Comments on: Maurice Isserman versus the new SDS

By: OldFart

OldFart — Tue, 27 May 2008 02:04:33 +0000

The Weathermen and much of the left were self righteous arrogant so and sos. Because most of them have lost not iota of their arrogance and self righteousness in 40 years, it is absurd to ask for them to apologize. You may as well ask a trained sheepdog to stop running after sheep.

By: James Tracy

James Tracy — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 17:54:55 +0000

There is far too much punditry on the choice of the name “SDS”. Personally, I don’t think it was the best choice. However, let’s get beyond that and praise these students for their attempt to bring their generation directly into the fights for social justice, a bringing creative and effective presence to counter-recruiting, New Orleans and other issues. If resurrecting the name is indeed a mistake, it is theirs to make. They should be judged by their actions which are by and large constructive, not by the unresolved issues of the last left.

By: bob f.

bob f. — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 03:38:15 +0000

Since late ’60s SDS was more effective in mobilizing U.S. students on campus to resist the U.S. war machine on campus than most of the subsequent anti-war student groups that organized under a different name, calling the 21st-century multi-issue student radical group “SDS” might make it easier for current student activists to build on the past history and help provide some historical continuity and increased historical consciousness. You can find some historical material about 60s columbia sds campus organizing posted on my blog at http://www.bfeldman68.blogspot.com (if you’re able to access it)

By: michael bagge

michael bagge — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 16:03:27 +0000

A smart essay. And one which makes me extremely sorry that I had a distractingly meaningless email exchange with you years ago when I wrongly mistook you for some typical marxist ideologue. Isserman has done good work but he is way off base lecturing students about what forms of organization they need to avoid. The old folks should be jumping up and down at the organizing instinct and willingness to draw on American traditions. Hectoring and scolding is not only counterproductive but disrespectful. As a once enthusiastic and long lasting member of SDS in the northeast, I am only too well aware of all the problems which were specific to personalities, context and Cointelpro.

Again, thanks for this upbeat, intelligent and critical essay. Nice to see that the news of marxism’s death were premature.

By: shliapnikov

shliapnikov — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 18:47:09 +0000

Here’s a piece about the politics of the new SDS that I wrote recently
for my blog, before reading Isserman’s: http://killbono.wordpress.com/2007/02/24/on-students-for-a-democratic-society-sds-20.

By: Michael Hureaux

Michael Hureaux — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 16:29:00 +0000

If they actually fucked things up, as Mr. Young implies, that’s a whole other kettle of fish. I’ve just always had a problem with Gitlin’s implication that Weatherman and Nixon were the same variety of nutcase.

By: Stuart Newman

Stuart Newman — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 07:17:55 +0000

Ethan Young is right about Weatherman turning into a narcissistic stunt. (Hi Ethan!) Earlier on, however, it represented a locus of creativity in its engagement with popular culture, irony (”fight the people!”), and distancing from Old Left forms that weren’t working for those times. There was obvious Panther-envy (unreciprocated) by people with enough analysis to realize that they had no standing as revolutionaries according to any decent theory. A number of Weatherpeople I knew well were steeped in theory. (The sense of being engaged bystanders in a period of historical turmoil is interestingly evoked in Tom Stoppard’s currently playing “Coast of Utopia” trilogy.) The first clear evidence of the nasty turn Weatherman would eventually take were the disgusting comments by the same Bernadine Dohrn applauding the Charles Manson-directed Tate-LaBianca murders in August 1969. A good friend central to the Weather group in Chicago did his best, along with others, to thwart the idiotic leadership of “Berna-dingdong.” Weatherman, for better or worse, is part of history. Dohrn and Ayers should just slink away.

By: Michael Hureaux

Michael Hureaux — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 20:04:47 +0000

Me too on this Weatherman piece. I’m sick to death of the equation which assumes an essential likeness between the nuttiness of the Weather underground and the atrocities the U.S. committed in Vietnam. At the risk of using movement poetry from the past, I believe, alongside Thoreau, that it is not the weapon used so much as it is the spirit in which it is used, or so he argued in his defense of John Brown. I believe the same applies to the mistakes of the Weathermen, who at the very least, aren’t repeating the errors of forty years ago, and that’s a hell of a lot more than one can say for Todd Gitlin.

By: ethan young

ethan young — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 20:19:05 +0000

There is another historical record, one of painstaking work to build a mass antiwar movement, which the Weatherpeople opposed. Dohrn, Ayers & co. certainly owe no apology to the war makers. To the movement, especially newly radicalized kids, they need to own up that they fucked things up royally. They strongly opposed mass organizing, coalition building and anything that they couldn’t fit into their vision of worldwide people’s war. They loudly and persistently declaimed that the rest of the ‘white left’ [except Workers World] were pigs, that white workers were pigs, that all pigs should be offed, that nonviolence was for pigs, and that the police should be killed– which gave the law extra cover in the war against the black movement, while the ivy league urban guerrillas ran and hid in hippieland.

As a one-time enthusiast of Weather politics, and a veteran of the ‘days of rage’ national action, I urge nostalgiacs to find and talk to real activists of the late 60s-early 70s [and I don't mean Gitlin]. The weather folks weren’t brave, smart, moral or loyal–just making a big show at the expense of the great majority of activists who made real sacrifices, and had a real political commitment to the class struggle.

By: tigger

tigger — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 07:28:39 +0000

How many deaths due to the Vietnam War? Approximately 5.4 million total.

Total US military casualties? 58,156.

Highest state death rate: West Virginia–84.1. (The national average death rate for males in 1970 was 58.9 per 100,000).

Severely disabled: 75,000, 23,214 were classified 100% disabled. 5,283 lost limbs, 1,081 sustained multiple amputations. Amputation or crippling wounds to the lower extremities were 300% higher than in WWII and 70% higher than in Korea. Multiple amputations occurred at the rate of 18.4% compared to 5.7% in WWII.MIA: 2,338POW: 766, of whom 114 died in captivity.

In the 5 years following the war, the suicide rate of veterans was 1.7
times the non-Veteran population, yielding an estimate of 9,000
suicides as a direct result of the war.

Tell me again why the Weather Underground should be sorry.