The Demise of the SDS

The most important (and to some the most surprising) development in the student movement as a shole in 1969 was the complete breakdown of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) Formerly its leaders had claimed up to 30,000 members. Now SDS consists of three warring factions, none larger than a few hundred members. Having no formal structure, the national organisation consisted of a few 'stars' who would command sufficient respect to remain at the top. SDS conferences were attended by those who could get there — 'participator' democracy' was the rule. The SDS experience shows that this very quickly turns into its opposite control by a small irresponsible clique. Parallel to this development, the SDS adopted more and more 'militant' and super-revolutionary phraseology and action. By its final conference in 1969, at which the old leadership (a minority) expelled the majority 'Worker-Student Alliance caucus (which is led by the Maoist Progressive Labour Party), the various factions were vying with one another as to which could be the most 'revolutionary' of all. Each group calls the others "enemies of the people" However, each remaining faction of SDS regards Stalin as some sort of hern. This is surprising when one considers the fact that the reasons for then rejection of Marxism was through identification of Stalin's crimes with Marxism.

The Weatherman faction provides an example of a group going far 'left' anough to border on insanity Recently they held four days of rage' in Chicago in which they were going to "kick the ass of the ruling class" A few hundred Weathermen with helmets and sticks charged down a street in the business area smashing cars and windows.

Over Christmas the Weathermen held a national convention, called a 'war council', attended by about 400 people. One top Weatherman, Ted Gold, stated that the U.S. would have to be run by an "agency of the people of the world" after the revolution, as white Americans had forfeited this right. To Weathermen, white workers are reactionary and impossible to organise and the revolution must be started now "without them".

Bernadine Dohrn, Weatherman leader, opened the Council with a call for armed struggle, a pan of which is terrorism. Political assassination and any kind of violence that is considered anti-social were put forward as legitimate forms of armed struggle "We were in an airplane." Dohrn said, "and we went up and down the aisle borrowing food from peoples' plates. They didn't know we were Weathermen, they just knew we were crazy. That's what we're about, being crazy motherfuckers and scaring the shit out of hanky America."

The Weather Bureau (the leaders) digs Charles Manson (accused murderer of Sharon Tate and others) not only for his understanding of white America —Manson allegedly wrote 'pig' in blood on the wall after murders but also because he's a "bad motherfucker". "Dig it — first they killed those pigs, then they are dinner in the same room with them, then they even shoved a fork into a victim's stomach! Wild!" said Bernadine Dohrn.