report from two organizers in the M20 working group
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Kosta Harlan
May 25, 2008, 2:00:08 PM5/25/08
to south...@lists.riseup.net, NE SDS, middleeast sds, nw...@lists.riseup.net, westco...@lists.riseup.net, 320...@googlegroups.com
Below is a
report back from two members of the March 20 working group about our
experience organizing the fifth anniversary antiwar campaign. The main points we raise were
discussed and agreed upon by the working group in our last conference call, one week
after the campaign was over.
comments welcomed, write to us at chapi...@gmail.com and kos...@gmail.com
In struggle,
Chapin Gray, Tuscaloosa SDS & Kosta Harlan, UNC Chapel Hill SDS
May 25, 2008
Organizing SDS Resistance Against the War
A report from organizers in the SDS M.20 Working Group
On the fifth anniversary of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, thousands of students took to the street in protest. For the second year a row, a working group within SDS brought together chapters and organizations from across the country in what was on of the largest coordinated student-led protests against the Iraq war, and one of the largest SDS-initiatives since the organization was formed in 2006. It is estimated that over 600 actions took place against the war across the US – we in SDS should be proud of organizing 90 of these protests!
In the weeks after March 20th, the organizers from the M.20 working group - SDS'ers from all regions from the country- met to evaluate the process and the outcome. Our goal was to identify what worked and what didn't, so that future national days of action and campaigns can be even bigger and even more powerful. We hope SDS'ers will read, think about, and discuss the points raised here, that our experience will help guide future organizing on a nation-wide scale.
While this event was incredibly successful, and reflected the hard work put in not only by the March 20 working group, but also by activists on campuses across the country, it could have been larger. Instead of 90 schools protesting, it could have been hundreds. We made some breakthroughs with getting national media recognition, but in the future we can build protests so large they will be impossible to ignore. It is our hope that through summing up this process we can learn from our experiences, from our mistakes and our successes, and that our reflections can help the next attempt at organizing an SDS nation-wide action.
A Call to Action
At the School Of the Americas demonstration in Fort Benning, GA in 2007, SDS chapters in the SOA working group reserved a space for an SDS meet-up. There, the possibility of forming a working group to organize for the anniversary protests was discussed. Soon after, a message went out to all SDS listservs asking for folks to volunteer their time and energy to help plan and organize for an action on the 5th anniversary of the Iraq war. The group, consisting of SDS'ers from all regions of the country, began having phone conferences in January. This early start was a good decision. Regular weekly conference calls helped us pace ourselves in the work and keep in contact.
A call to action was drafted by a couple SDS'ers from different chapters that brought together the main points discussed by the working group in conference calls, emphasizing the need for local protests, and to bring the resistance to our own campuses. The call to action also stressed a diversity of tactics - leaving it up to the chapter to evaluate their own conditions and decide whether a walkout, a rally, or act of civil disobedience was appropriate. Taking into consideration that many schools would be on spring break during that time, we included information for folks to link up with DC SDS and participate in actions planned there.
Getting the Word Out
The call was distributed to every possible regional listserv, and a facebook event was created off of the SDS facebook group, which enabled us to reach thousands of students. We created a website dedicated to the action - first as a blog, then set up a website at www.newsds.org/march20. We posted the call, a list of organizations that had signed on to the call, links to media coverage, and updates from chapters on the organizing process on their own campuses. We created a googlemap that marked each location where protests were planned to take place. This helped project the significance of the campaign: students were not just acting locally, but were acting across the country united around a call to action.
Throughout the campaign we had anywhere from a handful to over a dozen SDS'ers on the call, and tried to divide the work evenly between us. The most pressing tasks were to reach out to other chapters and organizations and ask them to sign on to the call. Another important task was to contact mainstream and independent media and publicize the action, write press releases, do interviews, and write articles. We also needed someone to constantly update the website and facebook page, and to check the email account set up specifically for the action, and add to the growing list of participating chapters, and answering questions people had.
While the working group did a good job coordinating the effort, there was much to be done. More hands involved would have spread the responsibilities and work around more evenly.
Roadblocks
We encountered a few challenges in the course of organizing this campaign.
a. Conflicting calls to action
There was a call for protests on the fifth anniversary put out by an SDS'er that conflicted with what the working group was organizing, causing some confusion. Though this was resolved, it showed the relative weaknesses of the existing structures in SDS – its very easy to lose sight of existing organizing that is going on, or know what other people in the group are working on at any given time.
b. Sectarianism
Many SDS chapters signed on to the call, from all over the country. However, quite a few did not. For some, it was just a communication issue. Other chapters didn't want to organize a protest around the war, or didn't feel the need to be part of the broader campaign. For some people, though, there was a different issue. We found out that a few people were calling up other SDS'ers and asking them to boycott the call to action and the M20 working group because of the political/ideological views of some of the individual organizers. In fact, the March 20 working group organizers came from a variety of different ideological and political backgrounds.
We feel a serious dialog needs to take place in SDS on this issue. This kind of division will only hurt the movement and create a climate of distrust in SDS. We certainly won't "win" anything if we are constantly attacking each other. We will fail if we are not united in our commitment to organize against this war, and refuse to work together based on what kind of leftist thought any given individual holds. Sectarian attacks should have no place in our organization. It is not just disrespectful to one another, it is a disservice to the people of Iraq.
Another related issue was the objections raised to non-SDS youth/student organizations such as FIST or World Cant' Wait chapters endorsing the call because of their politics. To us this seemed absurd – we wanted to unite everyone who could be united to oppose the occupation of Iraq. We found this sectarian attitude harmful and hope that we can have a dialog in SDS about how to address this problem.
c. Not enough commitment
In the working group, we had up to 20 people on the calls, but often as few as a handful. This made the workload heavy for those who were consistently involved. It is easy to imagine how much broader the impact of the protests would have been, both in scope and intensity, if there had been deeper be commitments from all regions of the country.
All in all, we mobilized over 50 chapters of SDS, and 40 other campus or community organizations. While getting this many chapters united around a single action is an achievement, it could have been more. To help unite chapters across the country, we feel we need a simple, transparent, accessible, and democratic way to communicate with all SDS chapters.
Summary
For the national convention, we recommend that SDS adopt a way to communicate efficiently and democratically on a nation-wide level. We also ask that there be a way for proposals that require national participation be able to be approved and distributed on a national level, in a democratic and transparent manner that ensures the voice of chapters from across the country are heard. We also plan on requesting time at the national convention to sum up this campaign and SDS antiwar work more generally – from the Port Militarization Resistance, to the March 20 national actions, to the Funk the War actions, it's clear that SDS is on a move. A collective discussion to address problems and discuss practical proposals to link up SDS chapters in antiwar actions will help us make gains in the coming year.
In the future, we envision actions that involve a broad representation of students and youth from across the country, all united to plan acts of resistance and protest against the war on our campuses and communities. We hope to see actions that are widely publicized, that inspire non-SDS students to take action and form SDS chapters, and that catch the attention of the national media. We want SDS'ers to work together and share resources, so that everyone can participate. We envision hundreds of schools signed on to the same call, and tens of thousands of students in the streets, and hope that whatever structure we adopt at the next SDS convention will help make this vision a reality.
Iraq for Iraqis – Troops out now!
comments welcomed, write to us at chapi...@gmail.com and kos...@gmail.com
In struggle,
Chapin Gray, Tuscaloosa SDS & Kosta Harlan, UNC Chapel Hill SDS
May 25, 2008
Organizing SDS Resistance Against the War
A report from organizers in the SDS M.20 Working Group
On the fifth anniversary of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, thousands of students took to the street in protest. For the second year a row, a working group within SDS brought together chapters and organizations from across the country in what was on of the largest coordinated student-led protests against the Iraq war, and one of the largest SDS-initiatives since the organization was formed in 2006. It is estimated that over 600 actions took place against the war across the US – we in SDS should be proud of organizing 90 of these protests!
In the weeks after March 20th, the organizers from the M.20 working group - SDS'ers from all regions from the country- met to evaluate the process and the outcome. Our goal was to identify what worked and what didn't, so that future national days of action and campaigns can be even bigger and even more powerful. We hope SDS'ers will read, think about, and discuss the points raised here, that our experience will help guide future organizing on a nation-wide scale.
While this event was incredibly successful, and reflected the hard work put in not only by the March 20 working group, but also by activists on campuses across the country, it could have been larger. Instead of 90 schools protesting, it could have been hundreds. We made some breakthroughs with getting national media recognition, but in the future we can build protests so large they will be impossible to ignore. It is our hope that through summing up this process we can learn from our experiences, from our mistakes and our successes, and that our reflections can help the next attempt at organizing an SDS nation-wide action.
A Call to Action
At the School Of the Americas demonstration in Fort Benning, GA in 2007, SDS chapters in the SOA working group reserved a space for an SDS meet-up. There, the possibility of forming a working group to organize for the anniversary protests was discussed. Soon after, a message went out to all SDS listservs asking for folks to volunteer their time and energy to help plan and organize for an action on the 5th anniversary of the Iraq war. The group, consisting of SDS'ers from all regions of the country, began having phone conferences in January. This early start was a good decision. Regular weekly conference calls helped us pace ourselves in the work and keep in contact.
A call to action was drafted by a couple SDS'ers from different chapters that brought together the main points discussed by the working group in conference calls, emphasizing the need for local protests, and to bring the resistance to our own campuses. The call to action also stressed a diversity of tactics - leaving it up to the chapter to evaluate their own conditions and decide whether a walkout, a rally, or act of civil disobedience was appropriate. Taking into consideration that many schools would be on spring break during that time, we included information for folks to link up with DC SDS and participate in actions planned there.
Getting the Word Out
The call was distributed to every possible regional listserv, and a facebook event was created off of the SDS facebook group, which enabled us to reach thousands of students. We created a website dedicated to the action - first as a blog, then set up a website at www.newsds.org/march20. We posted the call, a list of organizations that had signed on to the call, links to media coverage, and updates from chapters on the organizing process on their own campuses. We created a googlemap that marked each location where protests were planned to take place. This helped project the significance of the campaign: students were not just acting locally, but were acting across the country united around a call to action.
Throughout the campaign we had anywhere from a handful to over a dozen SDS'ers on the call, and tried to divide the work evenly between us. The most pressing tasks were to reach out to other chapters and organizations and ask them to sign on to the call. Another important task was to contact mainstream and independent media and publicize the action, write press releases, do interviews, and write articles. We also needed someone to constantly update the website and facebook page, and to check the email account set up specifically for the action, and add to the growing list of participating chapters, and answering questions people had.
While the working group did a good job coordinating the effort, there was much to be done. More hands involved would have spread the responsibilities and work around more evenly.
Roadblocks
We encountered a few challenges in the course of organizing this campaign.
a. Conflicting calls to action
There was a call for protests on the fifth anniversary put out by an SDS'er that conflicted with what the working group was organizing, causing some confusion. Though this was resolved, it showed the relative weaknesses of the existing structures in SDS – its very easy to lose sight of existing organizing that is going on, or know what other people in the group are working on at any given time.
b. Sectarianism
Many SDS chapters signed on to the call, from all over the country. However, quite a few did not. For some, it was just a communication issue. Other chapters didn't want to organize a protest around the war, or didn't feel the need to be part of the broader campaign. For some people, though, there was a different issue. We found out that a few people were calling up other SDS'ers and asking them to boycott the call to action and the M20 working group because of the political/ideological views of some of the individual organizers. In fact, the March 20 working group organizers came from a variety of different ideological and political backgrounds.
We feel a serious dialog needs to take place in SDS on this issue. This kind of division will only hurt the movement and create a climate of distrust in SDS. We certainly won't "win" anything if we are constantly attacking each other. We will fail if we are not united in our commitment to organize against this war, and refuse to work together based on what kind of leftist thought any given individual holds. Sectarian attacks should have no place in our organization. It is not just disrespectful to one another, it is a disservice to the people of Iraq.
Another related issue was the objections raised to non-SDS youth/student organizations such as FIST or World Cant' Wait chapters endorsing the call because of their politics. To us this seemed absurd – we wanted to unite everyone who could be united to oppose the occupation of Iraq. We found this sectarian attitude harmful and hope that we can have a dialog in SDS about how to address this problem.
c. Not enough commitment
In the working group, we had up to 20 people on the calls, but often as few as a handful. This made the workload heavy for those who were consistently involved. It is easy to imagine how much broader the impact of the protests would have been, both in scope and intensity, if there had been deeper be commitments from all regions of the country.
All in all, we mobilized over 50 chapters of SDS, and 40 other campus or community organizations. While getting this many chapters united around a single action is an achievement, it could have been more. To help unite chapters across the country, we feel we need a simple, transparent, accessible, and democratic way to communicate with all SDS chapters.
Summary
For the national convention, we recommend that SDS adopt a way to communicate efficiently and democratically on a nation-wide level. We also ask that there be a way for proposals that require national participation be able to be approved and distributed on a national level, in a democratic and transparent manner that ensures the voice of chapters from across the country are heard. We also plan on requesting time at the national convention to sum up this campaign and SDS antiwar work more generally – from the Port Militarization Resistance, to the March 20 national actions, to the Funk the War actions, it's clear that SDS is on a move. A collective discussion to address problems and discuss practical proposals to link up SDS chapters in antiwar actions will help us make gains in the coming year.
In the future, we envision actions that involve a broad representation of students and youth from across the country, all united to plan acts of resistance and protest against the war on our campuses and communities. We hope to see actions that are widely publicized, that inspire non-SDS students to take action and form SDS chapters, and that catch the attention of the national media. We want SDS'ers to work together and share resources, so that everyone can participate. We envision hundreds of schools signed on to the same call, and tens of thousands of students in the streets, and hope that whatever structure we adopt at the next SDS convention will help make this vision a reality.
Iraq for Iraqis – Troops out now!
Zack Hershman
May 25, 2008, 3:50:58 PM5/25/08
to 320...@googlegroups.com
Awesome report! Can you put this on the website? That way I can link to it on our National Announcement List digest, coming in the next few days!
Kosta Harlan
May 25, 2008, 6:53:25 PM5/25/08
to 320...@googlegroups.com
Thanks Zack, here you go:
http://newsds.org/wiki/index.php?title=Organizing_SDS_Resistance_Against_the_War
Kosta
http://newsds.org/wiki/index.php?title=Organizing_SDS_Resistance_Against_the_War
Kosta
Zack Hershman
May 25, 2008, 7:41:14 PM5/25/08
to 320...@googlegroups.com
yay awesome!
make sure you're all on the national announcements list to receive our digest! it's gonna be insannne!
http://groups.google.com/group/sdsannouncements?hl=en
make sure you're all on the national announcements list to receive our digest! it's gonna be insannne!
http://groups.google.com/group/sdsannouncements?hl=en
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