The Communist Party (Marxist–Leninist) was a Maoist political party in the United States.
122-578: The Communist Party (Marxist–Leninist)'s predecessor organization, the October League (Marxist–Leninist) , was founded in 1971 by several local groups, many of which had grown out of the radical student organization Students for a Democratic Society when SDS split apart in 1969. Michael Klonsky , who had been a national leader in SDS in the late 1960s, was the main leader of the CP(M-L). The October League came out of
244-474: A protest against the dictatorial regime of Georgios Papadopoulos . His suicide greatly embarrassed the junta, and caused a sensation in Greece and abroad as it was the first tangible manifestation of the depth of resistance against the junta. The junta delayed the arrival of his remains to Corfu for four months citing security reasons and fearing demonstrations while presenting bureaucratic obstacles through
366-418: A "base" from which students would "look outwards to the less exotic but more lasting struggles for justice." "The bridge to political power" would be "built through genuine cooperation, locally, nationally, and internationally, between a new left of young people and an awakening community of allies." It was to "stimulating this kind of social movement, this kind of vision and program in campus and community across
488-454: A "rethinking conference" to establish a coherent new direction for the organization failed. The conference, held on the University of Illinois campus at Champaign-Urbana over Christmas vacation, 1965, was attended by about 360 people from 66 chapters, many of whom were new to SDS. Despite a great deal of discussion, no substantial decisions were made. SDS chapters continued to use the draft as
610-603: A CP(M-L) member, also visited with Chinese leaders in June 1978. In 1978, Daniel Burstein, the editor of the CP (ML) central organ The Call , and three others made an eight-day tour of Khmer Rouge -ruled Cambodia , then a Chinese ally. He visited Phnom Penh as well as Siem Reap , Kompong Thom , Kompong Cham and Takéo provinces and had an interview with Ieng Sary . In an op-ed he wrote in The New York Times he claimed that there
732-435: A Political Education Project. Local chapters expanded activity across a range of projects, including University reform, community-university relations, and were beginning to focus on the issue of the draft and Vietnam War . They did so within the confines of university bans on on-campus political organization and activity. While students at Kent State, Ohio, had been protesting for the right to organize politically on campus
854-466: A University of Saskatchewan conference. While CUCND had focused on protest marches, SUPA sought to change Canadian society as a whole. The scope expanded to grass-roots politics in disadvantaged communities and 'consciousness raising' to radicalize and raise awareness of the 'generation gap' experienced by Canadian youth. SUPA was a decentralized organization, rooted in local university campuses. SUPA however disintegrated in late 1967 over debates concerning
976-636: A college experience that the Port Huron Statement had described as "hardly distinguishable from that of any other communications channel—say, a television set." Students were to start taking responsibility for their own education. By the fall of 1965, largely under SDS impetus, there were several "free universities" in operation: in Berkeley, SDS reopened the New School offering " 'Marx and Freud,' 'A Radical Approach to Science,' 'Agencies of Social Change and
1098-661: A demonstration. The global reverberations from the French uprising of 1968 continued into 1969 and even into the 1970s. In 1815 in Jena ( Germany ) the "Urburschenschaft" was founded. That was a Studentenverbindung that was concentrated on national and democratic ideas. In 1817, inspired by liberal and patriotic ideas of a united Germany, student organisations gathered for the Wartburg festival at Wartburg Castle , at Eisenach in Thuringia , on
1220-406: A few desks, some broken chairs, a couple of file cabinets and a few typewriters. As a student group with a strong belief in decentralization and a distrust for most organizations, the SDS had not developed, and never would develop, a strong central directorate. National Office staffers worked long hours for little pay to service the local chapters, and to help establish new ones. Following the lead of
1342-596: A full year before, it is the televised birth of the Free Speech Movement at the University of California, Berkeley that is generally recognized as the first major challenge to campus governance. On October 1, 1964, crowds of upwards of three thousand students surrounded a police cruiser holding a student arrested for setting up an informational card table for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). The sit-down prevented
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#17328548673841464-538: A jail cell in Albany, Georgia, where he landed on a Freedom Ride organized by Sandra "Casey" Cason ( Casey Hayden ). It is Cason that had first led Hayden into the SDS in 1960. Although herself regarded as "one of the boys", her recollection of those early SDS meetings is of interminable debate driven by young male intellectual posturing and, if a woman commented, of being made to feel as if a child had spoken among adults. (In 1962, she left Ann Arbor, and Tom Hayden, to return to
1586-695: A key role in Suharto's 1998 fall by initiating large demonstrations that gave voice to widespread popular discontent with the president in the aftermath of the May 1998 riots . High school and university students in Jakarta , Yogyakarta , Medan , and elsewhere were some of the first groups willing to speak out publicly against the military government. Student groups were a key part of the political scene during this period. Upon taking office after Suharto stepped down, B. J. Habibie made numerous mostly unsuccessful overtures to placate
1708-475: A large demonstration against Dow Chemical Company recruitment at the University of Wisconsin in Madison on October 17. Peaceful at first, the demonstrations turned to a sit-in that was violently dispersed by the Madison police and riot squad, resulting in many injuries and arrests. A mass rally and a student strike then closed the university for several days. A nationwide coordinated series of demonstrations against
1830-522: A long pedigree. In Joseon Dynasty Korea, 150 Sungkyunkwan students staged an unprecedented demonstration against the king in 1519 over the Kimyo purge . In Argentina , as elsewhere in Latin America , the tradition of student activism dates back to at least the 19th century, but it was not until after 1900 that it became a major political force. In 1918 student activism triggered a general modernization of
1952-538: A major protest against the occupation. Student-dominated youth movements have also played a central role in the " color revolutions " seen in post-communist societies in recent years. Of the color revolutions, the Velvet Revolution of 1989 in the Czechoslovak capital of Prague was one of them. Though the Velvet Revolution began as a celebration of International Students' Day , the single event quickly turned into
2074-681: A more international perspective. Vester was to be the first of a number of close connections between the American SDS and the West German SDS ( Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund ), a student movement that was to follow a similar trajectory. In the academic year 1962–1963, the president was Hayden, the vice president was Paul Booth , and the national secretary was Jim Monsonis. There were nine chapters with, at most, about 1000 members. The National Office (NO) in New York City consisted of
2196-421: A nationwide ordeal aimed at the dissolution of communism. The demonstration had turned violent when police intervened. However, the police attacks garnered nationwide sympathy for the student protesters. Soon enough multiple other protests unraveled in an effort to breakdown the one party communist regime of Czechoslovakia. The series of protests were successful; they broke down the communist regime and implemented
2318-498: A premium on strong local leadership, structure and accountability, Alinsky's "citizen participation" was something "fundamentally different" from the "participatory democracy" envisaged by Hayden and Gitlin. With the election of new leadership at the July 1964 national SDS convention there was already dissent. The "whole balance of the organization shifted to ERAP headquarters in Ann Arbor",
2440-590: A rallying issue. Over the rest of the academic year, with the universities supplying the Selective Service Boards with class ranking, SDS began to attack university complicity in the war. The University of Chicago's administration building was taken over in a three-day sit-in in May. "Rank protests" and sit-ins spread to many other universities. The war, however, was not the only issue driving the newfound militancy. There were new and growing calls to seriously question
2562-472: A student voice in faculty hiring; (3) support for university employees; and (4) support for black students. The December 1967 convention took down what little suggestion there was of hierarchy within the structure of the organisation: it eliminated the Presidential and Vice-Presidential offices. They were replaced with a National Secretary (20-year-old Mike Spiegel), an Education Secretary (Texan Bob Pardun of
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#17328548673842684-523: A willingness to make some amends. The Women's Liberation Workshop succeeded in having a resolution accepted that insisted that women be freed "to participate in other meaningful activities" and that their "brothers" be relieved of "the burden of male chauvinism". The SDS committed to the creation of communal childcare centers, women's control over reproduction, the sharing of domestic work and, critically for an organization whose offices were almost entirely populated by men, to women participating at every level of
2806-922: A youth group called the Communist Youth Organization. In June 1977, the October League transformed itself into the Communist Party (Marxist–Leninist), with Klonsky as chairman and Eileen Klehr as vice-chairman. The CP (ML) supported the Chinese government's purge of the Gang of Four . It was subsequently recognized by the Communist Party of China as their de facto fraternal party in the US. Klonsky and Klehr visited Peking in July 1977 and met with Hua Guofeng . Longtime Black communist Harry Haywood , who had become
2928-461: Is moving to the right. Students are going to be the revolutionary force in this country. Students are going to make the revolution because we have the will. After a three-hour open mike meeting in the Life Sciences building, instead of closing with the civil-rights anthem "We Shall Overcome", the crowd "grabbed hands and sang the chorus to 'Yellow Submarine ' ". SDSers understanding of their "own"
3050-607: Is regarded as an essential step of the democratic revolution in China, and it had also given birth to Chinese Communism. During the 1927–1937 Nanjing decade , student activism played an outsized role. While nationalist Anti-American movements led by some students and intellectuals during the Chinese Civil War were instrumental in winning enough support for the CCP in urban areas to prevail, there remained lots of polarization on campuses in
3172-508: The 1956 Hungarian Revolution was started by peaceful student demonstrations in the streets of Budapest , later attracting workers and other Hungarians. In Czechoslovakia , one of the most known faces of the protests following the Soviet -led invasion that ended the Prague Spring was Jan Palach , a student who committed suicide by setting fire to himself on January 16, 1969. The act triggered
3294-596: The Committee for Freedom Now which led the Chester school protests along with the NAACP in Chester, Pennsylvania . From November 1963 through April 1964, the demonstrations focused on ending the de facto segregation that resulted in the racial categorization of Chester public schools, even after the landmark Supreme Court case Brown v. The Board of Education of Topeka . The racial unrest and civil rights protests made Chester one of
3416-466: The Indian government to identify and expel illegal, (mostly Bangladeshi ), immigrants and protect and provide constitutional, legislative and administrative safeguards to the indigenous Assamese people . The Jadavpur University of Kolkata have played an important role to contribute to the student activism of India. The Hokkolorob Movement (2014) stirred many around the world. It took place after
3538-572: The Intercollegiate Socialist Society , founded in 1905 by Upton Sinclair , Walter Lippmann , Clarence Darrow , and Jack London . Early in 1960, to broaden the scope for recruitment beyond labor issues, the Student League for Industrial Democracy was reconstituted as SDS. They held their first meeting in 1960 on the University of Michigan campus at Ann Arbor, where Alan Haber was elected president. The SDS manifesto, known as
3660-744: The Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains unresolved, it continues to be a key issue driving student activism in Canada. From 2011 to 2013, Chile was rocked by a series of student-led nationwide protests across Chile , demanding a new framework for education in the country , including more direct state participation in secondary education and an end to the existence of profit in higher education. Currently in Chile, only 45% of high school students study in traditional public schools and most universities are also private. No new public universities have been built since
3782-621: The October Crisis . This was the only peacetime use of the War Measures Act. Since the 1970s, PIRGs ( Public Interest Research Groups ) have been created as a result of Student Union referendums across Canada in individual provinces. Like their American counterparts, Canadian PIRGs are student directed, run, and funded. Most operate on a consensus decision making model. Despite efforts at collaboration, Canadian PIRGs are independent of each other. Anti-Bullying Day (a.k.a. Pink Shirt Day)
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3904-656: The Port Huron Statement , was adopted at the organization's first convention in June 1962, based on an earlier draft by staff member Tom Hayden . Under Walter Reuther 's leadership, the United Automobile Workers union (UAW) paid for a range of expenses for the 1962 convention, including use of the UAW summer retreat in Port Huron. The Port Huron Statement decried what it described as "disturbing paradoxes": that
4026-604: The Pro-Beijing camp would not have opportunities to be nominated. The Hong Kong Federation of Students and Scholarism led a strike against the NPCSC's decision beginning on 22 September 2014, and started protesting outside the government headquarters on 26 September 2014. On 28 September, the Occupy Central with Love and Peace movement announced that the beginning of their civil disobedience campaign. Students and other members of
4148-572: The Revolutionary Youth Movement II grouping in the SDS split. During the early 1970s the OL took positions that were at odds with most of the US Left, including opposition to gay liberation and support of the shah of Iran , whose regime they saw as a bulwark against Soviet social-imperialism . The OL established influence within some of the established civil rights organizations , including
4270-779: The Rose Revolution , and PORA in Ukraine , which was key in organising the demonstrations that led to the Orange Revolution . Like Otpor, these organisations have consequently practiced non-violent resistance and used ridiculing humor in opposing authoritarian leaders. Similar movements include KelKel in Kyrgyzstan , Zubr in Belarus and MJAFT! in Albania . Student movements in Ethiopia in
4392-816: The Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Southern Conference Educational Fund , which had been under the influence of the Moscow-oriented Communist Party USA . In late 1975 they organized a "National Fight Back Conference", which drew 1,000 participants and was attended by representatives of the August 29th Movement , the Congress of Afrikan People and the Marxist–Leninist Organizing Committee of San Francisco . They also had
4514-493: The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), most activity was oriented toward the civil rights struggle. By the end of the academic year, there were over 200 delegates at the annual convention at Pine Hill, New York , from 32 different colleges and universities. The convention chose a confederal structure. Policy and direction would be discussed in a quarterly conclave of chapter delegates,
4636-594: The United Packinghouse Workers of America , arranged for Hayden and Gitlin to meet with Saul Alinsky who, with 25 years experience in Chicago and across the country, was the acknowledged father of community organizing. To Helstein's dismay, Alinsky dismissed the SDSers' venture into the field as naive and doomed to failure. Their view of the poor and of what could be achieved by consensus was absurdly romantic. Placing
4758-508: The União Nacional dos Estudantes (UNE) was formed as a platform for students to create change in Brazil. The organization tried to unite students from all over Brazil. However, in the 1940s the group had aligned more with socialism. Then in the 1950s the group changed alignment again, this time aligning with more conservative values. The União Metropolitana dos Estudantes rose up in replacement of
4880-579: The Vietnam War and Black Power . A new national network for left-wing student organizing, also calling itself Students for a Democratic Society , was founded in 2006. Progressive Era Repression and persecution Anti-war and civil rights movements Contemporary SDS developed from the youth branch of a socialist educational organization known as the League for Industrial Democracy (LID). LID itself descended from an older student organization,
5002-431: The 1967 convention in Ann Arbor there was another, perhaps equally portentous, demand for equality and autonomy. Despite the winding down of SDS leadership support for ERAP, in some community projects struggles against inequality, racism and police brutality had taken on a momentum of their own. The projects had drawn in white working class activists. While open in acknowledging the debt they believed they owed to SNCC and to
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5124-598: The 20th century, the major campus organizing group across Australia was the Australian Union of Students , which was founded in 1937 as the Union of Australian University Students. The AUS folded in 1984. It was replaced by the National Union of Students in 1987. Student politics of Bangladesh is reactive, confrontational and violent. Student organizations act as the armament of the political parties they are part of. Over
5246-593: The 300th anniversary of Martin Luther's 95 theses . In May 1832 the Hambacher Fest was celebrated at Hambach Castle near Neustadt an der Weinstraße with about 30,000 participants, amongst them many students. Together with the Frankfurter Wachensturm in 1833 planned to free students held in prison at Frankfurt and Georg Büchner 's revolutionary pamphlet Der Hessische Landbote that were events that led to
5368-499: The Austin chapter), and an Inter-organizational Secretary (former VP Carl Davidson). A clear direction for a national program was not set but delegates did manage to pass strong resolutions on the draft, resistance within the Army itself, and for an immediate withdrawal from Vietnam. There was no women's-equality plank in the Port Huron Statement. Tom Hayden had started drafting the statement from
5490-562: The Black Panthers , many were conscious that their poor white, and in some cases southern, backgrounds had limited their acceptance in "the Movement". In a blistering address, Peggy Terry announced that she and her neighbors in uptown, "Hillbilly Harlem", Chicago, had ordered student volunteers out of their community union. They would be relying on themselves, doing their own talking, and working only with those outsiders willing to live as part of
5612-534: The Greek consulate and the junta government. Hong Kong Student activist group Scholarism began an occupation of the Hong Kong government headquarters on 30 August 2012. The goal of the protest was, expressly, to force the government to retract its plans to introduce Moral and National Education as a compulsory subject. On 1 September, an open concert was held as part of the protest, with an attendance of 40,000. At last,
5734-429: The National Council. National officers, in the spirit of "participatory democracy", would be selected annually by consensus. Lee Webb of Boston University was chosen as national secretary, and Todd Gitlin of Harvard University was made president. In 1963, "racial equality" remained the cause célèbre. In November 1963, the Swarthmore College chapter of SDS partnered with Stanley Branche and local parents to create
5856-466: The New Movements'; in Gainesville, a Free University of Florida was established, and even incorporated; in New York, a Free University was begun in Greenwich Village, offering no fewer than forty-four courses ('Marxist Approaches to the Avant-garde Arts', 'Ethics and Revolution', 'Life in Mainland China Today'); and in Chicago, something called simply The School began with ten courses ('Neighborhood Organization and Nonviolence', 'Purposes of Revolution'). By
5978-593: The SDS "from licking stamps to assuming leadership positions." However, when the resolution was printed in the NO's New Left Notes it was with a caricature of a woman dressed in a baby-doll dress, holding a sign "We want our rights and we want them now!" Little changed in the two years that followed. By and large the issues that were spurring the growth of an autonomous women's liberation movement were not considered relevant for discussion by SDS men or women (and if they were discussed, one prominent activist recalls, "separatism" had to be denounced "every five minutes"). Over
6100-474: The SDS a household name. Membership again soared in the 1968–69 academic year. More important for thinking within the National Office, Columbia and the outbreak of student protest which it symbolized seemed proof that "long months of SDS work were paying off." As targets students were "picking war, complicity, and racism, rather than dress codes and dorm hours, and as tactics sit-ins and takeovers, rather than petitions and pickets." Yet Congressional investigation
6222-576: The SNCC in Atlanta). Seeking the "roots of the women's liberation movement" in the New Left, Sara Evans argues that in Hayden's ERAP program this presumption of male agency had been one of the undeclared sources of tension. Confronted with the reality of a war-heated economy, in which the only unemployed men "left to organize were very unstable and unskilled, winos, and street youth," the SDSers were disconcerted to find themselves having to organize around "nitty-gritty issues"—welfare, healthcare, childcare, garbage collection—springing "in cultural terms ... from
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#17328548673846344-400: The Texas State Capitol during a visit by Vice-President Hubert Humphrey . The example set a precedent for campus events across the country. The winter and spring of 1967 saw an escalation in the militancy of campus protests. Demonstrations against military-contractors and other campus recruiters were widespread, and ranking and the draft issues grew in scale. The school year had started with
6466-413: The USSR and Fidel Castro had "betrayed" the Cuban Revolution . Students for a Democratic Society (1960 organization) Students for a Democratic Society ( SDS ) was a national student activist organization in the United States during the 1960s and was one of the principal representations of the New Left . Disdaining permanent leaders, hierarchical relationships and parliamentary procedure,
6588-413: The UT West Mall. A summary ban by the UT administration ensured an even bigger, more enthusiastic, turnout for the second Gentle Thursday in the spring of 1967. Part of "Flipped Out Week", organized in coordination with a national mobilization against the war, it was a more defiant and overtly political affair. It included appearances by Stokley Carmichael, beat-poet Allen Ginsberg , and anti-war protests at
6710-437: The Union building a twenty-foot banner proclaimed "Happiness Is Student Power". A booming address announced: We're giving notice today, all of us, that we reject the notion that we should be patient and work for gradual change. That's the old way. We don't need the Old Left. We don't need their ideology or the working class, those mythical masses who are supposed to rise up and break their chains. The working class in this country
6832-414: The Youth Pledge ( Sumpah Pemuda ) helped to give voice to anti-colonial sentiments. During the political turmoil of the 1960s, right-wing student groups staged demonstrations calling for then-President Sukarno to eliminate alleged Communists from his government, and later demanding that he resign. Sukarno did step down in 1967, and was replaced by Army general Suharto . Student groups also played
6954-420: The administration. In protest of the closure and the expulsion of Nanterre students, students of the Sorbonne in Paris began their own demonstration. The situation escalated into a nationwide insurrection . The events in Paris were followed by student protests throughout the world. The German student movement participated in major demonstrations against proposed emergency legislation . In many countries,
7076-404: The alleged police attack over unarmed students inside the campus demanding the fair justice of a student who was molested inside the campus. The Movement finally led to the expulsion of the contemporary Vice Chancellor of the university, Mr. Abhijit Chakraborty, who allegedly ordered the police to do open lathicharge over the students. Some anti-social goons were also involved in the harassment of
7198-542: The anesthetic of bureaucracy and mass society that the vision and program of participatory democracy will come—if it is to come." Hayden, who committed himself to community organizing in Newark (where he witnessed the "race riots" in 1967) later suggested that if ERAP failed to build to greater success it was because of the escalating U.S. commitment in Vietnam: "Once again the government met an internal crisis by starting an external crisis." Yet there were ERAP volunteers more than ready to leave their storefront offices and heed
7320-399: The anti-war call to return to campus. Tending to the "less exotic struggles" of the urban poor had been a dispiriting experience. However much the volunteers might talk at night about "transforming the system", "building alternative institutions," and "revolutionary potential", credibility on the doorstep rested on their ability to secure concessions from, and thus to develop relations with,
7442-399: The authors disclaimed any "formulas" or "closed theories". Instead, "matured" by "the horrors of a century" in which "to be idealistic is to be considered apocalyptic", Students for a Democratic Society would seek a "new left ... committed to deliberativeness, honesty [and] reflection." The Statement proposed the university, with its "accessibility to knowledge" and an "internal openness", as
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#17328548673847564-430: The bi-monthly of the War Resisters League , under the title "Sex and Caste". As "the final impetus" for organizing a "women's workshop," Evans suggest it was "the real embryo of the new feminist revolt." But this was a revolt that was to play out largely outside of the SDS. When, at the 1966 SDS convention, women called for debate they were showered with abuse, pelted with tomatoes. The following year there seemed to be
7686-516: The campuses called "Ten Days of Resistance" and local chapters cooperated with the Student Mobilization Committee in rallies, marches, sit-ins and teach-ins, and on April 18 in a one-day strike. About a million students stayed away from classes that day, the largest student strike to date. But it was the student shutdown of Columbia University in New York that commanded the national media. Led by an inter-racial alliance of Columbia SDS chapter activists and Student Afro Society activists, it helped make
7808-413: The car from moving for 32 hours. By the end of the year, demonstrations, meetings and strikes all but shut the university down. Hundreds of students were arrested. In February 1965, President Johnson dramatically escalated the war in Vietnam. He ordered the bombing of North Vietnam ( Operation Flaming Dart ) and committed ground troops to fight the Viet Cong in the South. Campus chapters of SDS all over
7930-434: The chapters. FBI Director Hoover's general COINTELPRO directive was for agents to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize" the activities and leadership of the movements they infiltrated. The National Office sought to provide greater coordination and direction (partly through New Left Notes , its weekly correspondence with the membership). In the spring of 1968, National SDS activists led an effort on
8052-448: The community, and of "the working class", for the long haul. With what she regarded as an implicit understanding for Stokely Carmichael 's call for black people to define their own goals, to lead their own organizations, Terry argued that "the time has come for us to turn to our own people, poor and working-class whites, for direction, support, and inspiration, to organize around our own identity, our own interests." Yet as Peggy Terry
8174-432: The country started to lead small, localized demonstrations against the war. On April 17 the National Office coordinated a march in Washington. Co-sponsored by Women Strike for Peace , and with endorsements from nearly all of the other peace groups, 25,000 attended. The first teach-in against the war was held in the University of Michigan , followed by hundreds more across the country. The SDS became recognized nationally as
8296-467: The country to incorporate the "participatory democracy, community organizing and synthesis of politics and culture that the New Left of the midsixties was trying to develop." Inspired by a leaflet distributed by some poets in San Francisco, and organized by the Rag and the SDS in the belief that "there is nothing wrong with fun", a "Gentle Thursday" event in the fall of 1966 drew hundreds of area residents, bringing kids, dogs, balloons, picnics and music, to
8418-400: The country" that the SDS were committed. For the sponsoring League for Industrial Democracy there was an immediate issue. The Statement omitted the LID's standard denunciation of communism: the regret it expressed at the "perversion of the older left by Stalinism" was too discriminating, and its references to Cold War tensions too even handed. Hayden, who had succeeded Haber as SDS president,
8540-412: The course of this, there may even have been some excesses, which no revolution is immune to. In early 1980, the CP (ML) condemned the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and called on President Carter to give aid to the Afghan forces opposing the Soviets, end its arms embargo on China and refrain from selling the USSR any " strategic materials ". The CP (ML) also claimed the Mariel exodus was evidence that
8662-402: The democratisation of society and opposing the Vietnam War , but also stressed more nationally specific issues such as coming to terms with the legacy of the Nazi regime and opposing the German Emergency Acts . Student activism in Greece has a long and intense history. Student activism in the 1960s was one of the reasons cited to justify the imposition of the dictatorship in 1967 . Following
8784-916: The draft led by members of the Resistance, the War Resisters League , and SDS added fuel to the fire of protest. After conventional civil rights tactics of peaceful pickets seemed to have failed, the Oakland, California, Stop the Draft Week ended in mass hit and run skirmishes with the police. The huge (100,000 people) October 21 March on the Pentagon saw hundreds arrested and injured. Night-time raids on draft offices began to spread. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), mainly through its secret COINTELPRO (COunter INTELligence PROgram) and other law enforcement agencies were often exposed as having spies and informers in
8906-543: The end of 1966 there were perhaps fifteen. Universities understood the challenge, and soon began to offer seminars run on similar student-responsive lines, beginning what SDSers saw as a "liberal swallow-up". The summer convention of 1966 was moved farther west, to Clear Lake, Iowa . Nick Egleson was chosen as president, and Carl Davidson was elected vice president. Jane Adams, former Mississippi Freedom Summer volunteer and SDS campus traveler in Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, and Missouri,
9028-523: The end of the Chilean transition to democracy in 1990, even though the number of university students has swelled. Beyond the specific demands regarding education, the protests reflected a "deep discontent" among some parts of society with Chile's high level of inequality . Protests have included massive non-violent marches, but also a considerable amount of violence on the part of a side of protestors as well as riot police. The first clear government response to
9150-458: The five tumultuous days of the final convention in June 1969 women were given just three hours to caucus and their call on women to struggle against their oppression was rejected. Inasmuch as women felt both empowered and thwarted in the movement, Todd Gitlin was later to claim some credit for SDS in engendering second-wave feminism . Women had gained skills and experience in organising but had been made to feel keenly their second-class status. At
9272-482: The founders conceived of the organization as a broad exercise in " participatory democracy ". From its launch in 1960 it grew rapidly in the course of the tumultuous decade with over 300 campus chapters and 30,000 supporters recorded nationwide by its last national convention in 1969. The organization splintered at that convention amidst rivalry between factions seeking to impose national leadership and direction, and disputing "revolutionary" positions on, among other issues,
9394-687: The government de facto struck down the Moral and National Education. Student organizations made important roles during the Umbrella Movement . Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPCSC) made decisions on the Hong Kong political reform on 31 August 2014, which the Nominating Committee would tightly control the nomination of the Chief Executive candidate, candidates outside
9516-650: The imposition of the dictatorship, the Athens Polytechnic uprising in 1973 triggered a series of events that led to the abrupt end of the regime's attempted "liberalisation" process under Spiros Markezinis , and, after that, to the eventual collapse of the Greek junta during Metapolitefsi and the return of democracy in Greece. Kostas Georgakis was a Greek student of geology , who, in the early hours of 19 September 1970, set himself ablaze in Matteotti square in Genoa as
9638-494: The internal affairs of an institution (like disinvestment ); others tackle wars or dictatorships . Student activism is most often associated with left-wing politics. Student activism at the university level is nearly as old as the university itself. Students in Paris and Bologna staged collective actions as early as the 13th century, chiefly over town and gown issues. Student protests over broader political issues also have
9760-488: The key battlegrounds of the civil rights movement . However, within the Congress of Racial Equality , and within the SNCC (particularly after the 1964 Freedom Summer ), there was the suggestion that white activists might better advance the cause of civil rights by organising "their own". At the same time, for many, 1963–64 was the academic year in which white poverty was discovered. Michael Harrington's The Other America "was
9882-416: The language, there was a final parting of the ways. The students' tie to their parent organization was severed by mutual agreement. In drafting the Port Huron Statement, Hayden acknowledged the influence of a Bowdoin-College German-exchange student, Michael Vester. He encouraged Hayden to be more explicit about the contradictions "between political democracy and economic concentration of power", and to take
10004-580: The late 1940's with a wide range of views. Ironically, America's influence in post-war China, designed to prevent Soviet influence appears to have backfired for the United States as some Chinese students were sensitive to any overt foreign influence after the Japanese occupation. In 1989, the Tiananmen Square protests , led by students, inspired ended in a brutal government massacre of thousands, damaging
10126-401: The late 1960s, during the reign of Emperor Haile Selassie , included debates about the social sciences and social change and played a significant role in political opposition to Haile Selassie , which led to the 1974 Ethiopian Revolution . Student activism played a role in both socially progressive aspects of the revolution and in human rights violations. Student activism and their use of
10248-458: The leading student group against the war. The National Convention in Akron (which FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover reported was attended by "practically every subversive organization in the United States") selected as President Carl Oglesby (Antioch College). He had come to SDSers' attention with an article against the war, written while he had been working for a defense contractor. The Vice President
10370-541: The local power structures. Regardless of the agenda (welfare checks, rent, day-care, police harassment, garbage pick-up) the daytime reality was of delivery built "around all the shoddy instruments of the state." ERAP had seemed to trap the SDSers in "a politics of adjustment". Lyndon B. Johnson 's landslide in the November 1964 presidential election swamped considerations of Democratic-primary, or independent candidature, interventions—a path that had been tentatively explored in
10492-647: The mass demonstrations called by the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam to coincide with the August 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. In the event, under a mandate to recruit and to offer support should the Chicago police "start rioting" (which they did), national SDSers were present. On August 28 national secretary Michael Klonsky was on Havana radio: "We have been fighting in
10614-516: The military and, again, ranking for the draft. Despite the absence of a politically effective campus SDS chapter, Berkeley again became a center of particularly dramatic radical upheaval over the university's repressive anti-free-speech actions. One description of the convening of an enthusiastically supported student strike suggests the distance travelled from both the Left, and the civil rights, roots of earlier activism. Over "a sea of cheering bodies" before
10736-532: The modern Chinese history. Fueled mostly by Chinese nationalism , Chinese student activism strongly believes that young people are responsible for China's future. This strong nationalistic belief has been able to manifest in several forms such as pro-democracy , anti-Americanism and pro-communism . In 1919, the May Fourth Movement saw over 3,000 students of Peking University and other schools gather together in front of Tiananmen and demonstrate. It
10858-489: The moral horror of the war, others concentrated on its illegality, a number argued that it took funds away from domestic needs, and a few even then saw it as an example of 'American imperialism'. This was Oglesby's developing position. Thereafter, on November 27, at an anti-war demonstration in Washington, when Oglesby suggested that U.S. policy in Vietnam was essentially imperialist, and then called for an immediate ceasefire, he
10980-419: The new national secretary, C. Clark Kissinger cautioned against "the temptation to 'take one generation of campus leadership and run!' We must instead look toward building the campus base as the wellspring of our student movement." Gitlin's successor as president, Paul Potter, was blunter. The emphasis on "the problems of the dispossessed" had been misplaced: "It is through the experience of the middle class and
11102-479: The once socialist UNE. However, it was not long until União Nacional dos Estudantes once again sided with socialism, thus joining forces with the União Metropolitana dos Estudantes. The União Nacional dos Estudantes was influential in the democratization of higher education. Their first significant feat occurred during World War II when they successfully pressured Brazilian president Getúlio Vargas to join
11224-512: The protests was a proposal for a new education fund and a cabinet shuffle which replaced Minister of Education Joaquín Lavín and was seen as not fundamentally addressing student movement concerns. Other government proposals were also rejected. Since the defeat of the Qing Dynasty during the First (1839–1842) and Second Opium Wars (1856–1860), student activism has played a significant role in
11346-451: The public demonstrated outside government headquarters, and some began to occupy several major city intersections. The Assam Movement (or Assam Agitation ) (1979–1985) was a popular movement against illegal immigrants in Assam . The movement, led by All Assam Students Union (AASU) and the 'All Assam Gana Sangram Parishad' (AAGSP), developed a program of protests and demonstration to compel
11468-459: The rage". Conceived in part as a response to the gathering danger of a "white backlash," and with $ 5,000 from United Automobile Workers union, Tom Hayden promoted an Economic Research and Action Project (ERAP). SDS community organizers would help draw neighborhoods, both black and white, into an "interracial movement of the poor". By the end of 1964, ERAP had ten inner-city projects engaging 125 student volunteers. Ralph Helstein , president of
11590-529: The reputation of the Chinese Communist Party as it moved towards a more repressive approach to speech and dissent. Jan Palach and Jan Zajíc 's protests against the end of the Prague Spring used self-immolation. Student activism played an important, yet understudied, role in Congo's crisis of decolonisation. Throughout the 1960s, students denounced the unfinished decolonisation of higher education and
11712-434: The residential halls to manage seats in favor of their party members and loyal pupils. They eat and buy for free from the restaurants and shops nearby. They extort and grab tenders to earn illicit money. They take money from the freshmen candidates and put pressure on teachers to get an acceptance for them. They take money from the job seekers and put pressures on university administrations to appoint them. On August 11, 1937,
11834-770: The revolutions in the German states in 1848 . The White Rose society in Nazi Germany lasted from 1942–1943, during which students mailed anti-nazi leaflets around the country until the leaders were caught and executed. In the 1960s, the worldwide upswing in student and youth radicalism manifested itself through the German student movement and organisations such as the German Socialist Student Union . The movement in Germany shared many concerns of similar groups elsewhere, such as
11956-533: The role of working class and 'Old Left'. Members moved to the CYC or became active leaders in CUS (Canadian Union of Students), leading the CUS to assume the mantle of New Left student agitation. In 1968, SDU (Students for a Democratic University) was formed at McGill and Simon Fraser Universities. SFU SDU, originally former SUPA members and New Democratic Youth, absorbed members from the campus Liberal Club and Young Socialists. SDU
12078-617: The side of the Allies . In 1964, UNE was outlawed after elected leader João Goulart was disposed of power by a military coup . The military regime terrorized students in an effort to make them subservient. In 1966, students began protesting anyway despite the reality of further terror. All the protests led up to the March of the One Hundred Thousand in June 1968. Organized by the UNE, this protest
12200-456: The social sciences played a role in the 1991 fall of the following government, the Derg , and in the implementation of the rule of Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front during the following three decades. In France , student activists have been influential in shaping public debate. In May 1968 the University of Paris at Nanterre was closed due to problems between the students and
12322-518: The streets for four days. Many of our people have been beaten up, and many of them are in jail, but we are winning." But at the first national council meeting after the convention (University of Colorado, Boulder, October 11–13), the Worker Student Alliance had their line confirmed: attempts to influence political parties in the United States fostered an "illusion" that people can have democratic power over system institutions. The correct answer
12444-623: The student protests caused authorities to respond with violence. In Spain , student demonstrations against Franco's dictatorship led to clashes with police. A student demonstration in Mexico City ended in a storm of bullets on the night of October 2, 1968, an event known as the Tlatelolco massacre . Even in Pakistan , students took to the streets to protest changes in education policy, and on November 7 two college students died after police opened fire on
12566-429: The students. Indonesia is often believed to have hosted "some of the most important acts of student resistance in the world's history". University student groups have repeatedly been the first groups to stage street demonstrations calling for governmental change at key points in the nation's history, and other organizations from across the political spectrum have sought to align themselves with student groups. In 1928,
12688-464: The tuition hike. Canadian universities have been active sites for debate and mobilization, with student groups advocating on both sides of the conflict. This activism has led to significant polarization on campuses, with heated debates, protests, and resolutions at institutions like McGill University and York University . The discussions often involve broader issues of academic freedom and concerns over rising antisemitism and Islamophobia . As
12810-587: The universities especially tending towards democratization, called the University Revolution (Spanish: revolución universitaria ). The events started in Córdoba and were accompanied by similar uprisings across Latin America. Australian students have a long history of being active in political debates. This is particularly true in the newer universities that have been established in suburban areas. For much of
12932-563: The unrealised promises of national independence. The two issues crossed in the demonstration of June 4, 1969. Student activism continues and women such as Aline Mukovi Neema, winner of 100 Women BBC award, continue to campaign for political change in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. During communist rule, students in Eastern Europe were the force behind several of the best-known instances of protest. The chain of events leading to
13054-876: The use of democratic elections in 1990, only a few months after the first protest. Another example of this was the Serbian Otpor! ("Resistance!" in Serbian ), formed in October 1998 as a response to repressive university and media laws that were introduced that year. In the presidential campaign in September 2000, the organisation engineered the "Gotov je" ("He's finished") campaign that galvanized Serbian discontent with Slobodan Milošević , ultimately resulting in his defeat. Otpor has inspired other youth movements in Eastern Europe , such as Kmara in Georgia , which played an important role in
13176-464: The women's sphere of home and community life." Sexism was acknowledged as commonplace in the anti-war and New Left movement. In December 1965, the SDS held a "rethinking conference" at the University of Illinois. One of the papers included in the conference packet, was a memo Casey Hayden and others had written the previous year for a similar SNCC event, and published the previous month in Liberation ,
13298-540: The world's "wealthiest and strongest country" should "tolerate anarchy as a major principle of international conduct"; that it should allow "the declaration 'all men are created equal... ' " to ring "hollow before the facts of Negro life"; that, even as technology creates "new forms of social organization", it should continue to impose "meaningless work and idleness"; and with two-thirds of mankind undernourished that its "upper classes" should "revel amidst superfluous abundance". In searching for "the spark and engine of change"
13420-469: The years, political clashes and factional feuds in the educational institutes killed many, seriously hampering the academic atmosphere. To check those hitches, universities have no options but go to lengthy and unexpected closures. Therefore, classes are not completed on time and there are session jams. The student wings of ruling parties dominate the campuses and residential halls through crime and violence to enjoy various unauthorized facilities. They control
13542-485: Was Jeff Shero from the increasingly influential University of Texas chapter in Austin. Consensus, however, was not reached on a national program. At the September National Council meeting "an entire cacophony of strategies was put forward" on what had clearly become the central issue, Vietnam. Some urged negotiation, others immediate U.S. withdrawal, still others Viet-Cong victory. "Some wanted to emphasize
13664-507: Was called to a meeting where, refusing any further concession, he clashed with Michael Harrington (as he later would with Irving Howe). As security against "a united-front style takeover of its youth arm" the LID had inserted a communist-exclusion clause in the SDS constitution. When in 1965 those who considered this too obvious a concession to the Cold-War doctrines of the right succeeded in removing
13786-582: Was created by high school students David Shepherd, and Travis Price of Berwick, Nova Scotia, and is now celebrated annually across Canada. In 2012, the Quebec Student Movement arose due to an increase of tuition of 75%; that took students out of class and into the streets because that increase did not allow students to comfortably extend their education, because of fear of debt or not having money at all. Following elections that year, premier Jean Charest promised to repeal anti-assembly laws and cancel
13908-409: Was declaring her independence from the SDS as a working-class militant, the most strident voices at the convention were of those who, jettisoning the reservations of the Port Huron old guard, were declaring the working class as, after all, the only force capable of subverting U.S. imperialism and of effecting real change. It was on the basis of this new Marxist polemic that endorsements were withheld from
14030-520: Was elected Interim National Secretary. That fall, her companion Greg Calvert , recently a History Instructor at Iowa State University, became National Secretary. The convention marked a further turn towards organization around campus issues by local chapters, with the National Office cast in a strictly supporting role. Campus issues ranged from bad food, powerless student "governments", various in loco parentis manifestations, on-campus recruiting for
14152-428: Was increasingly colored by the country's exploding countercultural scene. There were explorations—some earnest, some playful—of the anarchist or libertarian implications of the commitment to participatory democracy. At the large and active University of Texas chapter in Austin, The Rag , an underground newspaper founded by SDS leaders Thorne Dreyer and Carol Neiman has been described as the first underground paper in
14274-481: Was no evidence of genocide, claiming that that was part of a propaganda campaign orchestrated by the regime's enemies. He did concede, however: The new government has had to deal with many forces that oppose the revolution—former Lon Nol officials, as well as organized networks of American, Russian and Vietnamese agents trying to overthrow the Government. Such sabotage has undoubtedly been met with violent suppression. In
14396-588: Was prominent in an Administration occupation in 1968, and a student strike in 1969. After the failure of the student strike, SDU broke up. Some members joined the IWW and Yippies (Youth International Party). Other members helped form the Vancouver Liberation Front in 1970. The FLQ (Quebec Liberation Front) was considered a terrorist organization, causing the use of the War Measures Act after 95 bombings in
14518-533: Was the largest yet. A few months later the government passed Institutional Act Number Five which officially banned students from any further protest. In Canada , New Left student organizations from the late 1950s and 1960s became mainly two: SUPA ( Student Union for Peace Action ) and CYC (Company of Young Canadians). SUPA grew out of the CUCND (Combined Universities Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) in December 1964, at
14640-412: Was to find that most chapters continued to follow their own, rather than a national, agenda. In the fall of 1968 their issues fell into one or more of four broad categories: (1) war-related issues such as opposition to ROTC, military or CIA recruitment, and military research, on campus; (2) student power issues including requests for a pass-fail grading system, beer sales on campus, no dormitory curfews, and
14762-637: Was to organize people in "direct action". "The 'center' has proven its failure ... it remains to the left not to cling to liberal myths but to build its own strength out of the polarization, to build the left 'pole ' ". Student activism Student activism or campus activism is work by students to cause political, environmental, economic, or social change. In addition to education, student groups often play central roles in democratization and winning civil rights . Modern student activist movements span all ages, races, socio-economic backgrounds, and political perspectives. Some student protests focus on
14884-415: Was wildly applauded and nationally reported. The new, more radical, and uncompromising anti-war profile this suggested, appeared to drive the growth in membership. The influx discomfited older members like Todd Gitlin who, as he later conceded, simply had no "feel" for an anti-war movement. No consensus was reached as to what role the SDS should play in stopping the war. A final attempt by the old guard at
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