New, young, and fire-d up. No hiding in the past and no
old baggage here. Burn, baby, burn and set the whole world on fire.
/R
-----Original Message-----
From:
change-links@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:change-links@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]On
Behalf Of John Johnson
Sent: Wednesday, April 26, 2006 5:03 PM
To:
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Subject: [change-links] [SDS-MDS Los Angeles]
OBSERVATIONS ON NE SDS
REGIONAL CONFERENCE
Begin the Revolution
Now!
This appears on the A -Info website. Don't know who the
author is
(en) US, Reflections on the First SDS* Northeast
Conference
Date Tue, 25 Apr 2006 20:39:15
+0300
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
<snip>
Aside from Robert Ross's poor choice of a venue to grind his
axe, the elders
in attendance who offered their wisdom were each
wonderful and unique.
Bernadine Dohrn, showing her inherent
female supremacy by taking the high
road and declining to use a
captive audience to settle scores from 37 years
ago, was eloquent,
down to earth and insightful. But I think the speaker who
stuck out
in my, and probably everyone else's minds, was Carl Oglesby.
He
began his remarks by saying, "What have I done to deserve
this?" He expressed
regrets and doubts about the past, and not a
dry eye was to be found when he
talked about the Townhouse
explosion that claimed three of his friends.
"Beautiful
friends," was a term he used a lot. But perhaps the
most
important part of his remarks was a story he told about being sent
to
Cuba by Dohrn, in the hopes of rekindling his revolutionary
fervor.
When he got there, he was shown cane field after cane field. But
at
one point they came upon an irrigation system. The small river
running
through the field had been dammed, but there was a huge
crack in it. The next
dam down the river wasn't holding water at
all. But the one after that was
working quite well. The tour guide
explained, everyone who knew how to make
dams left for Florida, so
they had to figure it out for themselves. Carl
finished his story and
remarks by saying that that's what revolution is
about. It cuts
through all ideology and dogma: You have to learn what
you
don't know how to do. My two-dimensional words hardly do his
any
justice.
During the workshop sessions, I went to both discussions
on
SDS's structure. We started with a brief introduction to the
original
organization's structure, and its strengths and
weaknesses. We then made a
list of things we wanted out of a
national organization. We listed things
like coordination, skill
sharing, resources (propaganda, training, funding),
basic
administrative, and perhaps most importantly in our minds,
was
security. Our concern was that if SDS continues to explode in the
way
it has, which we consensed that it probably will, we might be
unable to
handle that, much in the way the latter day organization
could not. This
might manifest in administrative duties becoming
overwhelmed, as well as
infiltration by the State and by people
whose ideologies are hostile to our
own values. One brother said it
well, that as soon as we become successful,
we would have to
assume that that will happen. The best thing to do about it
is damage
control.
This process of drawing our needs overflowed a
little bit into the
next workshop session, and not long into it, we began the
task of
discussing how those things ought to be provided. A core
consensus
was on what we didn't want: orders from above, and orders
from
adults. This brought up the question of how we define membership.
If
we want to be an organization of young activists to assert ourselves
in
society as well as the Left, how do we reconcile that not all youth
are
students, and not all students are youth? After we fiddled around
with the
concept a bit, I suggested that instead of having some sort
of cut-off point,
we ought to use guidelines when appointing people
to offices and committees,
keeping in mind that we want this to be a
youth organization controlled by
youth for the benefit of youth.
The question of how to assign tasks, such
as the ones described
above, was left for the most part unresolved. Some felt
that some
level of executive power was necessary in order to keep
the
organization efficient and coherent. Others, however, believed
that
assigning people these tasks did not constitute electing people
to
positions of decision-making. This view was reinforced by the idea
that
most information that we wanted to be distributed to the rank
and file could
easily be posted on the internet for easy viewing.
Myself and a coupe others,
however, recognized that while people
assigned tasks were not in a position
to make policy decisions or
steer the organization in one direction or
another, there were small,
everyday decisions that person would have to make,
many of which
would be unintentional. For example, how is a male in that
position
going to respond to a request from a female, as compared to
another
male? How is the official going to utilize his control of information
to
influence and manipulate the organization? And most obviously,
what do
we do about an official who just plain doesn't do her or
his job? So, there
needs to be some recognition that with every
position of responsibility,
there also comes power, and that power
must be checked, and the person kept
accountable to the
membership. This can be done in a number of ways, either
through
a system of checks and balances via other organization
bodies,
and/or through direct recalls by the membership (which I believe
is
preferable).
This of course made me realize that the whole task of
building a
national structure that remained democratic without
becoming
inefficient or weak would be an evolving one that would require us
to
study intensely the experiments and projects of the past and today
in
the practice of participatory democracy and power from below.
I
recommend that a very, very bare bones structure be put in place
this
summer at the founding convention. Something that can fulfill
the
most immediate needs of the chapters, but also leaves a great deal
of
room for revision and addition. I cannot imagine having a
mature
structural identity before two or three year's time. Very few of
us
are on the same page in terms of an understanding of power and
process,
and we need to develop some sort of collective memory of
our own tradition,
even if we do not come to the same conclusions
based on it.
The
conference's call for SDS chapters to support the May Day
general strike is a
clear indicator that we are on the right track, and
we have a solid idea of
where our loyalties are: to the downtrodden.
Civil rights
are still a core part of SDS's values, and direct action
even more so. I
think SDS has unprecedented potential. We can,
quite literally, change the
world. We are young, we are informed,
and godamnit, we are right. And
something that has everybody
rightfully worried, from Leslie Cagan to Brian
Becker to Bill
O'Reilly to Dick Cheney: we are many, and growing every
day.
Look out motherfuckers: SDS is
back.
===================================
* SDS is a US
antiauthoritarian anticapitalist network
in
building
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