. I was never a full-fledged PLer, and so am perhaps an unauthorized voice. But I was as much a PLer as anybody in Texas, and if I can still presume to speak for what was our faction, I’d say that Rudd and his comrades have long been forgiven, at least by us, their vanquished former rivals.

The split in SDS, I’ve always thought, was nearly inevitable. Smarter leadership could perhaps have prevented it, but only by abdication, and only in a limited way.

The problem was that what might be called the Port Huron generation had by 1969 spent several years protesting the Vietnam War without any significant effect on the nation’s policies or actions. Most of us had graduated or were graduating from college. We were facing 40 years of life as adults and we dreaded the prospect because we didn’t know what we would do, or where we would fit. To guide us, as we’d gone along organizing protests, we’d formed world views that were bigger than the anti-war cause.

Those of us who had become Marxists -- in SDS, mainly followers of PL and of the Spartacist League -- had adopted a plan that stunted our ambitions and shrunk our sense of self-importance. We’d been convinced that we had to join the industrial working class, from whose ranks we’d agitate for unions and revolution perhaps until we retired or died. PL sloganized our nearly humdrum agenda as “Build a Base in the Working Class.”

Rudd and the Weathermen claimed to be Marxists, but in effect, they substituted American youth, including themselves, for industrial workers, as the agents of socialism. Their attitude, and I’m afraid, even their political wisdom was summed-up in chants like “Oink, oink, bang, bang! Dead pig!” They wanted Revolution Now! -- or if not that, Vengeance Now!—and they thought that they could spark it.

The plain facts, seen in retrospect, are that the industrial working class was already doomed to decimation, and that the much-vaunted youth rising was more nearly a generational tiff than a political one. Most of us whom PL sent into factories gave up as soon we saw that the workers wouldn’t listen. Most Weathermen dropped out after learning, as Rudd did, that life on the lam was brutish, lonely and impotent. It hurts to say so, but Bill Clinton and George Bush, and maybe even Nixon and Reagan, gauged the political capacity of our generation far better than we did.

SDS could have survived, I believe, only if it had preserved its innocence, only as a group that held out hope for capitalism and its parties and sought merely to be heard by the people in power. But to have done so, those SDSers who had learned the lessons of the protest movement -- that appeals to rulers are routinely ignored or deflected -- would have had to distance themselves from their base. We would have had to stand aside while greener students repeated the mistakes that we had made.

Even our abnegation would not have produced an anti-war movement of the scale we had known, because the millions of young whites who attended anti-war protests -- the recruiting pool for both the PL and Weathermen factions—returned to purely personal and domestic concerns almost as soon as the draft lottery was instituted.

If anybody is responsible for the death of SDS, it is the officials who, with our concurrence, abolished conscription. They placed the question of war and peace on a new stage, on which we haven’t gotten our footing yet. The hour is late and we are nearing our graves: it’s highly unlikely that we will lead any movements now. If we are as honest as Rudd, we will admit that back in the day, we failed. Neither he nor the rest of us are to blame. It is perhaps heresy to say so in the United States, where optimism is a tenet of a Foucaultian, nearly mandatory faith, but for all of a polity’s problems, solutions are not always at hand.

[Rag Blog contributor Dick J. Reavis is an award-winning journalist, educator and author. He was active in the civil rights movement in the South and with SDS at the University of Texas in Austin. He wrote for Austin’s underground newspaper The Rag, and was a senior editor at Texas Monthly magazine. Dick Reavis’ book, The Ashes of Waco: An Investigation, about the siege and burning of the Branch Davidian compound, was published by Simon and Schuster and may be the definitive work on the subject.]

Find Mark Rudd's Underground: My Life with SDS and the Weathermen on Amazon.com.

See other Rag Blog articles on Mark Rudd's memoir and related subject matter:

• Judy Gumbo Albert : It's 'Celebrate 60s Radicals' Week! by Judy Gumbo Albert / The Rag Blog / April 22, 2009
• Rudd: Put the War Budget Into Peace, Diplomacy, Law, and Sustainable Energy Development by Bob Feldman / The Rag Blog / April 7, 2009
• BOOKS / Jonah Raskin on Mark Rudd : Underground, Again by Jonah Raskin / The Rag Blog / March 30, 2009
• Thomas Good : An Interview With Mark Rudd by Thomas Good / The Rag Blog / March 30, 2009

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BOOKS / Jonah Raskin on Mark Rudd : Underground, Again

Underground, Again
Mark Rudd’s 'Underground: My Life with SDS and the Weathermen'

A charismatic individual with very little sustained radical organizing, he came out of nowhere at a crucial moment in the 1960s and was instantly catapulted into the national spotlight.

By Jonah Raskin / The Rag Blog / March 30, 2009

[Underground: My Life with SDS and the Weathermen, by Mark Rudd, published by William Morrow, March 24, 2009.]

In the beginning was the underground. Indeed, the “underground” as a form of resistance to established power is a thread that runs through the centuries. Specific, historical undergrounds have existed whenever and wherever “the state” has existed. If there are police, prisons and judges, there will be undergrounds – oppositions that are clandestine, and invisible. It’s in the nature of human beings the world over to form secret organizations, and networks aimed at sabotaging the structures of society: the military, the work place, the church, and the family.

Ironically, the 1960s was an era in which the concept and the practice of the underground thrived, even as a generation of hippies, freaks, misfits, Yippies, feminists, Black Panthers, radicals, and non-conformists came into the open, took to the streets, and went naked both literally and figuratively. It wasn’t until the 1970s, which, one might argue is when “the 1960s” really happened, that political undergrounds – such as the Weather Underground, and the Symbionese Liberation Army – were born. About those two groups there has been almost uninterrupted fascination. There have been dozens of books and movies about them: Patty Hearst, Bernardine Dohrn, Bill Ayers, and the SLA members.

In the 1960s and 1970s, I wrote for underground newspapers, like The Seed and The Liberated Guardian, and worked for Liberation News Service. I was also affiliated with the Weather Underground; my wife, Eleanor Raskin, was part of the underground. I wrote most of “New Morning,” a communiqué from the Weather Underground, and I also aided and abetted -- to use the legal terminology -- Abbie Hoffman when he was underground in the 1970s. My own parents had been clandestine members of the Communist Party of the U.S.A. from 1932 to 1948, when they resigned. I grew up with the assumption that going underground was a necessary part of any political movement, and knew that one day I’d go underground, too.

A new book by Mark Rudd entitled Underground: My Life with SDS and the Weathermen, takes yet another look at the underground phenomenon. Mark Rudd was underground for seven years in the 1970s. Previously, he had been a member of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), then a leader of Weatherman, the SDS faction that advocated rioting in the streets, and committing acts of violence, including the detonation of bombs. Though Rudd was underground from 1970 to 1977, and though he had contact with the Weather Underground, he was not a member of the organization, neither as a leader -- there was a central committee -- nor a follower. The title of the book is ambiguous; a casual reader might look at it and assume that it’s about the Weather Underground. In fact it isn’t.

Like Abbie Hoffman, Mark Rudd wasn’t suited for the underground life – he needed attention, and attention is, of course, the last thing that any fugitive wants. Unless of course, he or she really wants to be caught, and to receive attention.

The Townhouse Explosion of March 1970 which resulted in the deaths of three members of the fledgling Weather Underground so profoundly shook Rudd that he could not be connected to former friends who were now making bombs. He calls them “comrades” but it’s a word that sounds odd coming out of his mouth. True enough, he wants “comrades” but he also wants to be the # One Comrade, which isn’t in the spirit of comradeship at all.

I saw Rudd twice when he was underground and a fugitive wanted by the FBI. The first time, he expressed genuine regret and remorse for the explosion and the death of Ted Gold, Diana Oughton and Terry Robbins. He made it clear to me at that time, in 1970, that he did not believe in the use of violence by revolutionaries in order to achieve political goals. The second time I saw him, in New Haven, Connecticut, he was a silent, anonymous bystander during the demonstrations to protest the trial of Bobby Seale, the founder of the Black Panther Party. In a sense, he was a father of those demonstrations. Protesters were doing what he had been urging students to do for years. But now, he couldn’t take part.

I have seen Rudd several times since he surrendered to the authorities, in New York and in Albuquerque, New Mexico where he lives. He is also in Sam Green’s documentary film, The Weather Underground, which offers far more fiction than fact about the organization. Green’s film has made Rudd’s name and face familiar to today’s radicals. The fact that he was not in fact a member of the Weather Underground makes no difference to them. He’s in the movie, and the movie has replaced the historical record. In the popular mind, Rudd and Weatherman have become nearly synonymous. This book will likely solidify that impression, so ironically the more he insists on his distance from the underground the more he’s linked to it, which enabled him to have all the glamour associated with the underground and to have clean hands at the same time.

Underground: My Life with SDS and Weathermen reflects Rudd’s curious relationship with SDS, Weatherman and the U. S. mass media. A charismatic individual with very little sustained radical organizing, he came out of nowhere at a crucial moment in the 1960s and was instantly catapulted into the national spotlight. In that sense, he is a representative figure of that time when unknown, minor actors on the stage of history briefly became major heroes of the revolution. In 1968 and 1969, Rudd became a spokesperson for the New Left. More accurately, one might say that the news media selected him as to be a spokesperson -- and a symbol of youthful rebellion. He went along for the ride, and he tells a lot of that story here.

Rudd did not have a long involvement with 1960s activism. Unlike Tom Hayden and Mario Savio of the Free Speech Movement he did not participate in the Civil Rights Movement in the South, nor did he push SDS to become the anti-imperialist organization it became in the mid-1960s. He wrote no significant political manifesto, such as the Port Huron Statement, and he did not forge any new organization -- like the Yippies and the White Panthers. Nor did he create a significant alliance –- like the Venceremos Brigades that brought young Americans to Cuba, though he did go to Cuba in 1968.

Rudd was in the public eye for a brief moment that peaked with the student protests at Columbia in New York in the spring of 1968. From then on he was assured fame, infamy and notoriety. In 1968 and 1969, he was defiant, outrageous, and confrontational. He had Chutzpah. He said “Shit” and “Up Against the Wall, Motherfucker” and he shocked his Ivy League teachers at Columbia. Once the media got hold of him it did not let him go; when he turned himself into law enforcement in 1977 the media descended on him once again, as they had in 1968 and fed him up to the nation.

I read a draft of Rudd’s memoir several years ago, and made suggestions to him, including an idea for the title. I urged him to call his book “Che and Me.” That title seemed to reflect accurately his own sense of grandiosity, and indeed one of the chapters in the early manuscript was entitled “Che and Me.” It is not in this book, alas. Years ago, Rudd also posted essays about himself on his website, and I read them there, too. They were written, he told me, for today’s teenagers, and indeed the language seemed simplified and the ideas rendered cartoon-like.

His new book, Underground, does not sound like the previous iterations of his life. This new account reads as though it was carefully massaged by an editor to make Rudd seem more palatable to readers today. It is written for adults, not children: for aging radicals, not young, irreverent protestors. Rudd also seems to want to make himself appear to be likeable, adorable, and cute. All that time in the 1960s, he now says, when he called people “shithead,” and urged students to smash the state, he was really afraid. Then, he didn’t care who he offended. Now, he says nice things about almost everyone -- even Bernardine Dohrn, the leader of the Weather Underground, with whom he has had a running feud -- as much personal as political -- since 1970.

If this book were to be faithfully adapted for the movies, it would be a long close up of Rudd, with other characters, like his parents, appearing on screen briefly. Rudd would be the star of the show. When it was first published, I didn’t like Christopher Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism perhaps because I was too close to the New Left and to the kinds of New Left people -- like Kathy Boudin of the Weather Underground -- he thought were examples of American narcissism. Now, Rudd strikes me as narcissistic. Lasch was insightful. Underground shows that he’s in love with himself, and with his own image. He has little self-awareness, probably because he’s so caught up in himself and with his image.

In this memoir he tells the story about the time that he and SDS members barged into the offices of Grayson Kirk, the President of Columbia, and made themselves at home there. Kirk had gone home for the day. Rudd describes himself picking up Kirk’s telephone and calling his middle class, apolitical Jewish parents in New Jersey. He wonders now why he did it, and though he offers suggestions, he doesn’t see the obvious -- that he was rebelling against his parents -- and that he wanted them to know. Lots of us were in rebellion against our parents, including the children of the Old Left. That’s why we spoke of the generation gap.

In this book, Rudd is glib about that telephone call, glib about his parents, and glib about his relationship to them. He wants to be not only Che but Lenny Bruce, too, so he writes of that phone call, “Maybe it was simply that Jewish boys call home, it’s that deeply ingrained.” Maybe it’s this and maybe it’s that. Mark Rudd has that Jewish-American habit of shrugging his shoulders ambiguously and leaving it at that. It could mean this and it could mean that.

Some of the passages from the old manuscript haven’t made it into the new book. Some of the ideas Rudd shared me with, and said he wanted to include, aren’t here, either, like the time his father called him a “schmuck.” Rudd can also be an astute literary critic of the novels of Philip Roth -- that other Jewish boy from New Jersey who wanted attention -- but his reflections on Roth aren’t here either.

In 1980, when Abbie Hoffman turned himself in to the authorities in New York, I had a conversation with Rudd about Abbie, and Abbie’s need for media attention. I said then that I thought that there’s a basic human need for attention and recognition. Some of us, like Abbie, need it, or think we need it, more than others. Some hardly seem to need it or want it at all. Underground suggests, implies, and shows that Rudd is up there, along with Abbie, near the top of the list of 1960s radicals who wanted attention, and who received far more attention than they needed. Media attention is a dangerous thing. It undid Abbie, and it also helped to undo Rudd. It remains to be seen whether the attention he will receive from the publication of, and from the publicity surrounding, this book about his underground life will undo him once again.

[Jonah Raskin is a prominent author, poet, educator and political activist. His most recent book is The Radical Jack London: Writings on War and Revolution.]

Find Underground: My Life with SDS and the Weathermen by Mark Rudd at amazon.com.

Also see Thomas Good : An Interview With Mark Rudd by Thomas Good / The Rag Blog / March 30, 2009

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Thomas Good : An Interview With Mark Rudd

Mark Rudd speaks at the West End Bar in New York last week. Photo by Thomas Good / NLN.

Beneath the gray beard and the wrinkles I could clearly see the boyish face of the 20-year-old SDS leader.

By Thomas Good / The Rag Blog / March 30, 2009

See Thomas Good's interview with Mark Rudd, Below.

[Thomas Good is the editor of Next Left Notes, where this interview also appears.]

I first photographed Mark Rudd in 2006, at Drew University. I was struck immediately by something trapped in the lens of my camera: the 60-year-old face of Rudd contained a hidden image. Beneath the gray beard and the wrinkles I could clearly see the boyish face of the 20-year-old SDS leader. When I mentioned this to Mark he agreed immediately -- Rudd’s boyish enthusiasm had not dissipated with age.

Over the next three years I photographed Rudd a number of times. I filmed an MDS Public Service Announcement with him. I witnessed an interesting exchange as Rudd and Tom Hayden traded wisecracks. And I argued with Rudd on a variety of topics. In every instance, I found Mark to be very generous and very gracious, a bit smug and undeniably a smartass. Conversations with Rudd reveal a very charming arrogance -- and this is not a negative assessment. Mark has worked diligently to redefine himself and in the process has been his own harshest critic. The self-conscious metamorphosis transformed a 20-year-old advocating armed struggle into a nonviolent 61-year-old activist committed to calm, patient organizing -- and a Lefty with a sense of humor, a rare commodity. I am fortunate to have the opportunity to disagree with Mark on a regular basis -- he embodies Murray Bookchin’s ideal of democratic debate and discourse.

After SDS and Weather, Mark moved to New Mexico where he taught algebra at the college level. As someone who barely survived algebra in college, I needed help when my teenage son was struggling with the A-word. I contacted Mark. He responded immediately and offered useful suggestions. Typical Rudd.

In 2008, Mark asked if he could use one of my photographs [the Drew University shot] in his new book. I said of course -- Mark had previously mentioned that he had decided to spend some time finishing his memoir and I was glad to be involved in a minor way.

Underground: My Life In SDS And The Weathermen was released on March 23, 2009, and there were two signings in New York that week. I caught the second and videotaped some of the event. The book signing was held at Rudd’s old hangout, the West End Bar. A number of Columbia SDS veterans showed up -- as did former Weather Underground activist Cathy Wilkerson who released her memoir last year. Wilkerson, an impressive speaker in her own right, thanked Mark for his generosity and told the crowd that Rudd had made the transition back from a militant, tough-talking activist into what he always was, beneath the bluster: “a really nice guy”.

Right on, Cathy.

Tom Good: What do you think of Obama so far?

Mark Rudd: I think he’s acted in an extremely predictable way, knowing what we already know about him. He’s cautious and strategic. He knows that there is no mandate yet for abrupt shifts to the left. I think he’s trying to work toward improvement on the economy, healthcare, education, and Israel. On Afghanistan, no. He knows that the biggest internal enemy is the military-industrial-security complex, and he’s not going to give them the excuse to organize to defeat him (as they defeated Kennedy). I know that the official left position is that JFK was a cold-warrior, no different from any others, but I’ve been reading “Brothers,” by David Talbot, a good journalist who makes a compelling case for the fact that the military and CIA loathed Kennedy and conspired to kill him. Since Obama isn’t a leftist (thank God), he’s not hampered by our prejudices. I’m sure he believes that Kennedy was killed by the military and CIA. JFK had zero control over both. They rarely carried out his orders.

TG: What do you make of his appointments?

MR: All terrible at the top level, except maybe Hillary Clinton, whom I’m expecting to win a Nobel prize for forcing the Israelis to accept a settlement. Who but the nation’s #1 shiksa, a certified lover of Israel, would the rightwing accept to force the settlement? That was a strategic appointment. All the others are strategic in the same way–giving the right the top positions. The trick is to look at the next level, where Podesta put center-leftists, predominantly. He learned from Cheney. Actually, the director of CIA, Minetta, a center-leftist, probably gave them conniptions.

TG: What is your view of the Ayers bashing that started with the election and is ongoing?

MR: Obama has almost no chinks in his armor. The right has very few ways in, and they’re so stupid that they don’t realize that the Ayers business has zero traction outside their own circles. Don’t ever underestimate the far right’s utter stupidity.

TG: You often say that Columbia SDS represented some great organizing - what in particular is noteworthy and/or useful to young activists?

MR: That’s why I spent so much time on it in my book. The chapter was run by red-diaper babies who knew nothing but old-style traditional organizing–patient, long term, base-building, coalition-building, involving engagement between people you’re trying to win over. Lots of study,analysis, research. The Praxis Axis was right! Of course the irony was that Ted Gold and David Gilbert got seduced by the apparent success of “militancy” at Columbia.

TG: Can you tell me about any organizing you are doing now in your community?

MR: My wife and I are organizing around environmental justice and health issues in our neighborhood, a working-class chicano/mexicano neighborhood. We have a bilingual “Neighborhood Association,” involving rich and poor, brown and white, immigrants and US citizens. It’s NOT ideological: we rarely push our left analysis, though people know who I am. Many republicans among us.

Also, I’m working with a small group called “Another Jewish Voice” to create a pro-peace in the middle east lobby in New Mexico. We’ve had some good luck with the congressional delegation, primarily because my wife and I are involved heavily in electoral politics.

Marla is the chair of New Mexico Conservation Voters. They’ve achieved almost a green majority in the state legislature. Both of us work on local Demo electoral campaigns, and have had some success electing progressives lately (after years and years of losing). We’re both on the central committee of the county Demo party !!

TG: Why should NLN readers buy your book - and can they get signed copies?

MR: It’s a great story, that’s why I hope people read it. I tried to be accurate and honest. I’m not pushing left heroism. I’m just this kid from the suburbs who got involved in the movement. It’s a story of good organizing followed by bad (Weatherman).

You know, I don’t believe in signed copies. What are they good for? I do it because people want them. Go to Morningside Bookshop at the corner of Broadway and West 114th St and you’ll find all the signed copies you might want. Readers can check out my “Book Tour” page on my website, http://www.markrudd.com/ www.markrudd.com to meet me and I’ll sign their copies.

TG: What do you have to say to Radosh’s comment that you haven’t grown up (and abandoned your Lefty beliefs)?

MR: Poor Ronald Radosh is a right-winger. His assuption is that anything left is childish. What more is there to say, except see my comment above on rightists’ intelligence.

TG: Do you support BDS [ Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions ] as a means of ending apartheid in Israel?

MR: Absolutely. My group is attempting to get a campaign going in New Mexico.

TG: How is your mother doing? Is she pleased about the new book?

MR: My mother is lucid less than 50% of the time. She’s thrilled about the book, though she seems fixated on the question of how I make money off it. Since I have no idea how the money works, I can’t explain it to her or anyone else. That confuses her even more, because she can’t understand why I’m so ignorant.

TG: Is there any hope I’ll ever learn algebra?

MR: Yes! Come out to New Mexico, hang with me a week or so, and I’ll help you figure it out. The trick to algebra is the ability to pay attention, and I know you have that. You’re just defeated by your own self-conception as a person who can’t learn algebra. It’s simple. I use geometry drawings to explain it.

Also see Jonah Raskin on Mark Rudd : Underground, Again by Jonah Raskin / The Rag Blog / March 30, 2009

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Rudd: Put the War Budget Into Peace, Diplomacy, Law, and Sustainable Energy Development

Mark Rudd.
Pacifism and The Military-Industrial-University Complex: Interviewing Mark Rudd
By Bob Feldman / The Rag Blog / April 7, 2009

Mark Rudd was the chairman of the Columbia University chapter of Students for a Democratic Society [SDS] at the time of the 1968 Columbia Student Revolt; and Rudd’s autobiography, Underground: My Life with SDS and the Weathermen was finally published in March 2009.

In a recent email interview with Toward Freedom, Rudd responded to some questions about how U.S. pacifists might consider responding to the role U.S. universities play in the current historical era of "permanent war abroad and economic depression at home" and about his new book.

In 2009, some U.S. pacifists seem to regard elite universities like Columbia as institutions that have, both historically and currently, opposed war and opposed racism—since they hire both anti-war and African-American professors and administrators, implement affirmative action hiring programs, set up "peace studies" and "African-American studies" departments, steer foundation grants and scholarship money in the direction of students from historically oppressed communities and to local community groups, and provide free or low-rent meeting room space for anti-war students and off-campus pacifist groups.

Yet in the preface to your book, you write that between 1965 and 1968 you were "a member of SDS at Columbia University" and "made as much noise and trouble as possible to protest the university’s pro-war and racist policies." In what ways were Columbia University’s policies "pro-war and racist" in 1968 and in what ways are the policies of Columbia University and other elite U.S. universities "pro-war and racist" in 2009?

Mark Rudd: The specific demands we raised leading up to the spring of 1968--training and recruitment of military officers for the war in Vietnam, weapons research for the war, the building of a gym in public park land--were only the tip of the iceberg of Columbia's policies. Within months of the strike, the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) produced a book entitled "Who Rules Columbia," in which they detailed the military, State Dept., and CIA contracts and connections with the School of International Affairs, the various geographical "area studies," such as the East Asia Institute, as well as the revolving door between Columbia and the government; also Columbia's expansion into the surrounding community at the expense of non-white residents. Most of these connections and policies are still in place; almost all major research universities are still major war contractors. The point is that student activists have their work cut out for them to research and expose what's correctly called the military-industrial-academic complex.

In chapter 1 of your book, titled "A Good German," you recall that when you first met the then-chairman of Columbia’s Independent Committee on Vietnam (ICV) anti-war student group--current U.S. political prisoner David Gilbert—in early 1966, Gilbert mentioned that in May 1965 his group had "held an antiwar protest at the Naval ROTC graduation ceremony" at Columbia. And later in the "A Good German" chapter you mention that in March 1967 you had "taken part in a sit-in at a Naval ROTC class" at Columbia.

Why did you oppose Naval ROTC at Columbia in the 1960s? And do you think U.S. pacifists should consider opposing ROTC on U.S. university campuses in 2009?

Mark Rudd: The issue is fundamentally moral. Is the training of people to wage war against other countries, carrying out a criminally aggressive military policy, appropriate in an institution that pretends to seek the truth? Our answer to this question was NO, because we believed in the necessity to oppose U.S. violence as a moral value. Remember, too, that the time we lived in was essentially post-World War II, and the problem of values in society was still being debated in the aftermath of Nazism. I have no doubt that contemporary students will be taking this up again in the near future.

In chapter 2 of your book, you mention that anti-war students at Columbia protested against recruitment on campus by external organizations like the CIA and the U.S. Marines. Why did you think that it was morally wrong for Columbia University to allow external organizations like the CIA and the U.S. Marines to recruit on campus in 1967? And do you think U.S. pacifists in 2009 should also protest against U.S. universities that allow the CIA and the U.S. Marines to recruit on campus while the Pentagon’s war in Iraq and Afghanistan continues?

Mark Rudd: Same response as #2 above. Whether recruitment is "external" (e.g., Marine recruiters) or "internal" (Military Science Dept. training future naval officers), it amounts to the same thing. The resources of the university are being used to help wage war.

In chapter 3 of your book, titled "Action Faction," you write that on March 27, 1968 "SDS had fifteen hundred names on a petition calling for the severing of " Columbia University’s "ties with the Pentagon think-tank, the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA);" and "IDA…became the shorthand symbol for Columbia’s huge network of complicity with the war."

In 2009, IDA still exists. Do you think that U.S. pacifists should consider demanding that IDA be finally shut down by the Democratic Obama Administration and that U.S. pacifists should consider demanding that U.S. universities like Columbia, MIT and Harvard stop performing war research for the Pentagon’s Defense Advance Research Projects Agency [DARPA] in 2009?

Mark Rudd: I believe that the entire US military budget should be cut back and the money used for social needs both in this country and around the world. Security would be much better served by the development of true international law, not more nuclear weapons. If that doesn't happen in the 21st century, we're doomed. All war research should immediately stop everywhere and the money be put into peace, diplomacy, law, and sustainable energy development. To do less now is not only suicidal, it's downright dumb.

In your book, you mention that you and Abbie Hoffman were both arrested at a November 1967 anti-war protest in Midtown Manhattan against the Foreign Policy Association giving an award to then-Secretary of State Dean Rusk.

April 2009 marks the 20th anniversary of Abbie’s death. How would you characterize the role that Abbie Hoffman played in U.S. anti-war movement history and his historical relationship to U.S. pacifists and non-violent anti-war activists like Dave Dellinger?

Mark Rudd: Abbie was essentially a comedian and an organizer. He was not at all violent; he always encouraged mass organizing, though often in the form of provocative guerilla theater, like the Yippies nominating a pig for president in 1968. I forget how he and Dave Dellinger got along in Chicago, both in 1968 and during the conspiracy trial the next year. My guess is that they respected each other. Perhaps you know more specifics.

Speaking of Abbie Hoffman, how would you respond to Professor Jonah Raskin’s assertion in his review of your book which was posted on The Rag Blog that "like Abbie Hoffman, Mark Rudd wasn’t suited for the underground life—he needed attention, and attention is, of course, the last thing that any fugitive wants;" and "Underground suggests, implies, and shows that Rudd is up there, along with Abbie, near the top of the list of 1960s radicals who wanted attention, and who received far more attention than they needed…It undid Abbie, and it also helped to undo Rudd."?

Mark Rudd: I wonder if Jonah actually read my book.

Why do you think the right-wing media monitoring pressure group" Accuracy In Media" [A.I.M.] apparently attempted to pressure Rupert Murdoch’s HarperCollins publishing firm to not promote your book, according to the" Accuracy In Media" web site?

Mark Rudd: Just another way for the far right to try get at Obama, but it's so indirect that it makes zero sense to anybody else. There was a tiny connection between Obama and Bill Ayers, but that fact gained no votes for John McCain. These people are so stupid that they're still pursuing a tactic that's already failed. I find that a rather comforting fact.

Do you think it’s likely that Columbia University’s Pulitzer Prize Board will decide to give you a Pulitzer Prize for writing Underground—after Columbia University’s current president--a current board member of the Washington Post Company/Newsweek media conglomerate named Lee Bollinger—reads what you’ve written about Columbia University?

Mark Rudd: I'm a shoe-in.

[This interview was also posted on Toward Freedom.]

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The Audacity of Obama : Centrist Appointments a Smoke Screen

Barack Obama at a book signing in 2006. "The writing style of Audacity of Hope reveals how complex and perceptive Obama is."

These various initiatives, which will collectively set the nation on a path towards energy independence, ending the war and redistributing financial resources downward, are presented as unconnected pieces of legislation but actually they are interlocking components of Obama's coherent multi-layered agenda.

By Jeff Jones / The Rag Blog / November 29, 2008

Also see Obama Chooses an Unlikely Team of Hawks by Peter Beinart, Below.

I agree with Mark Rudd's perceptive article Let's Get Smart About Obama in The Rag Blog.

The writing style of Audacity of Hope reveals how complex and perceptive Obama is: he is hyper-literate, almost Ciceronian, and unlike most of his speeches, amazingly precise. He expresses what he thinks and feels without resorting to binary thinking. He does not interpret reality in black and white terms: he is the nation's first post-modern president.

All of this leads me to the same conclusion reached by Mark Rudd: this guy is really SMART. He is setting Hillary Clinton up to be the public face of his effort to end the Iraq war. He is going to sucessfully extort green concessions from Detroit. He will convince Congress to pass a major stimulus package that will lay the foundation for the development of an alternative energy manufacturing industry. He will do something to help reduce housing foreclosures. He will let the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy expire.

These various initiatives, which will collectively set the nation on a path towards energy independence, ending the war and redistributing financial resources downward, are presented as unconnected pieces of legislation but actually they are interlocking components of Obama's coherent multi-layered agenda. His centrist appointments are a smokescreen; they co-opt the moderate center, but he's still the commander in chief. Even Lenin would be impressed!

Please see Mark Rudd : Let's Get Smart About Obama by Mark Rudd / The Rag Blog / Nov. 28, 2008

Obama Chooses an Unlikely Team of Hawks
By Peter Beinart / November 26, 2008

In liberal blogland, reports that Barack Obama will probably choose Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State and retired general James Jones as National Security Adviser and retain Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense have prompted a chorus of groans. "I feel incredibly frustrated," wrote Chris Bowers on OpenLeft.com.

"Progressives are being entirely left out."

A word of advice: cheer up. It's precisely because Obama intends to pursue a genuinely progressive foreign policy that he's surrounding himself with people who can guard his right flank at home. When George W. Bush wanted to sell the Iraq war, he trotted out Colin Powell--because Powell was nobody's idea of a hawk. Now Obama may be preparing to do the reverse. To give himself cover for a withdrawal from Iraq and a diplomatic push with Iran, he's surrounding himself with people like Gates, Clinton and Jones, who can't be lampooned as doves.

To grasp the logic of this strategy, start with the fact that Obama's likely national-security picks don't actually disagree very much with the foreign policy he laid out during the campaign. Jones is on record calling the Iraq war a "debacle" and urging that the detention center at Guantánamo Bay be closed "tomorrow." Gates has also reportedly pushed for closing Gitmo and for faster withdrawals from Iraq.

He has called a military strike against Iran a "strategic calamity," urged diplomacy with Tehran's mullahs and denounced the "creeping militarization" of U.S. foreign policy. (You don't hear that from a Defense Secretary every day.) For her part, Hillary Clinton during the presidential campaign embraced an Iraq-withdrawal position virtually identical to Obama's. And although they fought a sound-bite war over sitting down with the leaders of countries like Iran, the two candidates' actual Iran policies were pretty much the same. Both wanted intensive diplomacy; both wanted to start it at lower levels and work up from there.

On key policy issues, Jones, Gates and Clinton aren't significantly more hawkish than Obama. What they are is more hawkish symbolically. Gates is a Republican; Jones is a Marine general who once worked for John McCain; Clinton, as Senator from New York, has gained credibility with hawkish pro-Israel groups. In other words, what distinguishes Gates, Jones and Clinton isn't their desire to shift Obama's policies to the right; it's their ability to persuade the right to give Obama's policies a chance.

Obama knows that although Iraq has tarnished the GOP foreign policy brand, Democrats remain vulnerable. When the moderate Democratic group Third Way asked voters in September whom they trusted more on national security, Democrats trailed by 14 points. (The gap has widened substantially since late 2006.) On the question of "ensuring a strong military," they trailed by 30 points--an astonishing figure, given that it is a Republican President who has stretched the Army to its breaking point.

Politically, therefore, Obama is playing with fire. If he accelerates troop withdrawals and violence in Iraq flares up again, the GOP will pounce. If he cuts a nuclear deal with Iran, it will probably do the same, accusing him of putting his faith in an inspection agreement that Tehran will never obey. And if he pushes hard for a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians, right-leaning Jewish groups may cry foul. That's the beauty of his emerging national-security team. Even Republicans will find it hard to call Gates and Jones latter-day Neville Chamberlains, and even many Likudniks will think twice before claiming that Hillary Clinton is in league with Hamas. (For cover on Israel, Obama will also be able to trot out Rahm Emanuel, whose father was born in Jerusalem, and, quite possibly, long-serving Middle East envoy Dennis Ross, who is tight with the pro-Israel lobby.)

Obama understands that foreign policy is, in international-relations-speak, a two-sided game. To get your way, you not only have to convince other governments; you also have to convince the folks back home. Bill Clinton negotiated the Kyoto Protocol on global warming with well over 100 other countries but couldn't get it through the 100-member U.S. Senate. He crafted a nuclear agreement with North Korea but saw it sabotaged by a Republican Congress that wouldn't provide sufficient money to carry it out. Obama knows that while it's a tough world out there, it's tough here as well. In Gates, Jones and Clinton, he's found people who can do more than sell his foreign policy to Iranians, Iraqis and Israelis; they can sell it to Americans too.

[Beinart is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.]

Source / Time

Thanks to Thomas Cleaver / The Rag Blog

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Judy Gumbo Albert : It's 'Celebrate 60s Radicals' Week!

Judy Gumbo with (left) Stew Albert and Jerry Rubin, May, 1971. Photo from yippiegirl.com.
In California this week, book signings, an historic poster exhibition, a theatrical event and a 'Champion of Justice' award all shine a light on Sixties activists and their progeny.

By Judy Gumbo Albert / The Rag Blog / April 22, 2009

For some cosmic reason, this is Celebrate 1960s Radicals-And-Our-Children week in California. On Saturday April 18, in Oakland, I and at least 600 others witnessed my friend Steve Bingham get the National Lawyers Guild’s prestigious Champion of Justice Award. On Sunday I attended the opening of the Berkeley Historical Society’s “Up Against the Wall” exhibit of 1960’s posters and artifacts. Last night, in downtown Berkeley, former Weatherman Mark Rudd spoke and signed his long-awaited book Underground.

Friday will be the world premiere in nearby Marin County of Zayd (son of Weather leaders Bernardine Dohrn and Billy Ayers) Dohrn’s play Magic Forest Farm, advertised as a young woman’s journey back to her past to confront the truth. Next Wednesday, Chesa (raised by Bernardine and Billy, the son of former Weather person Kathy Boudin and still imprisoned David Gilbert) Boudin, will be in San Francisco signing Gringo -- his coming-of-age work which recently provoked a disgustingly arrogant and mean-spirited review in the New York Times.

Not too shabby for us Bush-battered 1960s types!

It’s difficult for me to convey how heart-warming and deeply emotional Steve’s recognition event turned out to be. Steve Bingham, you may recall, spent almost 14 years underground in Europe after being charged with five counts of conspiracy murder for allegedly smuggling a gun past metal detectors into San Quentin so that prison leader George Jackson could “escape” -- and be shot to death. In 1984 Steve resurfaced in the Bay Area with his wonderful wife Francoise, and, after a trial lasting six months -- one of the longest, if not the longest trials ever in the State of California -- Steve was completely exonerated.

It felt like a miracle seeing this tall, sweet, gentle man, flying silver hair somewhat trimmed for the occasion, wearing a deep reddish/pinkish crushed velvet shirt and garlanded with a lei, get a long, enthusiastic standing ovation recognizing his lifelong contributions to social justice -- not just the 1960s struggle, or his survival underground, but also for his last 20 years at Bay Area Legal Aid protecting the rights of the imprisoned, the poor and the homeless. For me this was time-travel—back to the day when we proudly used the words radical and revolutionary as self-descriptors. It felt a lot like coming home.

Next day, I ran into Gus Newport, the well known African-American former mayor of Berkeley at the poster exhibit. Many posters came from the remarkable collection of the late FSM (Free Speech Movement) activist turned children’s science teacher and author Michael Rossman. One, the Berkeley Liberation Program, is the exact same poster I gave to the Stew and Judy Gumbo Albert Archives at the Labadie Collection at University of Michigan. My late husband Stew Albert, SDS founder Tom Hayden, I, and a large contingent of Berkeley radicals collectively wrote the Berkeley Liberation Program during the 1969 People’s Park uprising. We begin by making a declaration that still resonates:

The people of Berkeley passionately desire human solidarity, cultural freedom and peace.

Gus and I reminisced about how, back in the day, we rarely put the year on political posters -- just the month and day. We lived so much in the intensity of the present; we were so busy “making history” that documenting it by putting the year on a publication was the furthest thing from our minds.

My favorite long-forgotten artifact was a small pamphlet that Tom, Stew, I, and others put together in 1969, titled "Every Soldier a Shitworker, Every Shitworker a Soldier.” 1969 was the year that, at least in Berkeley, Women’s Liberation came into full flower. This tiny handbook was published, as was the Berkeley Liberation Program, by a collective we named, with no lack of youthful grandiosity, the “International Liberation School.” For a mere 25 cents, young radicals learned, among other organizational skills, that women and men must equally share the “shitwork.” Good soldiers in the revolution give women’s work equal importance to everything else. So we believed and so we attempted to act.

At the exhibit I also ran into Mario Savio’s widow Lynne Savio Hollander, and Michael Rossman’s widow Karen McClellan. We widows of well-known 60s guys share a unique bond, but our grieving process is no different from anyone else—up/down, forward/back, eventually you survive and thrive, but your life is never the same. Mario, a gentle soul and truly charismatic speaker was at the center of Berkeley’s 1964-65 Free Speech Movement. Every fall Lynn and her fellow FSM’ers put on the Mario Savio Memorial Lecture at which they award an annual $6000 prize to a young person or persons with a deep commitment to human rights, social justice, and proven ability to transform their commitment into effective action.

Last night was Mark Rudd’s turn. I had not seen Mark for ages up until two years ago, when my fiancé David Dobkin and I had a warm, affectionate reunion with him and his wife Marla Painter at their New Mexico home. At the time, Mark said he figured Bernardine and Billy wouldn’t like his book. It’s not because of the narcissism that my dear friend Jonah Raskin called him on in The Rag Blog -- I mean, he is Mark Rudd, what else do you expect? It’s his memoir, he’s allowed. Last night Mark described his trajectory as going from schlemiel to media darling, to being wanted by the FBI to going underground—but never truly leaving the schlemiel behind.

I really appreciate Mark’s highly personal writing style -- there are even places where, in my opinion, he could have gone deeper and been more authentic. Marla said essentially the same thing last night. But Mark does explore his feelings with way more emotional openness than Cathy Wilkerson did in Flying Too Close to the Sun -- and for this he is to be congratulated.

What Bernardine and Billy aren’t likely to enjoy about Underground is Mark spilling his version of the beans about his former friends. He has his regrets and doesn’t especially hold back about who he blames. I believe that blaming and regretting are part of the grieving process -- for a while I blamed Stew for dying, for the terrible loss he inflicted on me. Perhaps this is just Mark’s way of channeling his anguish at all the losses: loss of life in the Townhouse and the Brinks robbery, the loss of comrades forced underground and those still in jail, to say nothing of factionalized friendships, lost youth, and the demise of an organization he so dearly loved. A North Vietnamese friend once gave me some strategic advice about dealing with friendships which Mark, perhaps, might have benefitted from: “Be good to friends who are good to you, also be good to friends who are bad to you, for only friends will go with you on the long road to revolution.”

Mark never considered himself a Yippie. He said last night he lost his sense of humor pretty early on in SDS. And we Yippies never felt close to SDS -- we experienced the organization as too serious, too focused on ideology and, as Yippie leaders Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin never forgot or forgave, SDS initially advocated not coming to Chicago for the 1968 protests -- before having a last minute change of heart.

Those who are making the movies and writing the books, memoirs, blogs and graphic novels will ultimately define our history. As best as I can reconstruct, both Mark and Cathy Wilkerson believe that, after a certain amazing moment in which everyone in SDS felt empowered to change the world, divisive internal conflicts turned the organization into a cult of isolated, fanatic, self-destructive individuals with, at least for a time, an ideological commitment to offensive violence. Both Mark and Cathy say they disagreed in their hearts with this direction as it was happening, but also went along, victimized by their own ambivalence.

I’ve learned in my life that, when more than one person says essentially the same thing about a shared experience, there’s likely some kernel of truth in what they say. It truly saddens me to recognize that Weatherman turned into a cult. Romantic idealist that I am, I prefer to remember historical Weatherman for what it stood for -- inspirational courage, exemplary risk-taking and a passionate commitment to ending racism and an immoral, illegal war in Vietnam.

Each one of us from back in the day has her or his own Sixties. Mark has made a terrific contribution by sharing his. I encourage you to buy Underground and go to here for his speaking schedule.

On Friday I’ll see what Zayd Dohrn’s play reveals about the search for past truths. I’ll keep you posted.

[Judy Gumbo Albert was an original member of the 1960s countercultural protest group known as the Yippies -- along with her late husband Stew Albert who died on Jan. 30, 2006. Judy co-authored The Sixties Papers: Documents of a Rebellious Decade (Greenwood Press, 1984) and The Conspiracy Trial (Bobbs-Merrill, 1970). Her articles available online include "The Battle of Chicago," about the 1968 Democratic Convention, and "What Were Those 1960’s Terrorists Thinking Anyway," about the 1971 Mayday anti-war protests.

Albert currently lives in Berkeley and is writing her memoir titled Yippie Girl: My Remarkable Adventures with the Yippies, Black Panthers, North Vietnamese and Weathermen. Judy can be reached at yippiegirl@gmail.com or through her website yippiegirl.com.]

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From the MDS Conference in NYC - D. Hamilton

Movement for a Democratic Society Conference. (2/17/07) What happened?

What didn’t happen.

Before the conference, a small group of dissidents complained via the MDS list-serve about national office staff domination by an illegitimate cabal who were controlling the conference and marginalizing Al Haber who was advocating greater internal democracy. My own initial evaluation of this was to advocate that all parties quit quibbling and get on with the important work to be done. I was told that I didn’t understand the issues involved. Then the dissident Haber supporters put out a highly verbose call for support that included a threat of physical violence at the conference if their demands were not addressed.

This was a terminal turn off for me. On arrival at the conference, we met Bruce Rubinstein, Paul Buhle and other alleged cabal members. They seemed entirely reasonable and businesslike. They also had a convincing story in regards to Haber’s actions that was not flattering.

The Haber dissidents did show up and immediately made a nuisance of themselves, disrupting the schedule of speakers at the very first opportunity. But it was also immediately obvious that their pre-conference efforts had gained them no recruits. They remained 5 people at most out of almost 200. They were eventually quelled and the proceedings continued. After all the speeches had been given and the business part of the program began, they renewed their onslaught. It failed utterly. Haber, however, did nothing to control their aggressiveness or distance himself from them. As a result, when it came to electing 3 vice chairs of the MDS Board, a position to which he was nominated, he came in last. Haber definitely suffered from his association with these unruly disruptors. I tend to feel that he’s a good man who got used by some not so good people with suspicious agendas.

I cannot help but wonder where these guys came from. It was immediately obvious that they were a tiny minority and their complaints had no traction. Yet, they persisted, at times in a rude and disorderly manner. Such actions cause me to suspect sinister motives. Their harshest and most telling critics were the young SDS speakers who denounced their activities with undiluted scorn. And these students, representing SDS, which is considered to be the main show, had clout. In sum, this group of dissidents were a disruption that was managed and marginalized with no effect other than to be a mild bummer during an otherwise uplifting event.

What did happen.

This was a coming out party, much of it for show, with a little business, although important business, tacked on to the end. The show included a series of speakers, all interesting, some inspiring. It kicked off with Tom Good, SDS/MDS organizer from NYC giving a review of SDS and MDS growth since its refounding almost a year ago. It was basically a description of accelerating growth and militancy coast to coast, but not centered in the elite universities that were the strongholds of the old SDS.

Good was followed by Mark Rudd, ex-leader of the famed 1968 Columbia student strike and subsequently of the Weather Underground. He basically denounced many of the decisions of his past, especially “the insane decision made unilaterally” by the Weather leaders who controlled the national office of SDS after the 1969 Chicago convention, to “kill off” SDS for not being sufficiently revolutionary. He actually said that although they were not, the Weather leaders should have been paid by the FBI for doing its work for it. He then moved on to denounce violence as a tactic, or even its discussion. Besides the moral arguments, violence inevitably led to isolation and invited repression from a government which has more weapons for such now in era of the “War on Terrorism” than it did back then. Rudd closed by pointing out that the earlier SDS surged from a minor organization to a major one when it took the lead of the student movement against the war in Vietnam. The new SDS should do the same in relation to the student movement against the war in Iraq. In this vein, he advocated counter recruitment, support of GI resisters and outreach through militancy. He also advocated SDS autonomy, not yoked to MDS.

Rudd was followed by Columbia Black history professor, Manning Marable, who gave the most riveting speech of the day. It was a sweeping analysis of the nature of the problem we face, globalized capitalism supported by American imperialism. A principal manifestation of this is “globalized aparteid”, the racialized domination by the primarily white developed world over billions of non-white poor. This system is a manifestation of the ideology of neo-liberalism, which he characterized domestically by the evisceration of the public sector by privatization and the elimination of government regulation and services. The war in Iraq is not an aberration foisted upon us by radical neo-conservatives. Debt growth and declining profits from domestic enterprises have forced US capitalists to export capital in search of lower waged labor and lack of environmental regulation, leading to a more aggressive foreign policy. In brief, neo-liberalism fosters more aggressive imperialism, leading to US troops currently being stationed in 59 different countries. Neo-liberalism also leads to “new racial domain of the 21st century” that includes mass unemployment in non-white communities (in reality 40-50%) and the mass incarceration of excess non-white workers (“warehousing redundant labor”) and their consequent disenfranchisement, over a million citizens including a third of all adult black males in Mississippi. A related manifestation is the prison-industrial complex with 2.3 million now behind bars in the US, the highest rate of incarceration of any nation in the world. Add those on parole or probation and the figure reaches 6 million. Most new prisons are located in Republican congressional districts where non-voting prisoners are counted as residents, resulting in those districts receiving more government money and increased representation. What is to be done? Opposition to imperialism in foreign policy and defense and expansion of the public sphere domestically. Marable’s analysis was comprehensive and his presentation dramatic. He rocked.

Marable was followed by a panel of New York area SDS members. They denounced the “egotistical” bickering among MDS members and listed their needs from MDS: mentorship, money, professional skills (e.g., lawyers) and networking. These four young representatives spoke with confidence and authority.

After lunch, Barbara Ehrenreich spoke, primarily about her new book, “Dancing in the Streets.” This concerned the evolution of the “carnivalization” of demonstrations, involving masking, music, theater, costuming, etc. These festive elements enhance solidarity, foster individual creativity and help us visualize a better world. This was an interesting point, but I would have liked hearing a broader perspective and something about her hopes for MDS. Ehrenreich was followed by Judith Malina, co-founder of the Living Theater and the day’s last speaker. Not surprisingly, her presentation was poetic, spontaneous, flamboyantly dramatic and charmingly brilliant, reading a wonderful poem written for the occasion. She urged the incorporation of the arts in our struggle.

At this point, we proceeded to the business part of the conference. This included the approval of the members of the MDS Board. Probably 20 of the 50 were on hand. Noam Chomsky, Angela Davis and others had sent messages of solidarity. Those on hand spoke of their qualifications and desire to participate. All were approved. In addition, Al Haber was added to the Board. Then Board members present voted on their chairperson and 3 vice-chairs. Manning Marable and Al Haber were nominated for chairperson with Marable winning by near acclamation.

There were 5 nominations for Vice Chairpersons. The winners were Boston historian Paul Buhle, radical hip hop artist, the 30ish Jessie Zurel, and Judith Malina. Haber was nominated for this position too, but came in last. He had been seriously damaged by his dissident supporters. Having Manning Marable assume this role was a huge rush. This man is brilliant, dynamic and African-American. SDS never had non-white leadership. I spoke with him afterwards about opposition to the “war on drugs” being an obvious component of his analysis. He emphatically agreed, greeted me as “comrade” and inspired me with his genuineness, warmth and energy.

Later, I asked Bruce Rubenstein, a Connecticut product liability lawyer who was once in the Weather Underground, about the level of commitment of the absent Board members. He said all were committed but the level varied. Some would speak to us and for us if given enough advance notice, for example Chomsky, who is generally booked up to 2 years in advance. Others would do committee work as well. He also pointed out that none of them, Zinn, Davis, Ferlingetti, et al, would be willing to join any other political organization.

In sum, I may have wished for better attendance – some, including Gavan Duffy, couldn’t make it because of miserable weather throughout the Northeast. And the dissidents didn’t exactly enhance the vibe. But at the end of the day I felt elated.

Alice Embree, Sally and I then left with Mark and Marla Rudd, Tom Good, Starhawk and others for dinner at the famous and funky Katz’s New York deli. Later, we walked over to a “party” at the Yippie center on Bleeker Street that turned out to be an over extended rap on some new drug made from an African root they were advocating as a cure for hard drug addiction. That was followed by a deafening punk rock band. We left. But Haber was there and bridges seemed to be being repaired.

What can MDS become? What you make it. Shortly, I’ll give you my take on what that could be.

David Hamilton

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Bill Richardson for Obama's Veep? : Two Views

The nation's only Hispanic governor, New Mexico's Bill Richardson, formally announced his endorsement of Barack Obama Friday, March 21, in Portland, Oregon. Photo by Brandon / AP.
Richardson is 'a vicious politician' and an 'opportunist'
By Mark Rudd / The Rag Blog / August 4, 2008

As a citizen of New Mexico who has had to suffer through six miserable years of Bill Richardson's governorship, I could write a book on what a vicious politician and person he is--a true opportunist scumbag. His administration has been thoroughly incompetent, even compared to that of the libertarian jerk who preceded him, with precisely one sole purpose: to get Richardson elected President. As Secretary of Energy he proved himself to be absolutely without principle, reversing his previous positions and supporting every single nuclear initiative as well as persecuting Wen Ho Lee. His reputation as an environmentalist has no substance behind it. His sole principle iin politics and life is Bill Richardson.

Outside New Mexico, Hispanics don't recognize him at all. his showing in the primaries was insignificant. Plus, he's really ugly. He takes a terrible picture due to his weight problem, though his recent beard has helped a bit. He also has a terrible Bill Clinton-type womanizing reputation. If Obama selects him as VP he'll surely bring down the ticket. I'd be surprised if the Obama people don't already know this. They probably offered him a sinecure like UN ambassador, where he was under Clinton, in return for his switching over during the primary campaign.

Bill Richardson has the 'best judgement and the best experience' to be Obama's running mate
By Michael Alan Dover / The Rag Blog / August 4, 2008

...Since Iowa I've been convinced that Gov. Richardson is the best VP candidate and am still convinced. It's simply a matter of who has the best judgement and the best experience. It's not what part of the country they are from, what states they can bring, what demographics are needed. And it's not about having a Governor on the ticket. It's who inspires trust. And, yes, name recognition is important, and Richardson has that.

What is really amazing is how none of the media mention him, as if two people of color on the ticket would somehow sink it. I don't agree. It's not just change people want. It's honesty and fairness. To deny the VP slot to the clearly most qualified potential candidate because he would be person of color #2 on the ticket would not be fair.

I recall well the Democratic convention which nominated Sen. Lieberman. It was electrifying that a Jew had been nominated, but what was clear to me from the TV version at least was that the most electrified delegates of all were the African-American delegates! They were clearly inspired and excited by the realization that once the religion barrier had finally been broken (first a Catholic, now a Jew and now doubt one year a Muslim such as the Representative from Minnesota), the race barrier would also soon be broken. I recall well and have an MP3 of the very moving concluding prayer from that convention, by an African-American pastor from Arkansas, who went out of the way to include ecumenical content with a strong focus on Old Testament conent. I've posted it here.

The phrase "in the City of our God" refers to Los Angeles...

As we ready ourselves for the 2008 convention and consider our political commitments, regardless of our religious views I think it is helpful to hear this.

Now we are on the verge of breaking that very race barrier to the Democratic nomination. Nominating Gov. Richardson would not be about further breaking that race barrier. It would be about selecting the best candidate. But imagine the degree to which people of any religion or any culture or "race" would be electrified by the realization that the political process in this great democracy is potentially open to all.

[Both Mark Rudd and Michael Alan Dover are affiliated with Progressives for Obama.]


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A. Embree : 1968 Columbia Student Revolt Remembered in New York

Mark Rudd and Grace (Linda) LeClair, vets of the 1968 Columbia occupation, at 40th anniversary of the uprising in New York. Photo by Alice Embree / The Rag Blog.
Columbia 1968: The View From Texas
By Alice Embree / The Rag Blog / May 3, 2008

[Alice Embree is an Austin activist, writer and Ragblogger. She played a major role in Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in the sixties and seventies, both in Austin and New York, and wrote for underground papers Rat and The Rag.]

In April 1968, Columbia University erupted in protest. Students occupied five buildings. I was there. I wasn’t a Columbia student, but I was there. I worked with the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) and caught a briefcase full of documents tossed from the second floor Low Library office of Grayson Kirk’s office that were re-printed in RAT newspaper and used to document the NACLA pamphlet, Who Rules Columbia?

I was at Columbia again April 24-27 for events commemorating the fortieth anniversary of the student uprising. The 1968 occupations were motivated by two major demands - to stop a Morningside Heights gym expansion and sever ties with the Institute for Defense Analysis (IDA). Antiwar passion and black liberation struggle were a potent mix. When the police cleared the buildings forty years ago, they arrested 700 students and left 150 injured. It was a pivotal event for students in a year marked by historic events.

1968 began with the Tet Offensive demonstrating the strength of the Vietnamese national liberation resistance. On April 4, 1968, Martlin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis and cities went up in flames. The Columbia strike occurred just weeks before a general strike in Paris. On June 5th Robert Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles. In August, tanks rolled into Prague and the National Guard was called up in Chicago where antiwar protestors massed outside the Democratic Convention and were attacked by Chicago police. A student uprising in Mexico City was brutally suppressed in the October 1968.

The Columbia gathering drew several hundred alumni of the protests with their nametags identifying the buildings they occupied: “Hamilton Hall, ’68,” “Mathematics, ’68,” etc. People found old friends and comrades, often needing to be prompted to reconcile gray hair or balding heads with the faces of youth.

On Thursday, the first night, there was a reception followed by a panel on Columbia and the World. Tom Hayden (Mathematics) recalled that year as did Black student activist William Sales (Hamilton Hall). Mark Kurlansky, author of 1968: The Year That Rocked the World, and Victoria de Grasso spoke of the world events that year.

Friday morning, Michael Klare spoke. He was a graduate student in Art History at Columbia when events steered him into research on defense contractors. I worked with him at NACLA. He is the author of Blood and Oil, a professor and defense correspondent for The Nation.

Klare detailed the lessons learned from Vietnam by the Defense Department: to use an all volunteer economic draft, to rely on technology, speed and fire-power, to attempt to reduce U.S. casualties and shorten the military engagement, to outsource military services and carefully control media coverage. He said that Defense Department brass have been extremely critical of the political bungling that has prolonged the military engagement. Many in the military see this as “dishonoring the commitment” of the servicemen and women.

The Friday morning panel also included Tom Engelhardt of the TomDispatch blog and Callie Maidhof, a Columbia student antiwar activist who spoke of the five days of antiwar action undertaken to commemorate the five years of the war. For thirteen hours each day, Columbia antiwar activists read the names of the dead – the known Iraqi dead and the U.S. dead. A gong was sounded for each death. On April 23rd, antiwar activists “hooded” Columbia’s iconic Alma Mater sculpture. With its face covered by black cloth, it appeared as an eerie reminder of Abu Ghraib torture victims.

The first Friday afternoon panel was on Feminist Legacies of 1968. It was a poignant reminder that 1968 preceded the women’s liberation movement. Women who were at Barnard and Columbia forty years ago were often the sandwich-makers, not the speakers. Although 250 women were arrested, their names are not well known. The full effect of the women’s movement can be seen, however, in the current generation of activists where women take leadership roles. The feminist panel included poets, professors, authors and activists. Ti-Grace Atkinson, Rosalyn Baxandall, Elizabeth Diggs, Christine Clark-Evans, Grace (Linda) LeClair, Sharon Olds, Catharine Stimpson participated. They recounted the early days of women’s liberation organizing – picketing the New York Times for gender-segregated want ads, participating in New York Red Stockings and WITCH and the founding of National Organization for Women (NOW).

One of the speakers, Grace (Linda) LeClair, a co-founder of the Calvert Social Investment Fund and Executive Director of NARAL in New Hampshire, was a Barnard student in 1966. She lived off-campus with her boyfriend. When a newspaper reported outed her, she was called before the Barnard president. LeClair was expelled and never graduated. Her boyfriend suffered no such fate, graduating from Columbia.

An afternoon panel on Political Action and Official Response included a judge, law professors and a criminal defense attorney who were veterans of the 1968 protest as well as Lee Bollinger, the President of Columbia. West Harlem organizers infuriated by Columbia’s current expansion plans interrupted Bollinger. A third afternoon panel addressed Race at Columbia, Then and Now, with writer Thulani Davis moderating. It included Manning Marable, a Columbia professor, and two student activists, one representing the Black Student Organization and the other Lucha. Johanna Ocana of Lucha became an activist when the Young Republicans invited a speaker from the Minuteman and students, many of immigrant parents, organized protests.

In the evening a lengthy multi-media event described what happened in April 1968. This was before the era of instant communication, the internet and cell phones with cameras. As pictures projected on huge screens, the occupation story was recounted by Nancy Biberman, Raymond Brown, Leon Denmark, Larry Frazier, Robert Friedman, Stuart Gedal, Juan Gonzalez, Michelle Patrick, Mark Rudd and others. An assistant to New York’s mayor at the time told his side of the story as well.

On Saturday, there were movies about 1968 shown and a panel on The Legacy of the Student Movement that included Todd Gittlin, now a Columbia University professor, and John McMillian, a Harvard lecturer. At noon, a Harlem contingent marched up Amsterdam Avenue protesting Columbia’s Manhattanville project. Joined by my daughter and brother-in-law we marched on to campus with them. Although the scheduled events continued, I went to only one more: Organizing, Activism, Engagement, Then and Now at which my daughter and I both spoke.

There was an odd disconnect between those passionate times and the scholarly panel discussions organized by alumni participants. Occasionally, the strident voices of Harlem residents who opposed a current Columbia expansion were reminiscent of that earlier time, particularly when they interrupted President Lee Bollinger. Contemporary Columbia antiwar activists and leaders of the Black Student Organization and Lucha, brought the present tense into discussion.

Many panels were dominated by male voices with credentials – professors and writers. When people lined up for questions, they frequently delivered polemics. It reminded me of being a young Texan in New York on a campus where the elite had been educated to believe they were the center of the known universe. There wasn’t much space for participatory democracy in the rarified Ivy League atmosphere forty years later. Not until the final panel that I attended – an event billed as an intergenerational dialogue – was there a structure that encouraged exchange. A table with microphones set in a circle allowed people to come and go (although some had to be encouraged to speak and then leave). There were more women’s voices and the familiar edge of now. Here, the younger generation showed what is easy to miss: the struggle continues.

Rally during recent Columbia occupation reunion. Photo by Alice Embree / The Rag Blog.
The Rag Blog

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The MDS Convergence

Report on the MDS Chicago Convergence

The MDS Chicago Convergence took place at Loyola University last weekend, Nov 11-12. The following are some impressions of David Hamilton, Jim Retherford and Thorne Dreyer who attended together representing Austin MDS. Tim Mahoney met us there and also attended part of the event.

Positives. It was a great opportunity to network with veteran movement activists. In various workshops we heard from Carl Davidson, Kathy Kelly (Voices for Creative Non-Violence), Bill Ayers, Mark Rudd, Paul Buhle, Penelope and Franklin Rosemont, Mike James, Al Haber, Bob Brown (ex-SNCC) and several others. Most of the above were major figures in sixties SDS. Haber was the co-author of The Port Huron Statement. There was also lots of unstructured time for hanging out at Mike James's Heartland Cafe with many of these folks plus an impressive group of SDS attendees, mostly from the Chicago area, with whom we had some productive dialogue. These interactions were inspirational and informative. They sparked several new ideas for possible activities and directions to pursue in Austin. Example: Chicago antiwar activists got a resolution on the city ballot to support immediate withdrawal of US forces from Iraq and the cut off of funding. It won with over 800,000 votes.

The reputation of Austin MDS as a most exemplary chapter, along with NYS-Staten Island, was enhanced. (The Rag also received substantial attention, once being referred to as that "famous" underground paper from Austin.) We had the most active chapter representation. There were more people from Chicago, but most of them were activists who are working in different areas of the movement, rather than in a formal MDS chapter. An evolved MDS likely would be a combination of such folk, with major involvement on other movement fronts, with activists whose primary commitment is to MDS building.

In addition, we (David, Jim and Thorne) had the opportunity to work closely together - in some cases, altogether too closely given that our cheap hotel room had only two queen beds and Jim sleeps with a machine. The trip gave us the opportunity to kick around a lot of ideas at length. We'll share some of those ideas in an upcoming email.

On the down side, there were only about 100 people total participating, mainly from Chicago, but also from NYC, Austin, Baltimore, Florida and a few other places, including several local SDS folks. This reflects organizational infancy. We're not yet a national organization. That means, like SDS of old, the action will be local and the national affiliation will be largely symbolic, but useful for such purposes as the positives listed above.

The famed MDS "Board" (Chomsky, et al) is very largely window dressing. Four of them (out of about 50) were there and three of those have full plates in other movement activities that seem to take precedence over building MDS. We can't say if the board luminaries lack commitment or if MDS hasn't found appropriate ways to utilize them. If MDS is to develop into an important element in the US left, it will be from the ground up, not from the top down. This is really not a negative so much as a realization, but more national structure and direction should clearly be a goal.

Although this is controversial some felt there was too much "nostalgia", analyzing what happened in 1968 instead of thinking about what we are going to be doing in 2008. Certainly we learned things in the sixties that can contribute to our current work, and that can be shared with others, but we must do so in a manner that is not condescending and focus mainly on the future.

There was talk already of another "convergence" in NYC as soon as January. But we were such an impressive bunch, some began to talk about a "convergence" in Austin in the spring - like the weekend of SXSW just in case folks have a little spare time. We may have oversold the place. A conference in Austin might be a lot of work, but it could be a good way to get new people involved and to reach out to people around the state, thus creating a regional network.

The Chicago Three: David, Jim and Thorne

David Hamilton


I'm sending this from Penelope Rosemont as a supplement to our report on the Chicago MDS Convergence. It gives a lot more information about what actually went on at the meetings. Note to Ragstaff: there's substantial mention of The Rag.

Thorne

In a hectic week for activists in Chicago that included Select Media Festival, Teaching for Social Justice Conference, SNCC commemoration, the Humanities festival, Natl Convention to End the Death Penalty, Commemoration of SOA martyrs, Bob Brown's law suit against the corporations, etc., the Movement for a Democratic Society (MDS) held its national convergence at Loyola University, from November 8 through 11.

Loyola provided fine meeting rooms in a maze-like setting on beautiful Lake Michigan. Thursday night eighty plus people attended Manning Marable's superb talk on South Africa, its increasing impoverishment and stratification caused by the demands of U.S. interests and investments. Marable spoke of the prison industry in the U.S. and observed that 1 in every 5 persons has a prison record. This has led to a mass disenfranchisement of black voters in the south.

Friday night SDSers from the 60s greeted old friends and out-of-town guests at Heartland Café.

Saturday morning was devoted to workshops and discussions. David Roediger discussed the Miserablist character of the University system, its conformism, its corporate character, its total integration into the repressive system, its total inability to function as a place that can expand the idea of freedom. Franklin Rosemont spoke of Surrealism, and its oppositional character, how it arose from the ruins of France after the First World war inspired by Jacques Vache a fellow soldier and close friend of Andre Breton. Kate Khatib drew on the creative side of surrealism. Amanda Armstrong who had organized a show of Exquisite Corpse drawings at heartland café attended. The show was accompanied by a pamphlet that discussed the effects of crisis of capitalism on the human imagination. Paul Buhle talked about the current evolution of the book from the days of the underground comics to today's graphic novels. Buhle is expecting any day the arrival of copies of his graphic novel on SDS. The discussion was fortunate to have present Thorne Dreyer from Austin, Texas who edited the Underground newspaper the Rag for 14 years; Thorne also edited Up Against the Wall, a wall poster/newspaper that SDS published during the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

Peter Linebaugh searched for the roots of our ideas of freedom in the Magna Carta and discussed the basis for his forthcoming book. Our ideas of community and also mutual responsibility come from that historic document. Linebaugh gives it a fresh perspective.

Muhammad Ahmad who had earlier in the day been interviewed by Michael James for Heartland radio did a workshop which centered on the experiences of the Black Movement in the 60s. In 1968 Ahmad then Max Stanford was in jail facing serious charges. He stayed in jail for a year before his attorney was able to get the charges dismissed. Michael Klonsky, Mark Rudd, Bruce Rubenstein, and Penelope Rosemont discussed the implications for the movement of the persecution of black radicals with Ahmed.

Paige Phillips showed a film clip that could be imagined to come from Saturday Night Live Comedy of a real news report on so called lesbian girl gangs terrorizing Memphis teens. It fed the fears of parents but was utterly unbelievable to any thoughtful person. An example of antigay bigotry in the bible belt. Andy Thayer, dynamic spokesman for the Chicago gay community urged solidarity and support for each others concerns and active support of demonstrations. He noted that the demonstrations by the black community against police brutality especially needed our support.

Thomas Good, Bill Ayers, Elaine Brower, Alan Haber, David Hamilton, Devra Morice and others representing New York, Chicago, Austin, Ann Arbor, etc. discussed current forms of popular resistance against the war and then joined by others began a necessary and long needed discussion of the future of MDS. David Hamilton proposed the following founding principles for discussion and consideration.

Formed in Chicago in August 2006, MDS affirmed the Founding Principles:

—the expansion of egalitarian and participatory democracy in politics, economics, and culture.

—the restoration and preservation of the earth's robust ecological health.

—the extension of human rights to include universal healthcare, decent housing, lifelong education, fortifying nutrition, reproductive freedom, and meaningful work.

—the eradication of systems of dominant power and privilege based on identity, including but not limited to race gender, nationality, sexual orientation, ethnicity, disability or religion.

—the growth and development of the commons, the resources that belong to society as a whole.

—the public control of corporate power to meet human needs and the expansion of workers' authority and rights, including the equitable distribution of wealth.

—the rejection of militarism and war and the enhancement of power and authority of international institutions capable of resolving conflict between nations.

—In working for the achievement of these special changes, MDS believes in working in coalition with like-minded others to create an interracial, interethnic, intergenerational and international mass movement.

During mid day, Loyola provided a lavish buffet, coffeee and free parking to the convergence attendees. Many visiting parents were offered the Spartacist newspaper and the Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company catalog. Campus tours got to enjoy the book tables of New World Resource Center and Charles H. Kerr. The Loyola Phoenix ran an ad for the Convergence and an expose of Loyola investments. We would not be surprised if new students chose Loyola because the Convergence made it seem like a lively place.

The afternoon session was held in another building. A bright casual room was filled to capacity and some late comers were turned away because of no seats. An estimate of the audience would probably be 100 plus. The panel on Peace chaired by Kate Khatib and Katy Hogan began with Kathy Kelly recounting her experiences in an Irish Court when arrested for Peace activities. After talking of the many innocent victims of war especially children, she pointedly asked the audience "What will it take to make you stop the war?"

Carl Davidson explained the political means of ending the war by cutting the funding to the war budget and urged voting for peace candidates. He also noted there was plenty of room for work on Civil Disobedience, GI resistance, and that a popular upsurge of sentiment against the war was necessary. Ahmed who currently has a book published by Kerr Co., We Will Return in the Whirlwind, spoke about the effects of war and poverty on the black community.

The 1968 Confidential Panel was chaired by Beau Golwitzer. Michael James spoke on the Berkeley Revolt, his early work with JOIN and community organizing. Michael Klonsky recounted the first days of his arrival in Chicago as National Secretary of SDS as the West side erupted in flames and fury after the assassination of Martin Luther King. He mentioned that none of us expected to live to see 30. Klonsky has a forthcoming book on those days.

Franklin Rosemont spoke of his meeting with Andre Breton and how that inspired him to begin a surrealist group in Chicago. Rosemont spent time in the streets and helping at the SDS National office during the days of the Democratic Convention. Bob Brown of SNCC recounted some of the national and international dimensions of those years. The contacts with the Zegakuran, German SDS, and French groups. Penelope Rosemont who worked in the SDS office in 1968 speculated on the importance of history, that remembering our history will effect what happens in the future; that we must examine those days, what we did, how we organized to be able to develop new strategies and avoid old mistakes; support a movement with a large left spectrum; support young anarchists in their efforts and not abandon our utopian visions. In the audience were many who had played a significant role in 1968–Mark Rudd, Thorne Dreyer, David Hamilton, Wayne Heimback, etc. After a short period of questions the discussion moved to the Red Line Tap to continue in a more casual atmosphere. Mark Rudd mentioned that there are significant indications that an attempt at recouperation of 1968 and the rebels of '68 is just around the corner as Universities and Museums plan their commemorations. This sort of recouperation happened in Amsterdam quite a while ago as exProvos unexpectedly ended up with state power. It is indeed a concern of ours. We want ours struggles and the story of our struggles preserved, but we do not want it contained, sanitized, consigned to the permanent irrelevancy of something from another time, another place. We had only just begun to formulate and imagine what needed to be done in the urgency of those years. There have been stunning technological revolutions since the 60s, but the social revolution that we envisioned, the vision of equality and freedom is in many ways is further away now than it was then. What is to be done?

The Session on Sunday began at 10am. Amy Partridge began with perhaps the most thoughtful and theoretical document on the concerns of the conference, it considered the attitudes toward themselves and to power that College students and young people have developed in recent times. She argued that most students think that the powers-that-be will recognize and redress their grievances without much effort on their part. Further that they already identify themselves as activists because they donate to or march for AIDS or breast cancer. They do not identify themselves with the struggles of the oppressed, they do not see themselves as oppressed. Partridge argued that we are seeing the end of identity politics and that if we can somehow find and address the concerns of young people today a new movement has real possibilities. This summary does not do justice to the paper or the discussion that followed. Bruce Rubenstein discussed unknown slave revolts in the US before the civil war and the legal evolution of rights for blacks and people of color. Kate Khatib talked of building a community around Red Emmas Bookstore in Baltimore where social services of the city are failing the needs of the people. Tamara Smith spoke about organizing another gathering. Gale Ahrens reported on the vast investment in the prison industry which constitutes the reinstitution of slavery. Penny Pixler of the IWW spoke about some parallels between today and the 1960s. Young SDSers from Columbia College, Art Institute, University of Chicago spoke about what they were doing, what their concerns were and how the new, I can only call it hyper-repression, effects the high schools. When asked why they identified themselves with SDS, one of them quipped "It's got great name recognition!" And I must say we should be proud of that; that SDS has come after 40 years to mean a fighting organization; an organization of resistance; one that never sold out. Alan Haber, a founder of the original SDS was there, listened and contributed his passion for peace and justice to the discussion. Someone expressed how exhilarating it was to be a room full of people who were really serious about social change. And it was! Everyone participated. Penelope Rosemont added "if you kept doing what you are doing, we are going to have a movement!" We called it quits about 2pm as everyone was hungry. Most of us walked from Loyola to Heartland Café where we again dined on some good and healthful food and parted ways. All in all thinking that some bridges had been built, some good thinking had been done, and that we had a fine core of people.

Penelope Rosemont

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