New SDS on the cover of The Nation (April 16, 2007) – and the original NLN photo

New York, NY – April 2, 2007. In January of 2006 the new SDS – then a handful of members – issued a call for a national organization. Since that time membership has increased to somewhere between 3,000 -4,000. There are presently 275 chapters on college campuses, in communities and, unlike the first iteration of SDS, on high school campuses. The first articles on new SDS in the corporate media focused on who was involved in the call for a new national organization. These included a very good piece on National Public Radio (NPR) by Elaine Korry and a surprisingly even handed piece in the conservative New York Sun, penned by Gary Shapiro. Six months into new SDS the media focus was on the National Convention held last August in Chicago. In These Times and several other news services covered the event but the emphasis was still on the future of SDS. Today, as new SDS continues to expand having just celebrated its first birthday, the focus in some publications is shifting to SDS’ many street actions, protests, counter-recruitment efforts and the fledgling Movement for a Democratic Society (MDS), the non-student wing of SDS. The most recent piece on New SDS in the mainstream press can be found in this week’s issue of The Nation. The cover of the magazine is a photograph culled from Next Left Notes’ coverage of the J27 protest.

In the ‘New SDS’ piece, Christopher Phelps, a regular contributor to ‘Solidarity’ and ‘New Politics’ who often writes about Max Shactman and Leon Trotsky, writes with a bit more edge than one typically sees in The Nation. In general, the article is favorable towards new SDS but not as even handed towards MDS.

“Chris spent quite alot of time interviewing me,” said Thomas Good of MDS, “but oddly none of the interview material saw the light of day. All that appeared in the article were some fractured ‘quotes’ yanked out of context from a joke email sent on a private listserv – the net result being that my views were misrepresented and I was reduced to a caricature. The larger problem is that nothing that MDS is currently doing was mentioned at all – and that is quite alot. There was no mention of the Radical Education Project, for example. There were also factual errors. I was listed as being secretary of MDS. MDS has no officers. I am Secretary of MDS, Incorporated – a non-profit organization that provides legal defense and other monies to the SDS student activists. The article is not mean spirited, I don’t think, but deeply flawed.”

“For a feature article, Mr. Phelps might have delved more deeply into the programs and workings of both New SDS and MDS. That he was not in contact with UCF SDS, one of the largest and most dynamic chapters in the organization, shows an unfortunate reliance on the quick and easy. That he made no assessment of the potential of the REP and RIP (Radicals In The Professions) projects of MDS further illustrates this shortcoming. While on the whole a decent enough article, it’s not up to the sort of cover story one would like to see from a leading left publication,” said Jay Jurie, an MDS organizer from Orlando and Vice-President of MDS, Inc.

“I guess you could say Chris wrote largely like a journalist when dealing with SDS but with MDS he lapsed into the role of gossip columnist in that all he reported on was the infighting that occurred on the MDS listserv. To be fair, the rhetorical exchanges there are colorful – but they have nothing at all to do with what MDS is doing on the ground,” Good said.

Although far behind SDS in terms of organizing, MDS now has several activist chapters: in Orlando, Austin and Arlington (Texas), in Louisville (Kentucky), Denver, Philadelphia, in Baltimore/D.C. and in New York City. New York City MDSers participated in a variety of nonviolent civil disobedience protests recently – Good and fellow MDSer Mike Morice were arrested with the War Resisters League for protesting on Wall Street (March 19th, 2007) while other MDSers served in a support capacity. In a widely publicized action on Staten Island (March 23, 2007), Good was arrested for being part of a nonviolent occupation of Congressman Vito Fossella’s office – an action organized by Peace Action Staten Island (PASI) and one in which, in a role reversal, SDS activists provided logistical and legal support. In addition to protests, MDS is involved in: the Radical Education Project (www.radicaleducation.org) which is a clearinghouse of educational materials for organizers; the effort to get more white collar workers involved in resistance (Radicals In The Professions), and; the SDS Legal Defense project.

“In a number of ways the Nation article was pretty slap-dash,” said Good. “I think the Lefty press, Indymedia in particular, does a far better job of covering SDS than the mainstream press does. Ironically, the corporate press like the (New York) Times and the (Washington) Post do a better job than the liberal left publications do, in general.”

Some of the student organizers in SDS were also not impressed with the focus on the Weather Underground Organization in the Nation piece. Several of these activists wrote a (forthcoming) letter to the editor of the Nation expressing their frustration that their quotes were truncated, altering their meaning – and that no one in new SDS/MDS is given to either “fawning praise or unrelenting condemnation of the Weather Underground Organization, its members and politics.” Most of the student activists regard the focus of the mainstream press on Weather to be misguided…all of this attention to historical issues tends to obscure what is happening now.

New SDS has been involved in an astonishing number of actions in a year’s time. SDS is waging first amendment struggles at both Pace SDS and at the University of Central Florida (UCF). At Pace, students were arrested for leafletting on their own campus. At UCF (not mentioned at all in the Nation article) a local law firm recognized the first amendment work of the chapter by presenting it with an award. In Olympia and Tacoma, Washington, in separate actions, SDS activists were arrested for blocking Stryker convoys, bound for Iraq. Southern SDS chapters are growing by leaps and bounds – in Tuscaloosa, Alabama; in Asheville, Chapel Hill and Charlotte, North Carolina; in Fairfax, Virginia – and engaging in all sorts of protest actions. On March 20th over 80 campuses saw walkouts in protest of the Iraq War – an action called by SDS’ southern chapters. These actions were covered by local newspapers but not in depth – and the actions were largely ignored by the national liberal media. When the liberal press does cover SDS they do so in depth but in a condescending and often inaccurate manner.

The more radical, independent Left, journalists continue to cover what SDS (and MDS) activists are actually doing – rather than focusing on personalities, factional infighting and historical issues. The best Left journalism today is found on the various IndyMedia websites, on Guerilla News Network and in the pages of The Indypendent and Left Turn. The focus is on the Struggle and the fact checking is surprisingly far better than what you find in the corporate or liberal media news services. A first generation SDSer expressed a common frustration recently when the subject of the liberal Left media and SDS came up: “How can you expect a bunch of academics to possibly understand a revolutionary organization?”

Matt DeVlieger, an activist with UCF SDS – who has worked with SDSers and MDSers up and down the East Coast – put it this way: “Journalists see the feeling we create and try to convey it in their articles but when our jokes and side comments get published out of context, without proper illustration, along with vague physical descriptions of “wild hair”, “lanky”, “scruffy” or “baggy jeans”, they don’t seem to realize that they are depicting us as unreasonable and even pompous to the public eye. On the surface, they seem to take our organizing seriously. Unfortunately, these reporters fall victim to the ‘behind the scenes’, ‘reality’ niche that renders information into entertainment. They are focusing on the members and not on the message. This is a disservice to SDS and it’s misleading to the public.”