An Introduction to Capital's Newest Club: Students for a Democratic Society

by Matt Laughlin
Today’s crises reflect a central lack of democracy in our day-to-day. More now than ever in the modern era, we lack control over the decisions which shape our world and our lives. We find ourselves in a destructive and useless war which we opposed in the majority long before it began. Many are saturated by wealth, while nearby, millions are caught in a cycle of poverty and subjected to crime, disease and natural disaster. What does it say about our nation’s priorities when we allow thousands of our most poor and oppressed people to drown in the floodwaters of the Gulf Coast? Surely this is not a nation where we, the people are responsible for such mistakes. Why on earth would we, the poor and working class majority subject ourselves to such horrors. To be sure, it must be the fault of those who have a direct say in our nation’s affairs – those who have the most wealth in our society.

Over 30 years ago, America was reeling from the tragedy of Vietnam, and we said, “Never again.” What changed? Did we all consciously decide it was time to give it another go? If not, then why do we find ourselves here once more? The only possible explanation can be that we no longer have as great a voice in these decisions as we would need in order to avoid such changes in direction.

So what happened?

Civic institutions such as community groups, labor unions, community churches, student unions and local political organizations have all taken major hits in funding and membership in recent decades. These grassroots bodies form the basis through which regular people effectively influence the government by exercising their strength in numbers and putting their collective pressure on those in high places of power.

Regular people have lost power at seemingly every level of their existence: the workplace, the community and the campus. And so it is little wonder that no matter how unpopular the policies of the government are, or who we vote for, or what the polls say, our voices are ignored and marginalized. Students for a Democratic Society is an organization with the goal of renewing the democratic tradition among students and, by extension, the workplace, community and society at large. Being a fairly community-oriented school, Capital provides an excellent forum to spread our ideas far beyond our campus. It is also perhaps one of the most free and open institutions in the city, allowing us an excellent opportunity to reach a broad cross section of the people who currently have the least say in this society, with ideas that are otherwise quite marginal.

SDS seeks to utilize creative democratic process in order to empower its membership and the world around it, coupled with innovative and uncompromising action methods. Below is an excerpt by Brendan Dunn of SDS in Olympia, Washington, who was involved in an inspiring campaign to directly oppose the war in Iraq while practicing participatory democracy.

Olympia SDS held its first meeting at Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA on May 17th. The fifteen students who attended the meeting had no idea that within a week's time, SDSers would join the community in direct action against the war machine.

A call was put out on May 22 that convoys from the Army's first Stryker Brigade Combat Team stationed at Fort Lewis were spotted driving through the streets of Olympia to the city's port. The Stryker Brigade, named after the vehicle of choice for the brigade which is a combination of a tank and a hummer, is currently embarking on its second deployment to Iraq. The moment I heard about the convoys rolling through town, I rode my bike to the port entrance. When I spotted a convoy coming towards the port I walked in front of it, forcing the entire convoy of over ten vehicles to stop, if only momentarily. I was arrested and brought to jail. The actions against the war machine that would engulf the ensuing weeks had begun.

The first day of protests saw a few dozen people come out in the streets. Four resisters from Tacoma SDS came for some time. As the word spread the numbers grew over the following days. On the second day, a total of six people were arrested - one when he tried to lock the port's entrance and the others when they blockaded a convoy. Of the six arrested, two were SDSers and one was a Vietnam War veteran. A few of the arrestees were excessively bruised by the pigs and repeatedly thrown on top of a squad car. The city government and city jail were momentarily shut down for "security reasons" when port resisters came to demand the release of their comrades. Everyone was eventually released that day. These were the first of many arrests.

Almost every day a meeting was held to discuss direct action, tactics and media. Usually, attendance at the meeting numbered at thirty or forty and the meetings were conducted in a genuinely participatory and democratic way. Affinity groups were formed at meetings, tactics were discussed and strategies and potential outcomes were covered at length. A group calling itself Port Militarization Resistance was established to articulate the aims of the resistance and create a resolutely anti-imperialist and internationalist response to the port's militarization. A diversity of tactics were developed at these meetings and later materialized, along with more spontaneous events, in the streets. Some of the tactics of protest included flyering, banner dropping, critical mass,[mass bike rides to block traffic] establishing tent cities and rendezvous points, vigils, blockades, marches, community outreach and maintaining a 24/7 watch on the port.

As the democratic fervor of the meetings increased so too did police surveillance. A house that became defacto headquarters for a while was the target of around the clock police and Coast Guard mobile K9 Unit surveillance. Resisters were followed by pigs to and from the house and a number of resisters were confronted by undercovers on the street who made futile attempts to extract information from them. A painfully obvious undercover federal agent was spotted at the port later in the week, no doubt recording our conversations.
The next large wave of arrests came on Wednesday May 24th. Human chains were propped up on the main road leading to the port entrance. After halting the convoy for quite some time, nine people, including two SDSers, in the first human chain were arrested and carted off to jail. A second human chain ran to the entrance of the port when the convoy made a detour. The detour occurred because Ultimate Fighter [UFC] and anarchist Jeff "The Snowman" Monson refused to move; and the pigs, not surprisingly, refused to move him. The second human chain was created by people linking arms through PVC pipes. Thurston County Sheriffs eventually broke the chain apart by pushing, dragging, pulling the hair of and strangling resisters. After over an hour of preventing the convoy from entering the port, the chains were finally broken. However, the convoys stopped coming for the day. Word leaked out from a Stryker Brigade soldier that his daily security briefings were prolonged from two hours to four because of the resisters' actions.

Ultimately, the military convoy did set sail, but not without the inspiration of a great number of people to become active in antiwar activism and greatly slowing down the operation. The Olympia actions provide a wonderful example for all of us concerned with the war in Iraq. If we were to utilize tactics like this on a national level, we would be able to finally force the government to put an end to this destructive, useless war.

SDS has also been organizing around specifically student issues, most recently in Athens, Ohio. Below is another excerpt from Joshua Russell’s piece on a campaign he supported there.

The Ohio University campus has been rocked this year by a decidedly anti-democratic, unaccountable administration, pushing unpopular policies without any student input whatsoever. “Free Speech Zones” on campus attempt to shut out discourse and protest. Arbitrary fees around popular student parties and holidays, the sudden cuts of Athens Varsity Sports teams, and indulgent pay bonuses for Administrators have left students feeling alienated and without control of their college. Ohio University is being run like a corporation rather than an educational institution.

SDS has risen up to advocate for student syndicalism [unionism] and a radical vision of a democratic university, and built an impressive coalition in the process. The SDS free speech demonstration on Friday, Feb 2nd, was attended not just by activists, but students most activists groups wouldn’t think to try to organize – including athletes and Frat boys.

I was invited to come to OU in Athens by their SDS chapter and the umbrella activist group InterAct, to do workshops, trainings, and other action support, both as an SDSer and also as an organizer from Rainforest Action Network (RAN). Trainings with SDS ranged from sustainable organization building to campaign strategy, while I got to connect with InterAct about collaborating on a few RAN-related projects including shutting down a corporation called TXU building dirty coal fired power plants (but that is a separate entry entirely).

We woke the morning of the demo to a new blanket of snow coating the campus. It was beautiful. We met in a nearby coffee shop early to tie up loose ends. Somehow a PBS news crew found us an hour early and interviewed Olivia and Sarah.

The snow was falling as students gathered around the civil war monument – an area NOT in a free speech zone. A student read the plaque outside the monument - one that discussed liberties that we’re supposed to have in this country, and about 150 students gathered around the SDS banner hanging from the monument.

Initially, energy seemed low. Some folks didn’t even want to chant. I soon realized this was a good thing; about 90% of the people there had likely never been to a demonstration before. Despite the lack of racial diversity, in other respects the diversity of students there was staggering. SDS managed to mobilize a wide cross section of campus, including students with a wide range of interests and backgrounds - people who would have never come out to a demonstration if it weren’t for Athens SDS’ strategy to simply be relevant.

After the president of the Graduate Student Union spoke, Will Klatt gave a speech about the corporatization of our universities.I was also invited to speak about Free Speech Zones…After which I convinced folks that chanting can be fun and it doesn’t make you a hippy.

Rosemary Esch announced SDS’ demands on the administration…And Dylan spoke about SDS being inspired by Malcolm X and organizing students AS students. People were fired up and marched to the president’s office. Energy was high, people were dancing and chanting and whoopin’ and hollerin’. We reached the chief of police and demanded entrance...And got it.

The cop actually turned out to be a pretty nice guy. Most of his background in stopping “civil disturbance” had been shutting down KKK rallies, so he seemed pretty down that we were actually trying to do something positive. Always important to remember to try to get inside the head of the police if you confront them - on campuses at least, they usually just don’t want to look bad in front of their bosses. If you can challenge their power and authority and get what you want, while still making it so they can play it off to their superior like they had control over the situation, then not only do you win and alter the power dynamics, but you usually eliminate the chance of arrest.

When we found out the president was in hiding, we decided to have a spokescouncil to see what to do next. [Spokesouncils are large meetings representing large numbers of people, utilizing democratic mechanisms, such as the instant recall of representatives by those they are representing in order to keep them accountable to the majority]

Strategically, it was useful for a lot of reasons. Not only did we want to democratically decide what to do next, but it helped all the participants in the demo - people with very different backgrounds and experience levels in activism - feel ownership over the march. Part of the strategy of the demo was to engage and activate people as much as possible. It worked (I’ll explain how in a minute).

We decided to march to a meeting of Vision Ohio - where administrators were proposing additions for the campus to business leaders, without student input.

We danced…And went inside the new student building and shook things up…And tracked down the Dean.

A student issued the demands…And he pinkey-swore Sarah that they would be responded to by the president before the deadline that SDS issued.

Afterwards we found out where the Vision Ohio meeting was, had a spokescouncil, and headed down there. The cop asked us to not be disruptive, and we thought that was appropriate. We pinkey-swore that we wouldn’t, and we kept our end of the bargain. Tactically, it was a great move, as in any action you need to make sure to exit on your own terms. We had already gotten what we wanted, and we decided to push it further - but if we had ended up getting kicked out it wouldn’t have been useful to us at all. It would have killed the energy and disheartened all the new folks involved. Instead we just ate all the cookies and soda at the Vision Ohio meeting and did interviews with lots of press.

…

At the end, we pushed that idea even further. We announced that we were going to have a strategy session workshop, and it wasn’t just for SDS - everyone was invited to come shape SDS’ strategy. If SDS is supposed to be building a student movement, their vision and strategy has gotta be shaped by real students, not just a small section of them. We wanted it as participatory as possible.

I was asked to facilitate the training/workshop. Some of the best ideas came from people who had not only never thought strategically before, but had never thought about activism period before. In the session we identified clear concepts about what it means to strategize campaigns – differentiated between campaigning for change or simply protesting it, between specific goals, broader vision, and the difference between being guided by a strategy rather than a random assortment of tactics. We identified power holders in the administration, how they were related to other power holders, what their points of weakness were, and how to leverage our own power to target them. We identified what the different kinds of tactics are, how to build and escalate them, and brainstormed on how to use them to connect with allies, be accountable to other students and student groups, build power, and win concrete victories each step of the way.

Perhaps more than any other national organization today, SDS is doing the hard work of building a new society. We have 245 chapters at the high school, college and community levels, 2000 members and a wealth of knowledge from this generation and generations past.

On Monday, February 26^th at 3:00 PM, Capital SDS will be having its first meeting in room 708, the Student Activities conference room. There, I will be elaborating more on the ideas of SDS and what activities we might take part in. Please come to participate in whatever way you wish. For more information, contact me at 860.416.4575, email circleamatt@gmail.com, or see our website at www.newsds.org/ccc.