sds National Conference Account I Wrote up for Tikkun

The following is an account of the sds National Conference which I wrote for Tikkun.  It will probably go up on the Tikkun website under Current Thinking soon.  

The new incarnation of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) is alive and thriving.   SDS convened its third national convention in College Park, Maryland on July 24th 2008, with the mandate to pass a national structure.  The University of Maryland chapter of sds along with the help of other DC sdsers, played host for over 140 sds members from across the country.  The long plenaries were broken apart by singing, meals, collective liberation activities, workshops, caucuses and socializing.  After trudging through a very long and rushed two days of discussing structure, the convention passed a resolution outlining a National Working Committee as the administrative (and possibly somewhat executive) body of the organization.  This structure will need to be ratified by the chapter base to go into effect.   

Political/Spiritual Analysis

SDS is a complicated political entity.  It has a very politically diverse membership, ranging from Anarchists to Maoists to a smattering of mainstream liberals.  The majority of the membership is anti-authoritarian and very distrustful of hierarchy, and yet we managed to compromise on structure to allow for some hierarchy when it comes to coordination of the national organization.  This bodes well for the future of sds. Being able to unify a diverse group of political outlooks toward positive social change will build the power of the organization and encourage membership growth.

SDS has a very strong vein of spiritual analysis in it, although very few sds members would frame it that way.  Recognizing how people are disenfranchised and dehumanized, having compassion for those suffering around the world, feeling compelled by their consciences to resist an unjust system, believing a better world is possible, and developing human-need-oriented structures are all key elements of a spiritual analysis of society which sds has whole-heartedly embraced. It is still discussing spiritual issues surrounding the humanization of one's opponents, suffering as a method of social change, and interfacing with the spiritual/religious community. 

Religious/Spiritual Issues

Like any community of left-leaning people, there is a certain amount of anti-religious fervor.  This is mostly directed at religious institutions for their role in oppression and causing injustice.  There is however, some deriding of religious/spiritual people as simplistic and foolish.  Sds has taken a mature approach to this issue through starting a discussion around stereotyping religious/spiritual people and the counter-productivity of blindly attacking religions as monolithic-ally bad.  The discussion touched on the extremely high standards that religions are held to by anti-religious people.  The point that religion institutions are run by humans, so they have the same flaws as every other institution was made.  Unfortunately there was not much time for discussion and the development of a mutual understanding to develop, so continuing the healing of this rift will have to wait for another day.     

Community

More impressive though, is the role that sds has been able to play in the lives of political activists.  That is, the establishment of a national community of like-minded people.  Connecting new people into the network, and having groups for across the country for sdsers to join when they move.  Prevention of the overwhelming feeling of isolation is essential to the health of the movement, and sds's network fulfills this beautifully.   Whenever a high school sds chapter graduates a class of sdsers, they spread like seeds across the nation to build new or reinforce existing sds chapters.  When students transfer, they can plug into a nearby chapter.  When a college chapter graduates a class of sdsers, they inject veteran organizers into the real world, organizers who often believe they will dedicate their lives to the pursuit of social justice.  This community causes dedication like none I have ever seen.  It effectively shields its members against ghastly burnout and provides a sense of security that is hard to find in the present social system. 

And this community is often deliberately created and cultivated.  There was a workshop at the convention titled "Building a Community of Support within sds" where the group discussed what in sds made them feel isolated and dis-empowered and what made them feel hopeful, fulfilled and empowered.  This discussion was very healing for those who attended.  Events such as this will help us develop the behavioral technology to protect our communities from the corrosive effects of isolation, fear, mistrust, personality clashes and misplaced anger.  In addition to this excellent workshop, the organizers of the conference created an emotional support and conflict resolution team to attempt to heal many of the frustrations, anger, and miscommunication created during the convention's decision-making process.  While sds does not always focus on how to adapt its current structures to fit human needs, this conference did a substantial job of creating a setting that facilitated the creation and protection of community.

Campaigns

The National Convention gave its seal of approval to one campaign, the "Student Power for Accessible Education" campaign.  This national campaign will, in the short term, push for fewer loans for students, tuition freezes, more grants, lower textbook costs, and many other needed changes to the financial interactions between students and their colleges. Mid-term goals include establishing student unions across the US, and building student power.  The long term goals include fair and free education for all, since after all, education is a right.  Individual sds chapters, as well as any other organizations that want to join us, can plug into this campaign simply by beginning to act on their own campus.  The idea is to not only push for change in the education system, but to build a student movement with the confidence and the skills to be able to have a decisive impact on the greater society. National coordination or activity is a possibility, but that will likely wait until there is a significant presence of chapter campaigns. 

Funk the War on the Poor

On Monday the 28th, DC sds hosted an action for those attending the convention to attend.  It was a roving dance party (essentially a march) that protested the construction of the NAFTA Superhighway, I-69, through many poor communities in the Midwest and South.  This highway is actually going to pass about 60 miles from my home town, so it was surprisingly relevant to me.  The tactic of dancing was quite effective in keeping a good group energy and appealing to on-lookers.  The police showed up in force, nearly 50 of them to our 100.

Update

I am still falling behind on my one post a week pledge.  I wanted to write about 3 more this month, but things happened and I didn't devote the time to it.  There is always next month.  

I do have alot to write about, though.  But... I still posted more recently than Bucky.  

For the past two weeks I have been extremely busy with both the sds National Convention and at the Tikkun office, as well as reading an excellent book on Jesus and nonviolence.  More to come on that later.  

But most interestingly of all, I have started studying for the LSAT and I have decided to try to go to law school.  The way I figure it, law school will help me understand the law and what I can do with it to change society.  Given my lifelong goals of making the world a better place, I figure knowing the law will allow me to combine my organizing and activist knowledge and outlook with a sense of how to push for change both inside and outside the system.  Knowing law will also allow me to use the legal system to my advantage when waging change.  So that is my reasoning. 

Now comes the inevitable turmoil of finding a school, going back to school, and settling in a new location.  I do not particularly look forward to being back in school, although the thought of going to regular sds meetings is sooooooo alluring.  I was never a fan of homework, or excessive reading, and I feel that law school will have alot of that.  But it will feel much more useful, I believe, than the reading that I had to do for school in the past.  

I am settling into living in El Cerrito.  It is really a lovely town, and I love my commute.  walking for 15 minutes, and riding the train.  I love supporting public transportation.  My job is going well, and I feel capable and productive from it.  Things are definitely going my way.  

Thoughts on Happiness and The Meaning of Life.

In trying to make up for June when I didn't write any blog posts, I am writing a few in rapid succession to get some ideas out of my head before they slip away.

Our happiness rests in the hands of the community we build around ourselves. We are happy when we feel loved, secure and fulfilled; when we can share our joys and sorrows with others. Money cannot provide any of that, nor can possessions. Yes, they might give the illusion of it sometimes, but those feelings are always fleeting. They come with the initial rush of emotion but soon fall away. Material pleasures are poor substitutes for the joys of community. When material pleasures become someone's main source of fulfillment, their lives have indeed become empty. They jump from pleasure to pleasure trying to stifle the emptiness they feel inside with the sudden rush of pleasure from some new possession. But when this rush fades, they are left with more emptiness, causing them to fly to something new to avoid their own caustic loneliness. Our economic system takes extreme advantage of this impulse, both facilitating the disruption of community to cause emptiness and giving people the impression that they can find fulfillment in their possessions and the accumulation of more of them.

Indeed, other people are the meaning of life. There can be no other, human nature bars it. Those who fail to realize this and prioritize something else over people always pay an emotional price, and often a material price as well. We all rely on other people, whether directly or indirectly, to give our lives meaning.

Ironically, capitalism is founded on this principle, although it is in a rather perverse way. If other people demand something, than you have a reason to make a living supplying it. The CEO who is afflicted with an ambition to accomplish still depends on his employees to fulfill that accomplishment. Investors who are so concerned about increasing the "value" of their stocks depend on other people to believe it is worth something. Plus, the prestige of accomplishments depends entirely on other people thinking what one has done is impressive.

The rat race, possessions, and other such transient pleasures are of no comparison to the truly deep and lasting happiness generated from close personal relationships. Whether they be romantic or friendly, these relationships are what sustain us. They stave off the specter of unhappiness and loneliness, providing a veritable vaccination for depression. This effect is easily observable in people. People around those who they are in love with are always happier. They tend to be sillier and more pleasant to be around as well, less apt to become frustrated or angry. It is an inspiring thing to see.

And so, I have come to the conclusion that other people are the meaning of life. When one realizes the inherent truth of this, it becomes a simple matter to escape the temptation of excessive material consumption. Indeed, material possessions produce more joy when given away than they ever could when kept. The generous life is the happy life. I hope our society learns this crucial lesson soon.

RYM and societal change.

RYM.  The Revolutionary Youth Movement.  It is something I have been thinking about alot lately, analyzing and reflecting upon its historical impact. 

RYM was a strategic vision that SDS laid out in the 60s, not to be confused with the sds sectarian groups that named themselves RYM I (which eventually became the weathermen) and RYM II (that went maoist and communist and eventually gave birth to countless splinter groups).  Now, I don't think I am getting this exactly correct... but what Michael Lerner described in one of his unpublished books is the basis for this understanding of RYM...  The strategy was simple and very long-term.  The idea was education based: you make a concerted and structured effort to teach as many young people as possible about progressive politics, ethics, and ideas.  You convince them and give them a reason for investing themselves in those politics. When they leave school they will go into the world and spread the ideas, and live their lives by them as much as is possible inside the system.  This will have a culture shifting impact.  Their actions will shift the perceptions of those around them.  Their contributions to their communities will change localities.  

This strategy combines the finest strengths of the left.  Strength of ideas, education, embodiment of principles, decentralized structure and grassroots action are all combined into an extremely long-term strategy that appears to have been quite effective.  It acknowledged the shifts that always occur when generations turn-over.  As new generations come and older ones leave, culture changes.  RYM takes advantage of this natural process of culture change by attempting to reform society by reshaping the minds of new generations.  

Unfortunately, RYM was only practiced for... perhaps the better part of a decade, if not less.  But it's impact is striking.  Take the issue of racism for example.  50 years ago, racism was the dominant viewpoint among large swaths of the American public, including in my hometown of Edmonton.  But now, racism has been forced underground.  It is now a shameful thing to be seen as or acting as a racist.  

But aside from issue oriented changes, I would also like to see how 5 to 10 years of RYM affected the life of a single person... me.  I am proud to say my parents were both products of RYM, whether they know it or not.   The ideas they garnered from the 60s allowed them to move to rural Kentucky and raise me there.  My mom's strong strain of feminism probably would have not been able to develop had it not been for RYM, and I would have lost one of the major positive influences on the way I structure my behavior toward everyone.  My Dad's political side also had an immense impact on shaping my perspective and direction in life.   

The compassion and dedication both of my parents have shown through their social work were, in part, inspired by their politics which were shaped by RYM.   Their dedication to helping others, even if you have to live "in the trenches" as my Dad has said, has consistently inspired me to live up to their example.  

Now lets look at the town I grew up in.  It is a town of 1500 people in rural Kentucky.  The poverty rate is nearly 25%. According to my Dad, there were duels in the streets in the 50s.  However, over the past 3 decades things have calmed down.  There are still plenty of problems, but since the influx in the 70s of hippies and people shaped by RYM, the culture of the county has changed.  Many of these hippie settlers have become community leaders.  Their children have gone on to change the minds of their peers and further the reverberating effects of RYM.  I can see the culture-shifting affects in my hometown of the concerted efforts of relatively small group of tens of thousands of young adults over the course of several years trying to institute RYM.  If between 5 and 10 years of instituting RYM can so drastically change our society that a small rural town in the middle of no where Kentucky is impacted this much, then imagine what a organized effort of 20 years of RYM could do.  With this technique we could restructure the very foundations upon which our society rests over the course of the next 100 years.  

Updates

So, it seems that Blogger posts a post under the date it was started and not under the date it was published, which is pretty cool. The last post I finally got around to posting in July, but the program says it was posted in May. An interesting thing, that.

So, here is an update. I moved from Berkeley to El Cerrito, which is about three miles north of Berkeley. I commute every day on BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit), a wonderful train system, every day. I am quite happy to be a patron of BART, I not only get a good service out of it, I feel good about giving my money to public transit. Public transit needs more help than ever now, and I intend to do my part.

Let see, I also went to my cousin's wedding in early June. Congrats Rich and Kelly! It was a great time, and only the second time that all of my cousins (on that side of the family), my brother and I were together. Good times. A week after that i had the privilege to go to the Beyt Tikkun Annual Retreat in Marin county. It was at a lovely place called Walter Creek Ranch, which is a picturesque camp-like place. Complete with rolling grassy hills, wildlife and a pond. It was nice to be out of the city, even if for a short period of time. It reminded me of Kentucky.

The following two weekends after that I worked and socialized, and built my bedframe. I just finished that bedframe after about a month of on and off work. I spent most of Saturday and Sunday morning finishing it up. It is stable and everything I was hoping. I am glad my rudimentrary carpentry skills did not fail me. I built it for approximately 4 dollars, which was the cost of two 2x4s that I bought to make up the long sides of the bedframe. I had been unable to procure a pair of 2x4s like them from the local dumpsters. Much cheaper than 150 dollars for a pre-made bedframe. Plus I get the satisfaction of knowing I built it with my own hands and I kept a fair amount of lumber and screws out of a landfill by reusing them. I really do enjoy living my life as close to my ideals of reusing and repairing as possible. It cuts down on waste and gives me a good feeling.

So now I feel like I have just caught up on a month's worth of work backlog, which is a great feeling. I have some catch-up to do in terms of blog posting, which I will hopefully get to in the next week. Alot of ideas have been percolating in my head, and I hope I will be able to get them down.

Strategy for Changing the US... Take 1

I wrote most of this about a month ago, and was going to add more, but life became really busy, so I decided to publish this as is, since it has been a month an a half since I wrote something.

The question in front of us is not naming the system, or even understanding it, but figuring out how to rebuild it and our society to reflect our highest vision. The people exist to do it. The resources exist to do it. The motivation exists to do it. The only reason it has not happened is because we don't agree on how to do it and we are not organized enough to implement it. We need to understand

This is my first try at setting down a skeletal strategy to restructure our entire society to make it more human, democratic, sustainable, and a generally affirming way of life. This strategy is still in bits and pieces at this point, but I think there is some worth in writing it down so i dont forget.

1. Create local democratic structures. Not sure what these will look specifically, but I imagine them as General Assemblies for non-administrative decision-making, with working groups (open to everyone) to execute tasks. If working groups become too large (What a problem that would be! Too much participation, is it possible?), then they can be split into several working groups that coordinate activity. The judicial system would stop being punitive, and become a rehabilitating presence. It would consist of a system where people would share their grievances and perspectives with each other, as well as consensus-based sentencing.

This really needs further study and experimentation in my opinion, hopefully with some resources behind this endeavor.

2. Non-violent Army. Just a really cool idea that has been stuck in my head for a few years now. They would have the discipline and cohesion of a regular army, minus the extreme hierarchy and violence. They would put their lives on the line for others, just like violent army soldiers and they would be extensively trained in conflict resolution, non-violent tactics and strategy, as well as human behavior. The non-violent army would be trained to confront violent forces as well as other non-violent forces. They would go on campaigns against various injustices across the country, mobilizing thousands. Again, resources are the key problem, as well as research into how to do it. The know-how is extremely important. Hopefully we will be able to create the equivalent of army manuals for the nv army.

3. Parallel Structures. With some local democratic institutions in place, these towns and counties could start forming parallel structures to state and federal governments. These would do everything that an organization composed of the entire community should do, including provide social services (police, hospitals, firefighters, general social support, protection and help)

A Lesson from History, for My Beloved sds.

One quick thought, which I had while reading historical analysis of the 60s.
There was a huge upsurge in sds recruitment in the post election time period between 1968 and 1971. While this may be attributed to the media attention that the DNC protest of 68 garnered, I think there is another reason that is more plausible. The 1968 election was the population's chance to change the direction of the country. Many people who saw the millions crying out against the war would first try the typical method for changing the direction. When this failed, they would become more cynical about its viability, and look for other methods to change things. Plus none of the standard methods for the rank and file citizenry can change policy (i.e. voting) were coming up soon after the 68 election. So people naturally looked for alternatives, since they tried voting and that didnt work. They saw sds and the new left. While many of them may not have been happy with the yucky sectarianism and negative feelings floating around sds at that time, they were the only game in town. And so, tens of thousands joined.

I am afraid for the future of sds. If whoever is elected fails to end the war (and my cynical side tells me they probably will), then the new sds will be swamped by new recruits, more than we can handle. So, I think our task in the coming year needs to be building the institutional capacity to absorb and teach all these new recruits. And that is one overwhelming task.