After dealing with so much repression at our University, SDS’ers at Pace have launched a free speech campaign. I made this flyer (PDF file, 11 x 17 inches) and thought other people could use it too. I made it more general for the entire Students for a Democratic Society. The concept was from a similarly designed Columbia Revolt Poster (which was a little more radical). The picture in the center is of the Berkeley students when Jack Weinberg was arrested. Mario Savio is on top of the police car, which is on the center-left of the image. Weinberg refused to comply with campus police when they demanded to see his ID on campus. The students surrounded the police car and gave speeches on top of the vehicle until all charges were dropped against Weinberg. Tell me what you think. (I backdated it so it Harass the Brass was still first. The date I posted this was April 2).
-Brian Kelly
Pace SDS, New York City
kelly@leftist.ws
kelly@leftist.ws
I’ll upload the flyer into the agitProp directory. What’s Pace’s free speech campaign all about? It sounds interesting. You should design a letter to the community detailing the motivation behind it, what you plan to do, and what you hope to accomplish. Pass it on our way, too.
At first glance, I kind-of thought the flyer was a proposal for a “free school” or something. That’s another project that I think SDSers should take up.
“A Free University in a Free Society” is an old SDS Slogan - - started during the Columbia Revolt/strike I believe. It was out of the motivations of the statement on the Strike by the coordinating commmittee that they understood the the university is a part of larger society and as such you need to fight for both to be free.
Free Schools are realllly awesome though. As are Democratic Schools. Definately something we should look into a little down the line.
-Brian
I had the same reaction at first glance as Kyle. I certainly like the idea of devolving control of universities to local, cooperative ownership. The students and faculty should be the ones running universities, not statist bureacrats and managers who are increasingly compromising the interests of students and their educational desires in order to reach out to the corporate statist ruling class and generally improve the cash flow.
Free schools and democratic schools are both good examples of alternatives to statist schools.
Free schools is something SDS should advocate for. I would be interested in knowing how the students as Pace are repressed. Also, I feel using images and slogans from the 60s is a big cliche. If SDS wants to attract progressives into the organization, it needs to offer new ideas, alternatives, means of protest. People want something fresh. Something that we can identify with!