SDS Organizer

A Positive Strategy Forward for Chicago SDS

mrsituationist — Tue, 22 May 2007 01:27:59 +0000

Below is an outline for a positive strategy for chicago SDS to pursue next semester, and I’d like to hear some feedback on it. These documents are rough rough drafts but I would like to hear what others have to say about this strategy. Essentially the plan is to use the resources of Chicago’s university in a cooperative incubator. The schools would provide the technology and identify market opportunities for worker cooperatives to be located in oppressed communities like austin on chicago’s west side.

The cooperative incubator would focus on creating opportunities in the green economy, and would obtain financing both from the numerous city of chicago financing schemes for new businesses and also from leftist lending institutions like south shore bank with resources in the tens of millions.

The text of a .pdf pamphlet I made is aimed at the average student and I also wrote an op ed piece for the leftist magazine In These Times out of chicago for a more revolutionary crowd (not yet submitted). The next step for this project is to hold a meeting of all those interested; which will be after the midwest conference in the middle of june. Hit me up if these ideas resonate with you because I want this incubator to become reality. We can get our universities to do this, they already participate in othe incubators and I feel there would be significant faculty support for an incubator with a mission to bring green tech to the market, and promote sustainable development in low income communities.

peace

nick

Introduction

Stable employment is the anchor of every community, and when jobs leave so does the lifeblood of a community. Residents of Chicago’s south and west sides have struggled with the deindustrialization of the 1980’s and have seen their neighborhoods spiral downwards into a state of entrenched poverty.

The city of Chicago has failed to address the problem of entrenched poverty in many of its neighborhoods. Many times it has resorted to simply tearing down neighborhoods, removing the residents and selling the land to real estate developers in a process called gentrification. Another strategy has been to allow polluting industry into neighborhoods that have been fought off by communities with enough political connections and money.

Mayor Daley’s latest strategy however has been to court big box retailers into low income communities by restricting wages and offering favorable financing schemes. Landing a Wal-Mart in Austin or Englewood is not going to start development in those neighborhoods for a number of reasons. First the Wal-mart will undercut whatever small business exists in these communities destroying both livelihoods and some of the tax base. Second Wal-mart workers will not have a net “multiplier” effect on the community like most other businesses. A money multiplier effect is when a workers wage becomes recycled into the local economy through their purchases at other businesses. Wal-mart simply does not pay enough to its workers for them to make a significant contribution to the local economy, instead most of their money gets recycled back into Wal-mart’s products.

It is clear that relying upon traditionally structured businesses to produce employment in these communities has been a failure. Shareholders are the only people consulted for decisions, meaning that the business can leave at any time, or even worse, the shareholders can slowly run the company into the ground extracting as much wealth as possible from the business’s productive capacity and its workers.

Clearly a new urban development paradigm is needed. Advocates for social justice must expand their strategy to include wealth creation in addition to protesting working conditions at Wal-Mart or the outsourcing of jobs. Entrenched poverty will only be solved by establishing ownership of enterprises within depressed communities, ensuring the profits are recycled back into the local economy which will create a money multiplier effect, generating even more growth.

A New Way Forward: A Green Cooperative Incubator

Our plan for generating employment in Chicago represents a new way forward, we want to establish enterprises that are both accountable to their workers and that contribute to the greening of our city and surrounding environment. The tool that we will use is called an incubator. As students we hold a unique position to pressure our institutions to live up to their stated social missions and to aid in wealth creation in low income communities and participate in a Green Cooperative Incubator.

Traditionally incubators have been restricted to partnerships between universities, their graduates, a few investors, and local government for the purpose of creating hi-tech industry. In this model the university graduates bring their university projects into the market place and the incubator helps them to establish a business towards this end.

Our Green Cooperative Incubator would be qualitatively different because it would focus on creating employment for low income communities, and not university graduates, but more importantly it would focus on using the cooperative enterprise model where enterprises are democratically directed by their workers. Democratic cooperatives have proven wildly successful in the Mondragon Basque region of Spain and the Emilia Romanga region of Italy, both of which were devastated after the Second World War.

Mondragon Cooperative Corporation

The Basque region of Spain was devastated after Franco’s vicious assault during the Spanish civil war, and was punished by the central government for being one of the last provinces to submit to fascist rule. In 1956 five engineers and a priest named Don Jose Maria Arizmendiarreta began a stove making company named ULGOR based on the cooperative principles espoused by Don Jose Maria. ULGOR proved successful and by 1959 it required more capital and prompted Maria to visit door to door to raise capital for a cooperative bank, also know as Caja.

As a student of cooperatives, Maria knew that cooperatives tended to become isolationist and disintegrate after some generations of workers. The Mondragon project was intended to rebuild the Basque region and to generate employment and as Mondragon expanded, each enterprise remained networked with each of the others. A Congress of Cooperatives established ground rules for the cooperatives to operate under, and served to help restructure and bail out struggling enterprises. This approach has created significant results with only one failed enterprise out of over 150 enterprises under the Mondragon network, this is especially promising consider the US failure rate for start up businesses is around 50%.

Today Mondragon Cooperative Corporation’s member enterprises have won contracts from NASA, hold the largest share in big ticket domestic appliances in Spain and a growing share in the European Union market, include the largest retailer in Spain through the cooperative big-box chain Eroski, and have been expanding industrial production outside of Spain.

Emilia Romanga

Emilia Romanga is a region in Northern Italy that was also devastated by WWII and was liberated by the Italian communist partisans. It has been rebuilt through the dynamic policies of the Italian Communist Party that has emphasized small businesses and cooperatives. The region has 325,000 firms and 4 million people, one of the highest firm ownership per capita rates in the world.

Small businesses and cooperatives have been promoted by the Communist Party through the sale of capital and land taken through the equivalent of eminent domain. The local government has also established incubators and service centers, where firms can loan time shares on expensive equipment that couldn’t be purchased on an individual level. Many of the businesses emerged after spinning off of other businesses, where employees from one company would create a spinoff company to supply their former employer with inputs. This had led to one of the most dynamic economies in Europe, winning Emilia Romanga a rating in the top ten most prosperous areas in the entire European Union. The cooperative movement in Emilia Romanga is an example of how a democratic decision making model in the workplace can lead to a dynamic, employment and technology intensive economy that has the ability to lead a community out of poverty.

The Next Step: A Green Cooperative Incubator in Chicago

Our Green Cooperative Incubator in Chicago would focus on utilizing green technology to transform our local economy. In the next decades there will be a massive expansion in the market opportunities for green tech companies in the manufacturing and service sectors. The renewable energy transition we must make to save the planet will need new manufacturing plants for solar panels and wind turbines, and will require firms to install the panels and turbines, and will require firms to recycle greater amounts and more varied types of waste to limit resource use.

These opportunities are the path out of entrenched poverty for many of Chicago’s community. We have a moral and environmental obligation to end Eco-Apartheid where the benefits of the green tech revolution are concentrated in the wealthy, mostly white, suburban areas. If we do not end entrenched poverty, the massive waste and pollution involved in maintaining such a state of affairs will negate any positive impact from a green suburbia and will eventually kill the planet.

Design of Green Cooperative Incubator

The board of the Green Cooperative Incubator would comprise of representatives from participating universities that would be responsible for coordinating their institutions’ contributions. Physical science departments would collaborative to research green technology deliverable to the market, and business departments would collaborate to author viable business plans. The universities would then fund feasibility studies to determine if the business plans would proceed to the next stage of development.

Also sitting on the board of the incubator would be representatives of participating financial institutions and student representatives appointed by the participating school’s student government. These student representatives would serve as a check to the power of the universities and act to ensure the integrity of the program. A liaison with the Chicago city government would also have a seat on the board, with the entire board electing a chairman. Board members representing community environment groups would be invited to join because of their intimate knowledge of the social and environmental justice issues facing their communities.

If a proposal for a cooperative enterprise would be found feasible; the next stage would be to select an initial manger to act as a “godfather,” similar to the model used to begin new enterprises in Mondragon. The manager would be appointed by the board, and would have to act within the guidelines set by the board and relinquish control of the enterprise after two years to the workers. The initial manager would not have any extra equity in the company, merely control rights. All of the equity of the business would be owned by the incubator with the workers purchasing equity collectively back from the board, with shares structured to ensure that each person would receive one vote. After two years the control of the enterprise would be relinquished to the workers, but if the enterprise were to fall into arrears in their equity payments or other financial trouble, the board would have the right to reappoint a manager for a temporary period of time.

What’s Next?

We must use our universities to initiate the Green Cooperative Incubator because those are the institutions we can most easily influence. Also school administrations would likely be more receptive to becoming the core of the Green Cooperative Incubator than any other institution.

Our campaign will focus itself on a single educational institution to create an organizational base that can then expand to other universities. The campaign for a Green Cooperative Incubator has the potential to link many student groups into a single campaign, we can expect anti-war groups, identity based groups (Black, Hispanic, Muslim student unions), fair-trade groups, Jobs with Justice, and environmental organizations to collaborate on the project.

Universities such as Depaul, UIC, and IIT have already committed themselves to promoting sustainable development in Chicago, meaning that we will have a moral high ground when advocating that they adopt our Green Cooperative Incubator proposal. If we can obtain support from one university, it will be much more likely that other universities will also lend their support. The snowball effect will make our task easier with the second and third universities, whereas attempting to pressure multiple universities simultaneously will spread our organizers too thin and we will not reach the critical mass to pressure any single university to adopt out plan. We must engage in typical advocacy, organizing demonstrations in support of our proposal, holding dozens of teach-ins across the campus, engaging in sit-ins, disruptions, and further escalations if our demands aren’t met in a timely manner.

If you support social and environmental justice please join Chicago SDS in our campaign for a Green Cooperative Incubator. We will be holding a series of forums in July about the campaign and are laying the foundations for further action this summer. Get in touch with us at chicagosds@gmail.com or at www.newsds.org/chicago

Op-ed for In These Times

Forty years ago the Black Panthers drafted the Ten Point Program; a survival platform for oppressed communities necessary to build towards a revolutionary future. The Program demanded that basic needs be fulfilled, and importantly, that jobs be provided to oppressed communities. Forty years later employment remains the most pressing demand. Today we need a revolutionary vision on how to generate employment.

The left has to date largely ignored the issue of creating employment in oppressed communities. Creating employment has been left in the hands of predatory capitalists; the Wal-Marts, the polluting industries that have been rejected everywhere else, the day labor agencies etc. As a movement we have failed to recognize how employment can affect communities and their potential to organize and overcome oppression.

Communities suffering from unemployment, underemployment and poor employment degenerate into concrete jungles. Employment provides economic stability for families; in the absence of such stability it is nearly impossible to successfully organize for change. Without communal stability movements decay from opportunistic survival behavior; selling drugs to pay for rent, scabbing, joining the military to pay for school, etc.

The failure of Chicago’s campaign to oppose Wal-Mart’s entry was instructive. If the revolutionary movement is to be successful it must provide a program to meet the basic needs of communities. We must continue to oppose Wal-Mart but we must expand beyond opposition campaigns.

Green Cooperative Incubator

Incubators are projects that promote the creation of businesses, and have traditionally been used as collaborations between universities, their graduates, and towns to promote hi-tech business development. We need to use our universities instead to promote employment in low income communities and to bring the benefits of green technology to fruition. Whereas most incubators favor upper and middle class managers to start small businesses, our incubator will promote qualified management from low income communities, and will promote a cooperative model of organization, anchoring the profits and ownership of the enterprise in low income communities.

Cooperatives have been used in Mondragon, Emilia Romanga, Venezuela, and have shown the viability of economic cooperatives as a tool to generate employment and empower communities. We have to learn from these models and adapt a plan using resources available to us in Chicago.

Creating a Green Cooperative Incubator can be done immediately once we organize and apply focused pressure on selected actors. Students must pressure their universities to participate in the incubator by dedicating funding and faculty to identify market opportunities for cooperatives, and also to dedicate research towards technology for use by the cooperative enterprises. Many schools already have programs toward environmental and sustainable business, which makes it much easier to obtain institutional support for a cooperative incubator.

We must also pressure aldermen from oppressed communities to obtain local government support. Significant support can be gained from the city with directed political pressure, from TIFF programs, small business loans to outright grants.

Financial institutions must also be involved in the incubator to provide seed capital and financing for the cooperative enterprises. Obtaining financing would be the least difficult part of the cooperative incubator because of the network of social investment institutions in the Midwest, and if they cannot provide adequate financing traditional lending institutions can be accessed for financing at discount rates through the city of Chicago programs for small businesses.

Our incubator would generate business plans for cooperatives to be located in oppressed communities. New cooperatives would follow the examples set by other successful models where a manager is appointed by the incubator for the first two years while the rest of the workers are trained to operate in a democratic workplace and learn how to make decisions about the company. Once the cooperative is turned over to the workers each worker would receive one vote in major decisions like electing the most skilled to supervisory positions, issues of pay, annual operating plans etc.

These first generation cooperatives would be a useful tool for establishing concrete political organizations in oppressed communities. Employment opportunities would be available for political organizers and would allow organizers to have the personal financial stability necessary for successful organizing efforts.

Green economy market opportunities will continue to expand for cooperatives; from installing green home improvements to manufacturing solar panel components to recycling demolition waste. A green cooperative incubator can distill these opportunities into actionable business plans that will create employment for oppressed communities. Universities can be changed from research institutions for war criminals like Boeing into partners providing important technical expertise for cooperative economic development. The green worker cooperatives created will anchor communities and create the stability necessary to build a revolutionary movement.

Movement for a Democratic society will be holding a series of public forums on the green cooperative incubator project throughout July. To participate in the creation of a new development paradigm please visit www.newsds.org/chicago

SDS MidEast Convention in Williamsburg Va April 20-22, 2007

johnsheppa — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 17:46:27 +0000

Hey All,

The SDS MidEast Convention is happening in 10 days in Williamsburg, Va at the College of William and Mary. We have an incredible weekend planned, defined by an emphasis on sharing techniques for local organizing and addressing and changing local issues through immediate action. We have 4 key note speakers lined up, several student led workshops, and a myriad of opportunities for participation, including cooperation with Tidewater Labor Support Committee and Student Environmental Action Coalition.

Come stay on the Sunken Gardens in FreeTown, paint the free speech wall, make a banner for the banner parade, join the march against William and Mary’s corrupt Student Affairs Dean, work Food Not Bombs, see an awesome documentary by Beth Bird (Each Their Grain of Sand) and hold your own workshop. We are looking for people to actively engage themselves this weekend and not come with the expectation to be herded and guided and filled with theory.

Check out the attached info packet which has the mission statement, tentative schedule, detailed list of speakers and workshops, activities, etc.

Please feel free to call Sean Sheppard at 757-350-1356 at any time to talk about this if you need persuading to make the drive down here. It is going to be worth it!

An Open Letter to SDS on National Structure

Aluttacontinua — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 06:07:11 +0000

A number of individuals within the SDS network have recently come out against the idea of building a national organizational structure. As we understand it, they have posed the choice facing SDS as essentially being one between building vibrant, autonomous campus chapters or a strong national organization. We believe this is a false choice. Not only is it possible to build both, but individual chapters can only benefit from being part of a strong national network if the strength of a national organization stems from the power of its base.

Given the dismal and often brutal legacy of left-wing political organizations in the 20th century, it is fitting that many people within SDS would be wary of building a national organization. But the nation-state we live in is home to the best-organized and most brutal ruling class in the world. If we’re serious about social change, the question is not whether we build an organization but how to build a different kind of organization, one that embodies the idea of participatory democracy and where power goes from the base (chapters) up rather than from the top down. Are we going to contest power with one hand tied behind our backs, coordinating only intermittently and on an ad-hoc basis or build the kind of infrastructure necessary to articulate an alternative on the national level? Another world is possible, but the route to it is collective action—and without sustainable organization, effective collective action is impossible.

The rulers of the world would love for us to remain ineffective and confined to small radical or activist “scenes”. But one of the many important tasks of SDS should be to help break the student wing of the movement out of this impasse. This entails not railing at other groups for not being radical enough or being what we consider more authoritarian but building bases and coalitions, providing a vision of how to move forward and using concrete, effective tactics that put this vision into practice.
What we have encountered on our campuses is not a sense of apathy, but of disillusionment. People care about the world they live in and once again believe that a better world is possible, but they also feel powerless to change it. By effective organizing, we can show people their own power. Each campus and location is different and organizing must accordingly take a different form at each in order to be relevant and effective, however many policies such as the Iraq war or the corporatization of the university are national in scope and an effective opposition to them must be articulated on this level.

While many national organizations have historically been too centralized, which we should be on guard against, representative institutions and centralization are not inherently negative. An accurate sense of the state of the campuses and the possibilities for organizing can only come from actual attempts to organize on various campuses across the country, not any abstract analysis. Centralizing and disseminating this information will help allow all chapters to grow by more equitably distributing our shared experiences. Instead of chapters being thought of as the local units of a national organization, the national and regional organization should be conceived of as a tool to help develop chapters effectively. Their role should be to facilitate the sharing of experiences and skills, make sure no chapter is isolated, and articulate a strategy and analysis on the national level—both coming out of and being put into practice by the local chapters.

Building a national organization would also allow us to make leadership accountable and develop the leadership capacities of all members. In any group, there are differences in political education, articulateness, confidence, available time, experience, etc. In an unstructured national network such as SDS, this means the emergence of an ad-hoc, effective leadership of those who talk to the press and coordinate among chapters—a process perhaps best described by 2nd-wave feminist Jo Freeman in her essay on the “Tyranny of Structurelessness”. Refusing to build a national organization doesn’t mean that hierarchy and divisions will somehow be abolished; it means that there is no institutionalized way to choose, develop and make accountable the leaders who do emerge—thus far, mostly white males.

Democracy in Practice
If we return to the Greek, “democracy” literally means something like “rule of the people”. But in popular discourse, “democracy” has been defined in terms of a procedure: competitive, fair elections. Thus we get “representative democracy”, a phenomenon that is neither genuinely representative nor democratic. We believe that Students for a Democratic Society should stand for an alternate, participatory conception of democracy. This is an understanding of democracy as a practice, not a procedure: people democratically making the decisions and structures that affect their lives.
Such a vision will be difficult to implement in a large, complex society. However, we think it betrays a distinct lack of confidence in this vision of participatory democracy to forsake building a national structure for SDS. If we can’t build an organization that genuinely embodies participatory democracy among a network of thousands of people committed to the idea, how can we seriously propose participatory democracy as a workable model for even a small city or neighborhood? We believe that one of the tasks of SDS is to explore a different way of organizing society, and provide an example of a new world within the shell of the old. Any constitution adopted should be viewed only as an outline within which such an experiment in bottom-up democracy can occur. Its true nature will appear in its interpretation in practice.

Endorsers:
Matt Wasserman, Reed College SDS
Adam Sanchez, Lewis & Clark College SDS
Brian Kelly, Pace University SDS
Pat Korte, New School SDS
Joshua Russell, San Francisco SDS
Robin Blanc, Reed College SDS
Daniel Tasripin, Hunter College SDS
William Woodson, Reed College SDS
Aric Miller, Detroit SDS
Patrick Dunn, University of Chicago SDS
John Cronan Jr., Pace University SDS
David Bradley, University of Texas SDS
Paul Buhle, Brown University MDS
Marcus Duskin, San Francisco MDS
Andrew Whitaker, Ole Miss SDS
Meaghan Linick, Pace University SDS

To endorse this statement send your information to adam@lclark.edu.

SDS! MDS! Fellow Workers! University of Michigan SDS and the IWW Need Your Solidarity!

Kyle Taylor — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 18:08:44 +0000

[ PUBLISH FAR AND WIDE ]

Fellow Workers, Fellow Students, and Community Members,

On Monday, March 12th, at 10:00 AM, wobbly temp workers (EWIU620-IWW) at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business will confront management and present demands calling for health care access, wage improvements, full-time work status, and an electable/recallable manager, among other job-site improvements. This move brings to fruition a months-long, under-the-radar campaign being carried out by University of Michigan employees and the IWW to organize temporary workers and the unrepresented at the University of Michigan; A campaign greatly assisted by the contributions of the university chapter of Students for a Democratic Society, who are conducting a labor solidarity effort organize students on campus (many students being temp workers themselves) in support of the campaign.

As part of that campaign, we in the IWW and in UM-SDS are asking other groups around the country for some much needed solidarity. When we present our demands on management tomorrow, we are starting a nation-wide call-in and email-in to try and add a little more pressure to the pot and bring the boss to the negotiating table.

The following scripts have been prepared for the email/phone-in, and can similarly be adapted for email as well. Feel free to make adjustments as needed, but remember to remain cordial, as we are trying to pressure them to the negotiating table, not alienate them. If you can send an email and make a call, you’ll contribute twice as much.

Please address emails supporting the campaign as follows :
TO: edadams@umich.edu
CC: rjdolan@umich.edu, cvisel@umich.edu, greendan@umich.edu, christyk@umich.edu

Please address your phone calls to :
1 734 763-6614

–[PHONE/EMAIL SCRIPT SNIPPET]—
Hi

My name is [INSERT NAME] and I am a student at [INSERT SCHOOL].

I’m calling today to express my support for University of Michigan workers, the temps organizing campaign, and more specifically, the job branch of the Education Workers Industrial Union at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business.

The organizing drive is being closely observed internationally and workers both on the inside and students in the community are providing updates on the campaign daily.

I urge you to meet the temps at the bargaining table and begin negotiations. I’ll be following the campaign closely as it progresses.

Thank you.

–[SNIP]—-

You can follow the campaign through the action blog — http://isupportthetemps.blogspot.com

Solidarity with the Glasgow University Students and Workers

Kyle Taylor — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 10:43:08 +0000

SDS! This is an issue pertinent to both the IWW and students the world over. An injury to one is an injury to all.

Glasgow University Job Branch Appeal For Support

From the IWW Website :

Fellow workers, Glasgow University IWW Job Branch workers have asked me to circulate this to the wider union. Hopefully some of you might be able to lend a hand here. Solidarity, Nick Durie, (Central Scotland Organiser, Clydeside GMB)

Glasgow University is proposing to close its campus at Crichton in Dumfries and Galloway. This campus has been really important in widening access to higher education, particularly amongst mature women. All its students have or are really enjoying the experience and feel really good about what it has done for them. There is overwhelming support from the local community and massive anger at the proposed closure. Crichton apparently has a deficit of £800,000 per year. However, Glasgow University had a surplus of £2 million this year and the principal, Sir Muir Russell, has just awarded himself a massive increase. Crichton was also not properly funded from the start and lacks some of the facilities that other campuses make money out of. Most important, universities should not be about money and making a profit. Universities should be about education and research, about opening up opportunities and changing lives. Crichton is doing this - opening up opportunities for people, changing their lives and being a focus and source of pride to the local community and hopes to continue to do so.

Fellow workers should fax, telephone or email the principal of University of Glasgow about Crichton principal@gla.ac.uk as many times as you can over the 24 hour period from 9am on Thursday 1 to 9am on Friday 2 . Emails can be as short or as long as you like e.g. ‘Save Crichton’, ‘We love Crichton’ or a detailed discussion of all the arguments. The idea is both to make the principal aware of the extent of concern about Crichton and to cause some disruption. Challenge him on why he is not taking responsibility for Crichton and how he has the gall to award himself a massive pay rise a the same time as planning to close Crichton, but keep it polite.
Tel: 0141 330 5995 Fax: 0141 330 4947 Email: principal@gla.ac.uk Pictures of Crichton Campus:-

http://www.bell.ac.uk/images/views/dudgeon.jpg http://crichtoncampus.co.uk/images/general/cm_church.jpg http://crichtoncampus.co.uk/images/general/ayjays.jpg http://crichtoncampus.co.uk/images/general/read_in_library.jpg

Radical High School Students Convergence

rob — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 20:39:46 +0000

The STAND Collective at Haverford College (an allied chapter of SDS) is organizing a weekend-long convergence on activism for high school students from around the country. The convergence will occur on Haverford’s campus (about 20 minutes outside of Philadelphia) from Friday, March 2 to Sunday, March 4. College students and local activists will be delivering workshops on a range of topics including: the prison system, racism, sustainable agriculture, internet activism and labor solidarity. Free food and sleeping arangments on campus have been worked out for everybody.

If you’re interested in learning more about how you can support this event or if you know high school kids who might be interested in attending, email Ashley: at abrichte@haverford.edu.

For more information: http://studentsforademocraticsociety.org/haverford/?page_id=121

Join SDS in the Streets of DC on Jan. 27th

Kyle Taylor — Sun, 21 Jan 2007 04:47:26 +0000

SDS chapters across the country have called for a student contingent for the upcoming UFPJ march on Washington on the 27th. From the debate that has been occuring over SDS mailing lists and in chapters, a general call has been put out to meet up near the student contingent at the Smithsonian (along with CAN and other student groups) on the national mall between 11:00 AM and 12:00 PM to form a feeder march.
Various other SDS chapter have also called for a meet-up in the black bloc at DuPont circle around the same time. Get a hold of other people in your chapter and hammer out where you want to meet up.

For more details, check out the J27 website at http://www.newsds.org/j27

See you in the streets.

MID EAST CONFERENCE in Williamsburg, Va

johnsheppa — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 05:29:29 +0000

Friday, April 20^th – Sunday, April 22^nd

Students for a Democratic Society Mid East Conference

Keeping It Local

The William and Mary SDS Chapter in Williamsburg, Virginia, will be hosting a Mid-East Conference on Friday, April 20^th thru Sunday, April 22^nd, 2007.

Too often, the citizenry of the United States is blinded by the hegemonic mechanics of our State and National legislatures. The distance between our representatives and ourselves is widening, evident in the direction of the Iraq War, our nation’s weakening economy, our President’s monarchial disposition. We then focus on these broad spectrum problems and dedicate ourselves at trying to change the most protected and intrinsically corrupt institutions.

Change takes place when we inspect our immediate surroundings, and recognize our immediate contribution to the overall problem. Then, the ways in which we can fix these problems are made clear.

The Mid-East Conference will focus on the interaction of citizens and their local governments, and the way local government should be operating to most efficiently convey the demands of its citizens to State and Federal government. William and Mary is located in the heart of Williamsburg, and has hosted its share of dissent from the Student Body towards the local governments Voting laws, Housing laws, Police activity and Homeless and Indigent policies. Williamsburg students are tax-paying citizens of Williamsburg, and a misconstrued and misinterpreted definition of residence and domicile have left them largely disenfranchised. Beyond the campus boundaries, Williamsburg practices housing policies that have displaced a disproportionate number of working-class poor, primarily African American and Mexican construction workers. As a result, many people have had to move 20 or 30 miles away, and have difficulty maintaining a job in Williamsburg. Furthermore, there are close to 700 working homeless in Williamsburg, rotating between motels and the woods for shelter. The local code has no language pertaining to the care, or even existence, of a homeless population in Williamsburg.

We must know our communities and understand what our communities want and need. This weekend will serve as a forum for relating experiences that we all share, exposing the weaknesses and building our collective knowledge of the solutions. Please try and clear this weekend and come out in numbers. Please check for weekly updates, email back with questions or suggestions and start planning. We are looking for speakers, activities, ideas and art-work.

At this point, housing will be provided, as well as some meals. Please stay tuned, email SDSMEconvention@gmail.com for more information.

Call for a Midwest SDS Convention

Kyle Taylor — Sat, 23 Dec 2006 19:12:42 +0000

This is a call to all chapters of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin to convene in Ann Arbor, MI on Saturday, 6 January and Sunday, 7 January for the first Midwest SDS Convention.

The purpose of the convention is to build regional solidarity and an infrastructure to be used by SDS chapters in the Great Lakes region to share knowledge and resources, develop regional campaigns, provide mutual aid, and support the building of new chapters. Therefore, because of the limited time we will have at the convention, attendants should come with proposals for the structure in mind. The convention will also cover regional strategy, national structure and skill sharing through several workshops.

The conventions will be held at two locations in Ann Arbor, MI. On 6 January, the convention will begin at 12:00PM EST at the Inter-Cooperative Council (ICC) Education Center located at 1510 Hill, Ann Arbor, MI 48104. On 7 January the convention will begin at 10:00PM EST at Hathaway’s Hideaway located at 310 S. Ashley St., Ann Arbor, MI 48104.

The schedule and all future news, as well as forms to register, file requests for housing, workshops and transportation can be found at the convention website, http://www.newsds.org/mwregional.

A Note on the term “Midwest”
It should be noted that the use of “Midwest” in “Midwest SDS Convention” is not referring to the traditional Midwestern region, which also includes Minnesota and Iowa (and sometimes Missouri, Nebraska, Kansas and the Dakotas). The region being used here is technically the region designated by the United States Census Bureau as the “East North Central United States”.

I say this partially to be funny–how often is it that people investigate the definitions of regions in so much detail. However this does raise a serious point, which is what should be included in the Midwest SDS region? If chapters in any of the states left out of this convention feel like they would like to be included I would suggest they contact us at mwconvention@studentsforademocraticsociety.org.

Aaron Petcoff, Wayne State University SDS

Iraq Research Project

mrsituationist — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 23:47:51 +0000

Chicago SDS
Iraq Research Project

The anti-war movement remains at an impasse because of its inability to
define and support a clear plan for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq.
Even though a majority of Americans want the US presence in Iraq to
end, there is not a strong voice for an immediate pull out. We must
reorient our efforts away from premature “mass actions” and
individual actions that too often lead to martyrdom at the hands of the
police and focus towards building a broad base of support for a radical
campaign centered on the removal of US troops from Iraq.

MDS and SDS must articulate a plan for removal of troops from Iraq and
have ironclad arguments ready as to why the US must end its occupation.
We must then create a group of organizers able to confidently and
effectively communicate our arguments to the rest of the public.
Finally organizers must hold presentations and teach-ins to communicate
our defined position to the larger public.

Essentially the Iraq Research Project is an attempt to create a
comprehensive plan for the immediate withdrawal of US soldiers from
Iraq and an attempt to refute every justification for the continued
occupation. The project is open to anyone interested in achieving the
aforementioned goal.

Below is our proposal for the Iraq Research Project.

1. This winter Chicago SDS/MDS and any other interested individuals are
compiling information from as many sources as possible on Iraq and
creating various plans for removal of American forces from Iraq.
2. Chicago SDS/MDS and other interested individuals will then
synthesize a coherent plan for the withdrawal of American forces from
Iraq. In addition we will create a comprehensive guide to refuting
every justification provided to support the American presence in Iraq.
3. After the plan for American withdrawal from Iraq and the
comprehensive guide to refuting arguments for the occupation are
completed they will be subjected to open review and editing and both
will be posted on the Chicago SDS/MDS website and anyone will be able
to comment and improve upon the drafts.
4. Chicago SDS/MDS will have the ultimate editorial control over the
final drafts of both documents, but membership will continue to be open
for anyone interested in a society based on participatory democracy and
democratic alternatives to capitalism.
5. After both documents are completed Chicago SDS/MDS will hold an
organizer training where we will present our work. We will educate and
train interested individuals on how to present the plan for removal of
US troops to audiences through teach-in models. The training will be
focused on building the confidence and presentation skills to
participants along with imparting a vast working knowledge of the
situation in Iraq. Trained members will be critical in creating a
larger base of activists ready for more radical actions to end the
occupation.
6. Chicago SDS/MDS and organizers attending the training will then
begin to hold teach-ins and presentations to local audiences. We will
create a list of Chicagoland libraries, community centers, sympathetic
churches, high schools, colleges, sympathetic unions and other
potential venues to hold teach-ins and presentations.

We have learned the hard way that there is not a large enough base to
sustain radical direct action against the military industrial complex.
Too many premature actions have floundered due to the lack of support.
The goal of the teach-ins will be to nurture a larger group of radicals
to undertake direct action against the occupation.

The reality is that as organizers do not know enough about Iraq. Our
position of immediate withdrawal is convincing among those already sold
on the idea of radical change but we lack the ability to recruit others
not involved in activist circles. As organizers we currently do not
have the confidence and detailed understanding necessary to make
effective appeals to apolitical citizens. The Iraq Research Project
will attempt to create an impeccable case against the continued
occupation and its justifications, and impart the tools and confidence
necessary to organizers who can then effectively create a radical
anti-war movement.

Presentations and teach-ins are the most critical elements of the
anti-war movement. Holding these teach-ins and presentations will be a
crucial route towards building a sustainable community based opposition
to the Iraq war. Our person to person contacts through our
presentations will be our most valuable assets.

Media and institutional manufactured consent crumbles in the face of
effective personal contacts and understandings. We have to take full
advantage of our ability to present our case directly to the people. As
organizers we must be as educated as possible on Iraq to teach others.
The Iraq Research Project is necessary to help us coherently
communicate with the public our radical opposition to the occupation of
Iraq and create support large enough for direct actions.

If you are interested in participating in the Iraq Research Project please email
chicagosds@gmail.com or join our google group at http://groups-beta.google.com/group/chicagosds/