Anonymous wrote:>... organizations like Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)believed in the ideal of engaged "participatory democracy." They believed this was more likely to occur in smaller, more decentralized organizations where everyone could "do their own thing." These smaller groups would also allow young people to overcome the racism, sexism, imperialism, and other shortcomings of the older, top-down organizations who refused to respond to growing demands from the grassroots.<
of course, such decentralized groups as the SDS "did their own thing" one time [1969] in the form of the "days of rage," in which a bunch of well-fed white suburbanites went crazy in the streets of Chicago, in hopes that the Black Youth would Rise Up and join them, overthrowing the System. I like this statement's emphasis on from-the-bottom organizing, but decentralization isn't always what it's advertised to be. JD