The Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade (RCYB) was the former youth group of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA .
125-749: The Attica Brigade was an anti-imperialist student organization in the United States in the early 1970s. It was initiated in 1972 by the Revolutionary Union. The Attica Brigade aimed to fill the vacuum of left wing activism on campuses after Students for a Democratic Society split in 1969. The name of the organization is inspired by the Attica prison uprising in 1971. Attica Brigade organized an Eastern regional conference that drew 250 attendants from 31 campus chapters in New York on March 31 - April 1, 1973. In 1974
250-586: A 10-day state visit to the US . President Eisenhower pledged his continued support, and a parade was held in Diệm's honor. But Secretary of State Dulles privately conceded Diệm had to be backed because they could find no better alternative. Between 1954 and 1957, the Diệm government succeeded in preventing large-scale organized unrest in the countryside. In April 1957, insurgents launched an assassination campaign, referred to as "extermination of traitors". 17 people were killed in
375-648: A Marxist–Leninist political organization which operated primarily in Hong Kong and the Soviet Union . The party aimed to overthrow French rule and establish an independent communist state in Vietnam. In September 1940, Japan invaded French Indochina, following France's capitulation to Nazi Germany . French influence was suppressed by the Japanese, and in 1941 Cung, now known as Ho Chi Minh , returned to Vietnam to establish
500-607: A Military Assistance and Advisory Group (MAAG) to screen French requests for aid, advise on strategy, and train Vietnamese soldiers. By 1954, the US had spent $ 1 billion in support of the French military effort, shouldering 80% of the cost of the war. During the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954, US carriers sailed to the Gulf of Tonkin and the US conducted reconnaissance flights. France and
625-554: A psychological warfare campaign which exaggerated anti-Catholic sentiment among the Viet Minh and distributed propaganda attributed to Viet Minh threatening an American attack on Hanoi with atomic bombs. During the 300-day period, up to one million northerners, mainly minority Catholics, moved south, fearing persecution by the Communists. The exodus was coordinated by a U.S.-funded $ 93 million relocation program, which involved
750-454: 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
875-566: 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, the founders conceived of the organization as a broad exercise in " participatory democracy ". From its launch in 1960 it grew rapidly in
1000-632: 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, the Intercollegiate Socialist Society , founded in 1905 by Upton Sinclair , Walter Lippmann , Clarence Darrow , and Jack London . Early in 1960, to broaden
1125-464: A ceasefire with the Viet Minh, and independence was granted to Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. At the 1954 Geneva Conference, Vietnam was temporarily partitioned at the 17th parallel . Ho Chi Minh wished to continue war in the south, but was restrained by Chinese allies who convinced him he could win control by electoral means. Under the Geneva Accords, civilians were allowed to move freely between
1250-538: 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 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
1375-636: 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
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#17328867083971500-594: 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 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
1625-460: A confederal structure. Policy and direction would be discussed in a quarterly conclave of chapter delegates, 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
1750-630: A coordinated uprising in South Vietnam against the government and a third of the population was soon living in areas of communist control. In December 1960, North Vietnam formally created the Viet Cong (VC) with the intent of uniting all anti-GVN insurgents, including non-communists. It was formed in Memot, Cambodia , and directed through COSVN. The VC "placed heavy emphasis on the withdrawal of American advisors and influence, on land reform and liberalization of
1875-538: 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
2000-527: 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
2125-512: A more "modest" winning margin of "60 to 70 percent." Diệm, however, viewed the election as a test of authority. He declared South Vietnam to be an independent state under the name Republic of Vietnam (ROV), with him as president. Likewise, Ho Chi Minh and other communists won at least 99% of the vote in North Vietnamese "elections". The domino theory , which argued that if a country fell to communism, all surrounding countries would follow,
2250-449: 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 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
2375-542: A person knowledgeable in Indochinese affairs who did not agree that had elections been held as of the time of the fighting, possibly 80% of the population would have voted for the Communist Ho Chi Minh as their leader rather than Chief of State Bảo Đại. Indeed, the lack of leadership and drive on the part of Bảo Đại was a factor in the feeling prevalent among Vietnamese that they had nothing to fight for. According to
2500-463: A policy of " Vietnamization " from 1969, which saw the conflict fought by an expanded ARVN, while US forces withdrew. A 1970 coup in Cambodia resulted in a PAVN invasion and a US–ARVN counter-invasion , escalating its civil war. US troops had mostly withdrawn from Vietnam by 1972, and the 1973 Paris Peace Accords saw the rest leave. The accords were broken almost immediately and fighting continued until
2625-590: 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
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#17328867083972750-728: A role in the RCP-RWH split. In 1980, what was left of the RSB joined with the Student Coalition Against Nukes Nationwide (SCANN) and Midwest Coalition Against Registration and the Draft (MidCARD) to found a new organization, the Progressive Student Network . Prior to this merger, RSB cadre had been active in both of the other two organizations. RCYB’s ultimate objective was to help create “a world of for-real Communism;
2875-557: 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 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
3000-472: 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
3125-523: 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
3250-505: A world where a few rich nations don’t oppress and dominate the globe; where whites don’t lord over non-whites; where men don’t dominate over women; and where one class of people doesn’t exploit the rest.” During its existence, the most famous member of the RCYB was Gregory Lee "Joey" Johnson . During the 1984 Republican National Convention in Dallas, Texas, he burned the United States flag to protest
3375-461: 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"
3500-634: Is the most commonly used title in English . It has been called the Second Indochina War since it spread to Laos and Cambodia , the Vietnam Conflict , and Nam (colloquially 'Nam). In Vietnam it is commonly known as Kháng chiến chống Mỹ ( lit. ' Resistance War against America ' ). The Government of Vietnam officially refers to it as the Resistance War against America to Save
3625-516: The 1975 spring offensive and fall of Saigon to the PAVN, marking the war's end. North and South Vietnam were reunified in 1976. The war exacted enormous human cost : estimates of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians killed range from 970,000 to 3 million. Some 275,000–310,000 Cambodians , 20,000–62,000 Laotians , and 58,220 US service members died. Its end would precipitate the Vietnamese boat people and
3750-597: The Châu Đốc massacre at a bar in July, and in September a district chief was killed with his family. By early 1959, Diệm had come to regard the violence as an organized campaign and implemented Law 10/59, which made political violence punishable by death and property confiscation. There had been division among former Viet Minh, whose main goal was to hold elections promised in the Geneva Accords, leading to " wildcat " activities separate from
3875-645: The Cold War between the Soviet Union and US. Direct US military involvement greatly escalated from 1965 until its withdrawal in 1973. The fighting spilled over into the Laotian and Cambodian Civil Wars , which ended with all three countries becoming communist in 1975. After the defeat of French Indochina in the First Indochina War that began in 1946, Vietnam gained independence in the 1954 Geneva Conference but
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4000-777: The Cuban Missile Crisis (October 1962) played out on television worldwide. It was the closest the Cold War came to nuclear war . The Kennedy administration remained committed to the Cold War foreign policy inherited from the Truman and Eisenhower administrations. In 1961, the US had 50,000 troops based in South Korea, and Kennedy faced four crisis situations: the failure of the Bay of Pigs Invasion he had approved in April, settlement negotiations between
4125-555: The French Navy and the US Seventh Fleet to ferry refugees. The northern refugees gave the later Ngô Đình Diệm regime a strong anti-communist constituency. Over 100,000 Viet Minh fighters went to the north for "regroupment", expecting to return south within two years. The Viet Minh left roughly 5,000 to 10,000 cadres in the south as a base for future insurgency. The last French soldiers left South Vietnam in April 1956 and
4250-651: The Ho Chi Minh trail to supply and reinforce the VC. By 1963, the north had covertly sent 40,000 soldiers of its own People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN), armed with Soviet and Chinese weapons, to fight in the insurgency in the south. President John F. Kennedy increased US involvement from 900 military advisors in 1960 to 16,300 in 1963 and sent more aid to the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), which failed to produce results. In 1963, Diem
4375-638: The Korean War in June convinced Washington policymakers that the war in Indochina was another example of communist expansionism, directed by the Soviet Union. Military advisors from China began assisting the Viet Minh in July 1950. Chinese weapons, expertise, and laborers transformed the Viet Minh from a guerrilla force into a regular army. In September 1950, the US further enforced the Truman Doctrine by creating
4500-608: The Pentagon Papers , which commented on Eisenhower's observation, Diệm would have been a more popular candidate than Bảo Đại against Hồ, stating that "It is almost certain that by 1956 the proportion which might have voted for Ho - in a free election against Diem - would have been much smaller than 80%." In 1957, independent observers from India, Poland, and Canada representing the International Control Commission (ICC) stated that fair elections were impossible, with
4625-622: 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 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
4750-587: The Viet Minh , an anti-Japanese resistance movement that advocated for independence. The Viet Minh received aid from the Allies , namely the US, Soviet Union, and Republic of China . Beginning in 1944, the US Office of Strategic Services (O.S.S.) provided the Viet Minh with weapons, ammunition, and training to fight the occupying Japanese and Vichy French forces. Throughout the war, Vietnamese guerrilla resistance against
4875-410: 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, 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
5000-483: 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
5125-627: The Attica Brigade changed its name to the Revolutionary Student Brigade at a conference, attended by about 450 students from 80 campuses, on June 15–17. The Revolutionary Student Brigade (RSB) was a Marxist-Leninist student organization active in the 1970s in the United States. The RSB was the student organization associated with the Revolutionary Union, which became the Revolutionary Communist Party in 1975. When
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5250-499: 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
5375-730: The Bakke decision! In 1979 they protested nuclear weapons. In 1989 Antonin Scalia and four others justices ruled that a Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade member's right to burn the US flag was a protected right. In 1991 they protested American involvement in the Persian Gulf , and members were arrested. In 1992 they participated in agitation and organization efforts during the Rodney King protests and uprising in Los Angeles. Students for
5500-562: 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
5625-402: The British were opposed. Eisenhower, wary of involving the US in an Asian land war, decided against intervention. Throughout the conflict, US intelligence estimates remained skeptical of France's chance of success. On 7 May 1954, the French garrison at Dien Bien Phu surrendered. The defeat marked the end of French military involvement in Indochina. At the Geneva Conference , they negotiated
5750-406: The GVN, on coalition government and the neutralization of Vietnam." The identities of the leaders of the organization were often kept secret. Support for the VC was driven by resentment of Diem's reversal of Viet Minh land reforms in the countryside. The Viet Minh had confiscated large private landholdings, reduced rents and debts, and leased communal lands, mostly to poorer peasants. Diem brought
5875-433: The ICC reporting that neither South nor North Vietnam had honored the armistice agreement. From April to June 1955, Diệm eliminated political opposition in the south by launching operations against religious groups: the Cao Đài and Hòa Hảo of Ba Cụt . The campaign also attacked the Bình Xuyên organized crime group, which was allied with members of the communist party secret police and had military elements. The group
6000-405: The Japanese grew dramatically, and by the end of 1944 the Viet Minh had grown to over 500,000 members. US President Franklin D. Roosevelt was an ardent supporter of Vietnamese resistance, and proposed that Vietnam's independence be granted under an international trusteeship following the war. Following the surrender of Japan in 1945, the Viet Minh launched the August Revolution , overthrowing
6125-423: The Japanese-backed Empire of Vietnam and seizing weapons from the surrendering Japanese forces. On September 2, Ho Chi Minh proclaimed the Declaration of independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV). However, on September 23, French forces overthrew the DRV and reinstated French rule. American support for the Viet Minh promptly ended, and O.S.S. forces left as the French sought to reassert control of
6250-403: The Nation. It is sometimes called the American War . Vietnam had been under French control as part of French Indochina since the mid-19th century. Under French rule, Vietnamese nationalism was suppressed, so revolutionary groups conducted their activities abroad, particularly in France and China. One such nationalist, Nguyen Sinh Cung , established the Indochinese Communist Party in 1930,
6375-466: 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
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#17328867083976500-409: The PRC also completed its withdrawal from North Vietnam. Between 1953 and 1956, the North Vietnamese government instituted agrarian reforms, including "rent reduction" and "land reform", which resulted in political oppression. During land reform, North Vietnamese witnesses suggested a ratio of one execution for every 160 village residents, which extrapolates to 100,000 executions. Because the campaign
6625-450: The RCP split in 1977 this struggle was reflected in the RSB; a significant section of the Revolutionary Student Brigade left the RCP, taking the RSB name with them. They joined the Revolutionary Workers Headquarters , a new Marxist-Leninist organization which emerged from the RCP. Those who remained in the RCP and renamed their organization the Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade . Disagreement over how to organize students and youth played
6750-593: 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
6875-474: 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
7000-436: 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 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
7125-576: 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
7250-408: The State of Vietnam, with Bảo Đại as Emperor, and Ngô Đình Diệm as prime minister. Neither the US, nor Diệm's State of Vietnam, signed anything at the Geneva Conference. The non-communist Vietnamese delegation objected strenuously to any division of Vietnam, but lost when the French accepted the proposal of Viet Minh delegate Phạm Văn Đồng , who proposed Vietnam eventually be united by elections under
7375-400: 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
7500-453: The US discussed the use of tactical nuclear weapons , though reports of how seriously this was considered and by whom, are vague. According to then-Vice President Richard Nixon , the Joint Chiefs of Staff drew up plans to use nuclear weapons to support the French. Nixon, a so-called " hawk ", suggested the US might have to "put American boys in". President Dwight D. Eisenhower made American participation contingent on British support, but
7625-413: 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
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#17328867083977750-437: 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
7875-473: The Vienna summit with Khrushchev, "Now we have a problem making our power credible and Vietnam looks like the place." Kennedy's policy toward South Vietnam assumed Diệm and his forces had to defeat the guerrillas on their own. He was against the deployment of American combat troops and observed "to introduce U.S. forces in large numbers there today, while it might have an initially favorable military impact, would almost certainly lead to adverse political and, in
8000-430: 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
8125-743: The border. About 500 of the "regroupees" of 1954 were sent south on the trail during its first year of operation. The first arms delivery via the trail was completed in August 1959. In April 1960, North Vietnam imposed universal military conscription for men. About 40,000 communist soldiers infiltrated the south from 1961 to 1963. In the 1960 U.S. presidential election , Senator John F. Kennedy defeated incumbent Vice President Richard Nixon. Although Eisenhower warned Kennedy about Laos and Vietnam, Europe and Latin America "loomed larger than Asia on his sights." In June 1961, he bitterly disagreed with Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev when they met in Vienna to discuss key U.S.–Soviet issues. Only 16 months later,
8250-516: 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
8375-443: The cause célèbre. In November 1963, the Swarthmore College chapter of SDS partnered with Stanley Branche and local parents to create 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
8500-434: 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
8625-448: 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
8750-399: The contradictions "between political democracy and economic concentration of power", and to take 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
8875-438: The country . Tensions between the Viet Minh and French authorities had erupted into full-scale war by 1946, a conflict which soon became entwined with the wider Cold War . On March 12, 1947, US President Harry S. Truman announced the Truman Doctrine , an anticommunist foreign policy which pledged US support to nations resisting "attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures". In Indochina, this doctrine
9000-620: 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
9125-540: The country to the Virgin Mary . In the summer of 1955, Diệm launched the "Denounce the Communists" campaign, during which suspected communists and other anti-government elements were arrested, imprisoned, tortured, or executed. He instituted the death penalty in August 1956 against activity deemed communist. The North Vietnamese government claimed that, by November 1957, over 65,000 individuals were imprisoned and 2,148 killed in
9250-527: 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, the Vietnam War and Black Power . A new national network for left-wing student organizing, also calling itself Students for
9375-572: The demilitarized zone, between North and South Vietnam. The North Vietnamese Communist Party approved a "people's war" on the South at a session in January 1959, and, in May, Group 559 was established to maintain and upgrade the Ho Chi Minh trail , at this time a six-month mountain trek through Laos. On 28 July, North Vietnamese and Pathet Lao forces invaded Laos, fighting the Royal Lao Army all along
9500-452: The dispossessed" had been misplaced: "It is through the experience of the middle class and 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
9625-916: 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
9750-470: The end of 1965, and to 536,000 by the end of 1968. US forces relied on air supremacy and overwhelming firepower to conduct search and destroy operations in rural areas. In 1968, North Vietnam launched the Tet Offensive , which was a tactical defeat but convinced many in the US that the war could not be won. The PAVN began engaging in more conventional warfare . Johnson's successor, Richard Nixon , began
9875-543: 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,
10000-423: 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" the authors disclaimed any "formulas" or "closed theories". Instead, "matured" by "the horrors of
10125-433: 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 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
10250-557: 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 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
10375-458: 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
10500-711: The insurgency entitled "The Road to the South" to the Politburo in Hanoi. However, as China and the Soviets opposed confrontation, his plan was rejected. Despite this, the North Vietnamese leadership approved tentative measures to revive southern insurgency in December 1956. Communist forces were under a single command structure set up in 1958. In May 1958, North Vietnamese forces seized the transportation hub at Tchepone in Southern Laos near
10625-465: 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 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
10750-497: The landlords back, people who had been farming land for years had to return it to landlords and pay years of back rent. Marilyn B. Young wrote that "The divisions within villages reproduced those that had existed against the French: 75% support for the NLF, 20% trying to remain neutral and 5% firmly pro-government". In March 1956, southern communist leader Lê Duẩn presented a plan to revive
10875-490: The landmark Supreme Court case Brown v. The Board of Education of Topeka . The racial unrest and civil rights protests made Chester one of 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
11000-467: The larger Indochina refugee crisis , which saw millions leave Indochina, an estimated 250,000 perished at sea. The US destroyed 20% of South Vietnam's jungle and 20–50% of the mangrove forests, by spraying over 20 million U.S. gallons (75 million liters) of toxic herbicides; a notable example of ecocide . The Khmer Rouge carried out the Cambodian genocide , while conflict between them and
11125-526: The long run, adverse military consequences." The quality of the South Vietnamese military, however, remained poor. Poor leadership, corruption, and political promotions weakened the ARVN. The frequency of guerrilla attacks rose as the insurgency gathered steam. While Hanoi's support for the VC played a role, South Vietnamese governmental incompetence was at the core of the crisis. One major issue Kennedy raised
11250-598: 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
11375-516: 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
11500-489: 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
11625-446: The other communists and anti-GVN activists. Douglas Pike estimated that insurgents carried out 2,000 abductions, and 1,700 assassinations of government officials, village chiefs, hospital workers and teachers from 1957 to 1960. Violence between insurgents and government forces increased drastically from 180 clashes in January 1960, to 545 clashes in September. In September 1960, COSVN , North Vietnam's southern headquarters, ordered
11750-576: 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 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
11875-709: The policies of the Reagan administration. Johnson was arrested and convicted, but had his conviction overturned on appeal. The State of Texas then sought and obtained review by the Supreme Court . In Texas v. Johnson , a five-justice majority of the court held that Johnson’s act of flag burning was protected speech under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution . In 1978 Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade published Minorities and whites, unite to smash
12000-537: The poor". By the end of 1964, ERAP had ten inner-city projects engaging 125 student volunteers. Ralph Helstein , president of 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
12125-633: The pro-Western government of Laos and the Pathet Lao communist movement in May, construction of the Berlin Wall in August, and the Cuban Missile Crisis in October. Kennedy believed another failure to stop communist expansion would irreparably damage US credibility. He was determined to "draw a line in the sand" and prevent a communist victory in Vietnam. He told James Reston of The New York Times after
12250-412: The process. According to Gabriel Kolko , 40,000 political prisoners had been jailed by the end of 1958. In October 1956, Diệm launched a land reform program limiting the size of rice farms per owner. 1.8m acres of farm land became available for purchase by landless people. By 1960, the process had stalled because many of Diem's biggest supporters were large landowners. In May 1957, Diệm undertook
12375-469: The same time, for many, 1963–64 was the academic year in which white poverty was discovered. Michael Harrington's The Other America "was 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
12500-585: 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 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,
12625-518: 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
12750-817: The supervision of "local commissions". The US countered with what became known as the "American Plan", with the support of South Vietnam and the UK. It provided for unification elections under the supervision of the UN, but was rejected by the Soviet delegation. The US said, "With respect to the statement made by the representative of the State of Vietnam, the United States reiterates its traditional position that peoples are entitled to determine their own future and that it will not join in any arrangement which would hinder this". US President Eisenhower wrote in 1954: I have never talked or corresponded with
12875-434: 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, 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
13000-511: The two provisional states for a 300-day period. Elections throughout the country were to be held in 1956 to establish a unified government. However, the US, represented at the conference by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles , objected to the resolution; Dulles' objection was supported only by the representative of Bảo Đại. John Foster's brother, Allen Dulles , who was director of the Central Intelligence Agency , then initiated
13125-587: The unified Vietnam escalated into the Cambodian–Vietnamese War . In response, China invaded Vietnam , with border conflicts lasting until 1991. Within the US, the war gave rise to Vietnam syndrome , a public aversion to American overseas military involvement, which, with the Watergate scandal , contributed to the crisis of confidence that affected America throughout the 1970s. Various names have been applied and have shifted over time, though Vietnam War
13250-471: 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 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
13375-573: The war, written while he had been working for a defense contractor. The Vice President 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
13500-464: 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 ,
13625-500: 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 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,
13750-433: Was already dissent. The "whole balance of the organization shifted to ERAP headquarters in Ann Arbor", 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
13875-522: Was an armed conflict in Vietnam , Laos , and Cambodia fought between North Vietnam (Democratic Republic of Vietnam) and South Vietnam (Republic of Vietnam) and their allies. North Vietnam was supported by the Soviet Union and China , while South Vietnam was supported by the United States and other anti-communist nations. The conflict was the second of the Indochina Wars and a major proxy war of
14000-483: 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 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
14125-409: 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
14250-451: Was defeated in April following a battle in Saigon . As broad-based opposition to his harsh tactics mounted, Diệm increasingly sought to blame the communists. In a referendum on the future of the State of Vietnam in October 1955, Diệm rigged the poll supervised by his brother Ngô Đình Nhu and was credited with 98% of the vote, including 133% in Saigon. His American advisors had recommended
14375-433: Was divided into two parts at the 17th parallel : the Viet Minh , led by Ho Chi Minh , took control of North Vietnam, while the US assumed financial and military support for South Vietnam, led by Ngo Dinh Diem . The North Vietnamese began supplying and directing the Viet Cong (VC), a common front of dissidents in the south, which intensified a guerrilla war from 1957. In 1958, North Vietnam invaded Laos , establishing
14500-462: 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
14625-863: Was first proposed by the Eisenhower administration . John F. Kennedy , then a senator , said in a speech to the American Friends of Vietnam : "Burma, Thailand, India, Japan, the Philippines and obviously Laos and Cambodia are among those whose security would be threatened if the Red Tide of Communism overflowed into Vietnam." A devout Roman Catholic, Diệm was fervently anti-communist, nationalist, and socially conservative. Historian Luu Doan Huynh notes "Diệm represented narrow and extremist nationalism coupled with autocracy and nepotism ." Most Vietnamese were Buddhist , and alarmed by Diệm's actions, like his dedication of
14750-656: Was first put into practice in February 1950, when the United States recognized the French-backed State of Vietnam in Saigon , led by former Emperor Bảo Đại, as the legitimate government of Vietnam, after the communist states of the Soviet Union and People's Republic of China recognized the Democratic Republic of Vietnam , led by Ho Chi Minh, as the legitimate Vietnamese government the previous month. The outbreak of
14875-428: 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
15000-468: Was killed in a US-backed military coup , which added to the south's instability. Following the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964, the US Congress passed a resolution that gave President Lyndon B. Johnson authority to increase military presence without a declaration of war. Johnson launched a bombing campaign of the north and began sending combat troops, dramatically increasing deployment to 184,000 by
15125-464: Was mainly in the Red River Delta area, 50,000 executions became accepted by scholars. However, declassified documents from Vietnamese and Hungarian archives indicate executions were much lower, though likely greater than 13,500. In 1956, leaders in Hanoi admitted to "excesses" in implementing this program and restored much of the land to the original owners. The south, meanwhile, constituted
15250-412: 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
15375-773: 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 ' ". Vietnam War ≈860,000 (1967) ≈1,420,000 (1968) Total military dead/missing: ≈1,100,000 Total military wounded: ≈604,200 (excluding GRUNK / Khmer Rouge and Pathet Lao ) Second Third American intervention 1965 1966 1967 Tet Offensive and aftermath Vietnamization 1969–1971 1972 Post- Paris Peace Accords (1973–1974) Spring 1975 Air operations Naval operations Lists of allied operations The Vietnam War (1 November 1955 – 30 April 1975)
15500-518: Was whether the Soviet space and missile programs had surpassed those of the US. Although Kennedy stressed long-range missile parity with the Soviets, he was interested in using special forces for counterinsurgency warfare in Third World countries threatened by communist insurgencies. Although they were intended for use behind front lines after a conventional Soviet invasion of Europe, Kennedy believed guerrilla tactics employed by special forces, such as
15625-415: 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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