SDS - Students for a Democratic Society & Their Education Agenda

Have you ever heard of SDS? http://www.studentsforademocraticsociety.org/?q=node/8From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
They are back again, helping to organize the current student marches against tuition hikes, and for socialism.

From Wikipedia: "Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was a student activist movement in the United States that was one of the main iconic representations of the country's New Left. The organization developed and expanded rapidly in the mid-1960s before dissolving at its last convention in 1969.

"SDS was the organizational high point for student radicalism in the United States and has been an important influence on student organizing in the decades since its collapse. Participatory democracy, direct action, radicalism, student power, shoestring budgets, and its organizational structure are all present in varying degrees in current national student activist groups. Though various organizations have been formed in subsequent years as proposed national networks for left-wing student organizing, none has approached the scale of SDS, and most have lasted a few years at best." Their logo can be viewed at http://sdshouston.wordpress.com/ It is a drawing of a fist on an open book, with the words !(which is upside down)Protect Your Education, followed by Resist Mobilize Transform

"In early 2006 SDS was "refounded" by high school and college students, with the help of former members of SDS from the '60s, and has grown rapidly through local chapters, regional and national conventions. The "New SDS" takes the name, inspiration and focus on participatory democracy from the original group, but is a completely new youth- and student-led organization.
DS developed from the youth branch of a socialist educational organization known as the League for Industrial Democracy (LID) which descended from the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, started in 1905. SDS held its first meeting in 1960 at Ann Arbor, Michigan, where Alan Haber was elected president. Its political manifesto, known as the Port Huron Statement, was adopted at the organization's first convention in 1962, based on an earlier draft by staff member Tom Hayden. This manifesto criticized the political system of the United States for failing to achieve international peace and for failing to address social ills in contemporary society.
[I figured that taking care of the poor and those living on the streets, and providing health care to all would be their first priorities in a bad economy. But, no, they believe that an entirely free education from preschool through a PhD is the RIGHT of all, costs being no object.]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

MSNBC reports from BERKELEY, Calif. - "Students carried out raucous rallies on college campuses nationwide Thursday in protests against deep education cuts that turned violent as demonstrators threw punches and ice chunks in Wisconsin and blocked university gates and smashed car windows in California. The university was among dozens of nationwide campuses hit with marches, strikes, teach-ins and walkouts in what was billed as the March 4th National Day of Action for Public Education."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To save most of you from having to read the rest of this blog, I have simply listed the stated goals of these radical people of the 70's, come back to power now under various new organizational names:
1) Free tuition for all, from preschool thru PhD
2) Fight Capitalism and the two party political system in America
3) Jobs for everyone thru public works
4) Unity of working class
5) Troops out of Middle East
6) Don't scapegoat immigrants
7) Nationalize our banks and large corporations
8) Equality
9) Redistribution of wealth - where have we heard this before?
10) Socialism
11) To defend education the problem must be address at its roots: the entire structure of America and world society (Is this Obama's plan to, as he says, Transform America?)
12) The alternative to capitalism is socialism
13) Reorganization of economic life on a world scale - to meet social need, not private profit
14) Debt cancellation of all student loans
15) Defend public education from disaster capitalism
As Kait McIntyre, as student at the University of Chicago, and a member of the Chicago SDS stated: "This is the first step toward more militant actions".

[This is a sobering demonstration of what liberals in charge of our system of education in America have created through their social agenda, where the teaching of American history and our Constitution have been sacrificed to better teach social studies, service to Obama and the environment. There is actually a pledge:  I pledge allegiance to the Earth.  Students are taught to see America as an evil in the world, and her capitalism as disastrous and evil.]

David Horowitz, a converted 60's radical has said, "I think the potential for violence and actually disastrous violence is very real and that is because these first of all, these are violent groups and they will commit violent acts. But much more serious is that they are integrated with our terrorist enemies. They have networks and their ideology links them into the Islamic jihad. I've written a book about this called Unholy Alliance. I have experience of this. I mean, I was a very intellectual leftist. I never threw a rock. But as the editor of Ramparts magazine, which is the biggest magazine of the left, I was approached by an editorial board,a defector from our intelligence services. And we printed national secrets in the magazine and, of course, nothing, nothing happened to us. I was advised actually by a Harvard law professor, still a professor of constitutional law on exactly how to commit treason."
As an example, the speaker at the Detroit march, happily declaring they are in favor of Socialism, called for: free college educations, a right to food, & housing rights which cannot be taken away. I wonder if they have considered the truth of this statement:  "the problem with Socialism is that sooner or later, they run out of other people's money to spend".  I'm certain that they see no value in what Margaret Thatcher had to say.....
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For those who want in-depth coverage of these issues, please continue reading.....


To give you an idea of how the SDS and its many spin-offs appeal to college students, I have copied from CCDE's website: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=124513161926
CUNY Campaign to Defend Education (CCDE)
Description:
CCDE is a new campaign dedicated to building an on-going struggle to defend CUNY education through mobilizations and united actions.

We meet on Tuesdays at 7pm at the CUNY Graduate Center (34th St and 5th Av), room 5414

We say: Education is a right - for open admissions and free tuition

Full funding for all CUNY needs

It's not our crisis, we won't pay!

I find it instructional that their logo of choice is a black fist - raised and clutching a pencil and the letters C C D E.
Having just listened to an interview with former admitted leftist radical David Horowitz, I consider myself warned that the radicals of the 70's finally have their long awaited power: a radical President in the White House, and ownership by the radical left of the NYT and the Washington Post. Their agenda is the hatred of capitalism and America, and their plan is to take over our government, and, as Barack Obama has proclaimed, to fundamentally change America. David Horowitz is concerned that if the health care bill empowering them and the unions fails to pass, we should be alert for perhaps even violent reactions by the groups who with their code word associations are truly radical.

Add to the mix this headline from The World Socialist Web Site, or WSWS: For a socialist movement to defend education!
Statement of the International Students for Social Equality
23 February 2010 However, demonstrations by themselves will not solve this crisis. What is necessary, above all, is a new political movement that unifies all sections of the working class in a common political struggle, directed at the source of the crisis: the capitalist system and the two political parties—the Democrats and Republicans—that defend it.
The International Students for Social Equality advocates the following program:

1. No education cuts! Billions to rebuild schools! Free public education for all!
2. For an emergency public works program! Jobs for everyone who wants to work!
3. Withdraw all troops from Iraq and Afghanistan! For an end to militarism and war!
4. For the international unity of the working class! As the international scope of the economic crisis reveals, workers and young people in every country face the same struggle. The ISSE calls for the unity of the working class and rejects all efforts to scapegoat immigrants and divide the working class along racial, ethnic or national lines.
5. Nationalize the banks and large corporations! For equality and the redistribution of wealth
6. Defend democratic rights!
7. Mobilize the working class to defend education!
8. For socialism and equality! To defend education, the problem must be addressed at its roots: the entire structure of American and world society. No opposition to cuts in public education that accepts the parameters of the capitalist system can be successful. The alternative to capitalism is socialism. The defense and expansion of public education requires the reorganization of economic life on a world scale, to meet social need, not private profit.

If you agree with our program, make the decision to join the ISSE and take up the fight for socialism! To see more, go to http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/feb2010/mar4-f23.shtml
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Glenn Beck recently interviewed David Horowitz, once a self acclaimed radical from the 70's who long ago saw the power of destruction of these groups. As Glenn said, "If you research the participating organizations [for last week's campus marches], they were all in a coalition called Defend Education. There's one, Bail Out the People Movement, which is a front group for the International Answer, which is a pro North Korea Communist Party. [I have done some research myself, and cannot disagree with Glenn's assessment - just Google the names for yourself.]

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On Monday, the California Socialist Party USA endorsed the March 4th national demonstrations to defend education; on that day, demonstrations will occur nationwide to protest escalating tuition fees, layoffs, cuts and attacks on education.
In Chicago there was a forceful protest of over 250 at the University of Illinois-Chicago who came out to defend education and fight for fair contracts. Chanting "Chop from the top!" and "Whose university? Our university!", students, members of SEIU Local 73, the Graduate Employees Organization, and faculty joined in unison against the administration placing the budget crisis on their backs. Earlier in the day featured a forum by several professors speaking on the budget crisis, followed by a rally and march through the campus to the administrator’s building, and closed with a soup kitchen provided by SEIU to demonstrate for a fair contract.

"This is the first step toward more militant actions," says Kait McIntyre, a student at UIC and member of Chicago SDS. "Today we showed that you can't put this on the backs of students and workers, you can't cut our diversity centers without a fight."
SDS works for the democratic transformation of education in this country through its national campaign, Student Power for Accessible Education.
The goals of this campaign are:

1. Universal, free, equitably-funded schools at all levels
2. Schools run democratically by students, workers, teachers, and the
local community
3. Debt cancellation of all student loans
4. Affirmative action and a focus on anti-oppression to end all forms
of oppression in our schools and communities
Defend public education from ‘disaster capitalism’
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Fight Imperialism, Stand Together (FIST) issued the following statement in solidarity with the March 4 national day of action in defense of education.

On Thursday, March 4, students, educators and community activists across the country will take to the streets in defense of public education. Students will also be demanding the cancellation of student debt and the right to public higher education.

Stewart Alexander, the California SPUSA State Chair says, “March 4th is a day of solidarity with students, teachers, parents, workers, unions and organizations to unite against the attacks on education.” Alexander, a Candidate for California Governor, has spoken against the drastic tuition hikes that were recently approved by the University Of California Board Of Regents
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------