While this was over fifty years ago, I remember attending the 1969 National SDS Convention in Chicago. I witnessed and only a foot apart in our circle, Peter Camejo debating Bob Avakian near the entrance of that armory. I was in fact placed with one other in charge of security, to keep PLP from the front rows, to prevent their storming the stage or interfering with those speaking, several feet above those sitting in the chairs. I heard Fred Hampton deliver his speech denouncing the PLP, as the SDS RYM leadership intended.
When that convention ended, the national SDS soon collapsed, as did most chapters. The RYM groups no longer used the SDS name and only the PLP-WSA did, but for a handful of local colleges that continued to also use the name SDS. A year later, in late April and early May 1970, many former SDS members did travel to New Haven (as did myself), but not as SDS. And it was not the one person Tom Hayden, who issued "The Call" for a national strike (Hayden was expelled from SDS when he decided to identify with Robert Kennedy in 1968). I was at the New Haven meeting, the night Nixon announced the U. S. was escalating the war and "officially" bombing and invading Cambodia (which the U. S. military had long been doing!) Several hundred of us gathered in the large room watching Nixon's announcement on the television there, formed an immediate response after brief discussion - that since so many activists were together from across the nation, that we cancel the planned New Haven-Yale protests and set up right there a national strike network and travel back to our cities, towns and schools - to organize/support and participate in response to yet another War escalation. The prior October 15, 1969 National Moratorium was organized by democratic party operatives, intent on wresting leadership of the Vietnam Antiwar Movement away from the political control of the Left. And the November 15, 1969 mass marches in Washington DC and San Francisco, were that U. S. Left efforts to outmaneuver the democratic party operatives and to encourage people becoming active in protests - and continuing to protest and not just as the democratic party operatives sought to have the focus turn to ONLY electing democratic politicians in the 1970 elections and of course getting the activists off the streets and becoming loyal servants to compromising their values, to benefit the corporate dems and who they serve. As with the current DSA, there were many different political views in SDS, in June 1969 - the whole left spectrum and liberals too. The destroying of the SDS membership and supporters records, was a mistake and done "to prevent PLP getting access to". The thought of just removing those records from the SDS national office would be sufficient and yet have that valuable resource then - was not clearly "thought out" - or were the politics and tactics of RYM 1 and or RYM2, that soon split from each other and the splitting inside both RYM2 continued and the walking away of those in RYM 1, as myself who wanted a better organized reality of opposition. Most in SDS were NOT Maoists. It was PLP and then the RYM2 splits of Avakian, Klonsky, etc. that turned to Maoism. Elbaum's views of the influence and numbers of RU and the many splits over the 1970's of the New Communist Movement. being able to hold some events and with fewer and fewer people, as each "vanguard party" denounced their former comrades as "exhibiting revisionism" or being actual revisionists! Whether how many Red Pepper, The Fire Next Time (RYM i newspaper), or the Militant, National Guardian or hundreds of "underground press" - was not involving larger numbers in the vanguard parties. But there were hundreds of independent collectives and circles of people working together on common interests over the next four decades, most growing older, with small numbers of youth -- until the response of the 2008 Great Recession (Occupy, Bernie Sanders Campaign, etc.) I was involved in 1969-1971 with a collective, because of apartment costs and identifying with those in that group - and not because of any Red Pepper or any writings - just what was available to survive not worse, in then New York City, hostile to poor laborers. >From my view and remembrances of five decades ago - many walked away from left >political activity, when George McGovern was defeated 49-1 states, in November 1972 and decided activism would not change things, believing the U.S. populace appeared "hopeless" and concentrated instead on their job careers and comforts. The then internal infighting inside the left activist groups, both demoralized and led many in those "vanguard groups" to seek careers and creature comforts (who were with college degrees- and not those laborers as myself, which many just turned to laborer jobs and "settling down" to finding companions, relationships and keeping connections to their relatives). The declining vanguard parties numbers, turned to labor unions, community groups and the annual Spring mass protest march. The youth were not joining in the numbers as in the 1960's and most of us were just responding and not creating. Spontaneous witnessing oneself protests, that represented only that person and opportunism, searching for the masses to follow "their leadership". A number as myself, stopped belonging to the vanguard parties. I left over having self-respect and not staying to follow the words and thoughts and wishes of the homophobe Jack Barnes in 1974 and many others left their sectarian left sects, with preferring to spend their efforts against, racism, sexism, militarism, environmental, or turned to New Age self-improvement. Now, if we can learn and not play the government agents efforts and other reactionaries, to create divisions in working together in DSA and involving more people to join together and become more aware - we might hopefully be able to defeat the capitalists, the cult of the individual leader and involve many needed laborers to go beyond the academic circles and sectarian leftists - of talking about how many Marxists fit on a pin - to taking on and organizing and defeating the masters of greed and exploitation. And to do that, seems learning the mistakes and not continuing to repeat them. The small left sects have a sad history in the U. S., of reaching a couple of thousand - and then splitting - almost always over who should be the new Lenin. The small left sects concerned only with their own group growth and influence (acting as religious minded adherents) - and not what would be best for the class, that they claim they support. Can we learn and instead of fighting each other on egos and differences that we give space to let those models be viewed if working - or not and keep the education and growth and reinforcing to new activists, it is not just who is correct, but also in being successful in creating dual power and organizing AS COMRADES, with accepting differences. It should not be a religion, but a real movement that understands there are differences, and let each "flower bloom". Seems from what I have witnessed and read about others in the left sects, we need many more people and not less. Curg your egos and cooperate better = and you might prefer that over isolation and alienation. DSA seems not stopping anyone or any group from doing good work. If one does not want to support or work for an election candidate, there is no imprisonment, expulsion, punishment. You can decide what to support in efforts and just need the power control queens, to develop and do better to control themselves! ________________________________ From: [email protected] <[email protected]> on behalf of [email protected] <[email protected]> . I think these discussions of PL and SDS in the period 1969-1970 are too narrowly focused on a few individuals at the national level. The squabble at the last SDS National Convention was not followed by a wholesale disintegration of SDS chapters on the local level. Activity continued on the campuses in the latter half of 1969, with anti-imperialist contingents participating in the two major demonstrations against the war in October and November. Then in May somewhere between ten and fifteen thousand SDS members on the East Coast (minus both Weatherman and PL) traveled to New Haven for a demonstration in support of Bobby Seale, Erika Huggins, and other Black Panthers on trial for murder. This demonstration coincided with Nixon's invasion of Cambodia. Following a call by Tom Hayden at the demonstration in New Haven for a national student strike, we then returned to our campuses to join the growing national protests. Rejecting both Weatherman's call for guerilla warfare and PL's anti-Panther positions on nationalism, the vast majority of SDS activists remained committed to anti-imperialist and anti-racist mass politics. Along with the mass politics of SDS, there were also proposals at the last SDS convention for what students should do after they left the campuses. The most influential proposal turned out to be the Revolutionary Union's Red Papers. According to Max Elbaum's Revolution in the Air, the RU sold thirty thousand copies over the next year. Rather than the RU's own political positions on revolution in the US or Mao or Stalin, it was the RU's tactical proposal that ex-students should form collectives, get working class jobs, study Marxism, and discuss their experiences with one another. Elbaum puts the number of activists who followed this path at about ten thousand, much bigger than the formal memberships of the many Marxist-Leninist groups put together. If anyone is interested, I have written an essay called "You Can't Use Weatherman to Show which Way the Wind Blew" which goes over this history in more detail. It can be found either by Googling it or Gil Schaeffer or democraticconstitutionparty.com. . -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. 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