Read a Pacific Northwest, liberal perspective on world, national, and local politics. From majestic Redmond, Washington - the Northwest Progressive Institute Official Blog.

Thursday, March 15, 2007

You better free your mind instead

If you thought the recent protests at the Port of Tacoma had the look and feel of the 1960's, there may be a good reason. Today's Oregonian has a front page story (replete with artistic photo) about the newly reconstituted Students for a Democratic Society.
At least 14 Lewis & Clark students, including four SDS members, joined those from Olympia and Tacoma last weekend at the Port of Portland to protest the shipment of Stryker vehicles to Iraq.

A video posted on the Northwest SDS Web site and YouTube shows Tacoma police using tear gas against protesters in scenes reminiscent of the 1960s. Danielle Hurley, 19, a freshman and SDS member at Lewis & Clark, says she was hit in the arm and three places in the back by rubber bullets and tear gas.

Both the Reed and Lewis & Clark SDS are recruiting students to join an anti-war rally Sunday in the South Park Blocks of downtown Portland.
So, depending on your point of view, this could be a positive sign of youth interest in meaningful change, it could be that some aging Baby Boomers decided to re-start SDS, or it might represent something of a potential threat to the chances that Democrats have to enact meaningful reform themselves.

The original SDS, of course, had its roots in the nuclear freeze and civil rights movements, progressed to opposing the Vietnam War, and met its ultimate destruction in the insane violence and ridiculous views of the Weathermen. Which isn't to say that today's students who want a democratic society should not act, but it strikes me as rather peculiar to atempt the re-creation of a movement that was not only specific to its time but specific to a particular class of elite (mostly white) college students. But hey, people can act for change as they see best, although frankly I wonder if these new activists understand that being gassed and hit with rubber bullets in Tacoma was child's play compared with what happened in the 1960's. They didn't use rubber bullets at Kent State, and the Chicago police in 1968 were more than happy to take their frustrations out on any skull, press or otherwise, within reach.

But the world and the American politcal parties have changed. The Republican Party is now the party of the South, and a huge upswing in interest not just among students but among people from all walks of life have fed new blood into the Democratic Party.

The world of 1962 that saw a small group of college students issue the famous "Port Huron Statement" was a Cold War world of segregation and computers were the size of houses. The Democratic Party was heavily reliant on its southern base, and the recent memory of McCarthyism weighed heavily on foreign policy decisions. A disastrous involvement in a foreign war loomed large, although in 1962 only the most prescient could have foreseen the scale of the disaster. Communciation and organizing took place at a much slower pace. People used telegrams for messages to Congress.

While racism and other forms of bigotry, especially homophobia, are still all too common, and there are still legal obstacles to be overcome, the basic political conditions of this country are not really the same. Yes, there is a disastrous foreign war, but unlike Vietnam the Democratic Party is moving towards ending it. Legal rights for gay couples are high on the agenda of many Democrats. Progress on all fronts is not as fast nor as clean as anyone would like, but progress is not only present but stands to increase rapidly as the prospects for larger majorities and a Democratic President materialize. Yes, there are regressive forces in the Democratic Party, but it's hardly realistic to think that entrenched power would be completely cleaned out in the four or so years the netroots since the netroots exploded onto the scene.

In the 1960's, students who wished to stop the war or push for civil rights were, in many ways, shut out of the Democratic Party and thus electoral politics. The 1964 Democratic convention featured the famous struggle over whether to seat the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party delegates, and the 1968 convention was, of course, marred by a police riot. Students literally had nowhere to turn.

That's simply not the case today. The party would welcome them with open arms, if they actually wanted to accomplish change. But if you root around the New SDS web site you might be struck, as I was, at how similar the language and conceptualization of the "new" SDS is to the old.

For example, the Call for March 20 student action from the "new" SDS web site features verbiage that could have been written forty years ago:
We refuse to be subtle in our outcry against this war, we refuse to do nothing and be silent while people are killed in our name for profit for the rich and we refuse to be sent overseas in a war for oil.
Which, you know, would be fine if their path to participation were actually blocked. But it's not. There is no draft, so anyone getting sent overseas volunteered to do so. Yes, there are problems with voting systems and military recruiting, but things just aren't the same as in the 1960's.

It's worth stating that the original SDS, in its non-violent days, was incredibly important. We owe those who came before us a lot. And I share everyone's current frustration not only with the war in Iraq and other vital issues, but with the sick, twisted political-media-industrial complex that allowed that war to happen. But let's be honest: while there were plenty of "small-d" democrats involved with SDS, there was also a labyrinthine set of sub-groups that most Americans, to this day, associate with either communism or socialism.

The association with communism and socialism is probably the most damaging historical legacy of SDS (if you leave the Weathermen out of the equation,) and while it's true that many, many original SDS'ers were bitterly opposed to what ultimately happened, you can't really go back and change things. It's not that Americans today hate and fear communism, it's that communism and socialism are at this point such relics of the 20th century that it seems absurd to identify, even in passing, with a long dead organization that had more than a limited fondness for them. Just as it seems antiquated and well, ridiculous to talk about street protests as a means of accomplishing anything today, when there are so many other outlets.

All that being said, I'm certain there are genuinely sincere individuals involved in the "new" SDS, but I'm fairly dubious of pursuing radical strategies and tactics at this point in history. Frankly, the majority of Americans simply won't support it.

The political risk, of course, is that extremism on the left will be used to attack Democrats and damage their electoral chances. It's not really possible to say if that is likely, although even the hint of continued and increasingly strident street protests probably fills Nixon toady Roger Ailes' heart with glee. It's the satellite video age, and each and every pepper gas canister will be re-run fifty times while Sean Hannity burbbles on and on about "law and order."

You kind of wonder what the "elder SDS activists" who helped re-start SDS actually learned from their experiences.

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