The New SDS: Letter to Nation Magazine by Bernardine Dohrn

[Hardrada]

Letter to The Nation, regarding Christopher Phelps’ “The New SDS” (April 16, 2007).

The Nation
Chicago

Christopher Phelps has written a timely but ultimately disappointing
article about the vibrant and growing student movement. He transforms the
tough challenges of movement-building into a set of tepid formulas about
what not to do. The new wave of student activism in America and around
the world is a hopeful development worthy of our active participation and
respect. Yet Phelps focuses on the sectarian divides of the MDS
generation rehearsing old political grudges or offering simplistic
“lessons” from the New Left, rather than highlighting the steps forward
and the common ground between radical organizers.


Our points of convergence (young and old, organizers and activists) are
numerous, including the need to strive for participatory democracy and
non-exclusion, resist the savage US wars and occupations of Iraq and
Afghanistan, fight brutal poverty and gluttonous wealth here and globally,
act to end catastrophic climate change, racial injustice and patriarchal
power, and reject the permanent so-called war on “terror” in toto. Phelps
would have benefited from more attention to what led to coordinated
anti-war actions on 60 campuses last month, and to the new SDS’s diverse
political campaigns ranging from getting military recruiters out of high
schools and off campuses to anti-sweatshop coordination, from opposition
to police violence against the community to protest when war criminals
speak, from support for Assata Shakur and the new Panther 8 defendants to
fights for universal health care — radical youth organizing is broad and
deep. This is the power and the inspiration of a vast, left umbrella
network with variety and vigor.

Phelps stereotypically characterizes me as a “celebrity” while the male
ideologues are described by what they say about politics. I object. Who
knows why any speech or article is well received? At the SDS conference
at Brown University in Spring 2006, it seemed that the political substance
of my talk was what generated the positive response from students: the
urgent needs to reject the framework of US military and economic empire,
to forge active opposition to white supremacy and grapple with the issue
of multiracial organization, and to reckon with the importance of direct
action to organizing and educating. I intentionally ignored the challenge
to debate the issue of what killed SDS 38 years ago and who was right
when, in favor of exploring what we all can do, in solidarity, now.
Building bridges between issues, finding points of convergence, and
creating an independent radical movement resonates across generations.
The last thing the new SDS needs is patronizing elders wagging their
fingers with cautionary tales.

Bernardine Dohrn