Kasama Interview: The Radical Politics of Today’s SDS
Posted by Mike E on August 13, 2008
Zerohour conducted a Kasama interview with Freddy B. shortly after the recent SDS Convention. Freddy is an activist within SDS, a blogger with Good Morning Revolution and has been a participant of the Kasama project from its beginning.
Kasama: What are political questions you see posing themselves around SDS, both during the recent convention and into the future?
Freddy: I think some of the fault-lines are going to be questions over revolution itself.
A lot of SDS’ers define themselves as radicals or revolutionaries and people know what that means – social transformation, etc. But no one knows how that’s going to look like and there are a lot of political fault-lines around that.
People are arguing everything from armed revolution to peaceful movement or some sort of a cultural revolution – so those things are out there.
There are also going to be political divisions on questions of the class struggle in the United States. A lot of the people in SDS are in the IWW for example. It’s an organization that I like, but I don’t do work with it because I fundamentally don’t think the work it’s doing will solve the questions in our country, or worldwide.
At the convention, on Friday, there was an interactive workshop on class.
There was actually a lot of political stuff that went down there. There was a lot of challenging people upon what “class” meant, the question of “intersectionality” became part of it or in other workshops from what I know.
The question of “coordinator class” and Parecon by Michael Albert came up, which is a different sort of view. And there’s a lot of challenging based on ideology: like Marxist class analysis vs. identity politics vs. Parecon and just things like that.
Those sort of questions are going to come up.
Basically a lot of the political basis for discussion are going to be a lot of the fault-lines that are currently on the left. SDS is currently a grouping of young people that are influenced broadly by left-wing politics and are very eclectic but don’t have a real center.
Kasama: How do you think such political controversies will mature and resolve?
Freddy: I came out of the Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade [RCYB, the RCP's youth organization] and our view of organizing anything amongst youth was like: You put out the politics and they gravitate towards it. Or you go out to a high school and you sell the paper or something like that, organize a showing of something.
I don’t think that fundamentally that’s how SDS is going to work. I don’t think it’s good for organizing students.
SDS is an organization that is going to immanently come through its consciousness, like the leap of consciousness from the second convention to the third convention, or the first convention even.
The first convention was dominated was dominated by young crusty-punks.
The second convention was much different but yet you still had sort of like, “Well we don’t want a student organization on the level of a national office.” The structure that we even got was like “We’re going to stop everything before it happens,” you know. “We’re going to stop the PLP before it comes.” That way of thinking.
The third convention was just this huge turnaround where people were like “All the shit we said last year was just fucked up. It’s not how things fundamentally work.”
People started realizing that, and I think that’s the way politics is going to evolve in SDS for a while. These political debates come forth: These debates about how we’re going to organize, what view or vision we’re going to put forward, etc., and people are going to address them as they come forward.
There’s a place for putting something forward about Nepal for example. [editor: where there is a Maoist revolution struggling to seize power.]
But if you fundamentally take that character away from immanently going through the stages of consciousness amongst youth, then you’re not actually going to create revolutionary consciousness amongst them.
Kasama: How would you situate SDS in the context of the left?
Freddy: Well, what is “the left”? The left is such a diffuse, weak strain of things.
No one really relates to “the left” on the level of work besides projects like Iraq Moratorium or various environmental projects or whatever happens on a local level.
There are all these other student organizations like CAN [Campus Antiwar Network] for example. All these other student organizations, or youth organizations are pretty much (I don’t want to be bad about this) are led politically from centers. Like CAN is from the political center of ISO [International Socialist Organization].
SDS is interesting in the sense that you had a call from a couple of high schoolers in 2006 and you had an explosion of movement without any centrally defined character to it. The people who put out that call were people from World Can’t Wait. It showed at a fundamental level young people wanting to define their own organization; young radicals wanting to find their own organization.
But I think that’s been fundamentally lacking in the left for a long, long time. You always have a center-defined group and you give character to its youth wing which is not a bad thing because you’re always going to have young people who agree with a particular party organization.
But the fact that there is no level of accessibility and discussions among young radicals themselves is fundamentally going to lead to the same sort of dichotomy and diffusion among the left itself, where you just have stupid splits like between the Troops Out Now Coalition and A.N.S.W.E.R. where they don’t meet together ever and they plan things out differently and it fucks up the anti-war movement.
So I think SDS’s relationship is one that’s basically critical of the left altogether about organizing the youth. It’s basically saying “Listen, we don’t need partisanship on that level. We need partisanship on the level of doing work in unity, on issues of the war, on issues of the environment, on issues of worker organizing.”
Struggling to build multi-racial organization
Kasama: This SDS convention, like the previous ones, debated important issues around racism, white supremacy and what it means to develop multi-racial organization. Can you tell us about that?
Freddy: There’s been a lot of struggle in the People of Color Caucus because what’s a “person of color”? That’s a fundamental question in the People of Color Caucus and I’m probably not the best person to talk about that since I’m not in the Caucus.
However I think it’s popping up because it’s really hard to define especially with bi-racial people. “Am I a person of color?” “What is national oppression?” “Does a white Puerto Rican person face national oppression in the United States” – that’s a question that’s always brought up. There’s been points when people who are Armenian joined the People of Color Caucus because Turkey carried out genocide against them.
I don’t think people have a fundamental answer yet. I think there are broadening questions around it.
Kasama: The original SDS was overwhelmingly white, because during the 1960s and later, there was a great deal of organization along separate lines, because of the influence of Black nationalist politics and groups like SNCC and the Panthers.
Freddy: Yeah, and you had third world Marxists. I think that kind of focus is going to define a lot of the character of student organizations altogether.
If you look at student groups now, you have a lot of Asian American student groups that are quite good in their politics. I’ll just name a few like NAASCon [National Asian American Students Convention].
For example. I have some differences with their worldview but a lot of people gravitate towards that because they address a lot of concerns of Asian Americans students and are really doing good work.
Here at Hunter College we have a similar grouping called CRAASH (Coalition for the Revitalization of Asian American Studies at Hunter.)
I don’t think SDS wants to have this relationship of competition with political student organizations of people of color. We also don’t want to tail those groupings because sometimes they can put out really fucked up shit. Sometimes.
It’s a question of SDS wanting to build a multi-racial student organization. It doesn’t want to be just a white-bound student organization and there was a lot of discussion about that at the convention itself because people kept referring to SDS as a white organization, fundamentally ignoring all the people of color in this group that are here right now.
So I think that’s always going to fundamentally shape the character of any student organization just because there are plenty of groups around. But I think if you put forward a certain politics to people that are good, and by that I mean ones that express support for national liberation struggles, etc., I think we could get more support from people of color but I’m not sure about that exactly.
Kasama: What is the breakdown of nationalities within SDS now?
Freddy: I think there were only a few Black students at the whole convention. There were a lot more Latinos and Asians. There’s people of bi-raciality. I would like to say I’m one of them because I’m part Latino, part Italian — but I’m obviously white. I think a lot of people are like that in SDS. I think that’s the character of colleges altogether — more people of color are coming into colleges. I think this important because college can be in itself a radically transforming experience for oppressed peoples, and can turn them into organic radicals.
SDS, though, has still a national character that is bound to white culture and activist culture and I think it limits us to a certain extent.
Debate Over the Elections
Kasama: What were the campaigns the convention agreed upon?
Freddy: There were two different ideas proposed that had to deal with some level of work around the election coming up. Those two were: (1) one hundred days of pressure on Obama and social priorities, and (2) the other one was Protest McCain.
Basically these were two directions of trying to relate somehow to young people who are going to be disenfranchised with Obama.
However among SDS there is a certain level of people not knowing how to do that. Everyone agrees: Obama’s an imperialist. He’s not really anti-war. He’s just going to re-assert it in Afghanistan.
A lot of people know this but they don’t know how to define what sort of relationship they’re going to have to the presidential race.
They don’t want to have a character of typical bad ultra-leftism where “Elections are fucked up and we’re going to do our own thing and you’re just being fooled.” But I’m obviously not going to be involved in the campaign itself.
Those proposals both failed. It just showed the level of political disunity around the question and not knowing how to address the question altogether.
Kasama: So was it political or tactical disunity? You said they agreed that Obama was imperialist.
Freddy: There’s a certain amount of tactical disunity, and there’s politics involved here. The people with the “hundred days, social priorities” thing I felt were too soft on the Obama thing. It was so vague and open it gave the chapter the potential to do anything, which basically meant maybe they’ll go and support Obama, like who knew what that campaign proposal actually meant?
The Protest McCain one was really about “We’ll be on the streets protesting McCain’s imperialism and then we’ll show the contradictions to the Obama supporters with their candidate.” But then people thought that was too soft on Obama too.
So there was really no way of resolving it. People didn’t understand how to solve it and there were certain politics that were dividing line that said “what kind of relationship can we have with bourgeois electoral politics” so they don’t know.
Kasama: A proposal about accessible education did pass. What exactly is that? What did that proposal call for?
Freddy: Quite honestly it’s student syndicalist. I disagree with it. However, there’s a certain level of truth to it.
At Hunter College, for example, tuition issues are always going to arise and it’s something you should always step up and fight against. These issues of student debt in private schools are big issues, people are emerging out of college paying almost twenty years of student debt, which is ridiculous.
However I just fundamentally don’t see how that’s going to work out in the end because the student debt question, student tuition question is so big and frustrating because of the complexities of public school vs. private school, and private schooling just being a sprawling matter of arbitrariness of whatever school you’re at, so I fundamentally don’t see how it’s going to work on a national level.
But people want to do something about it. And it’s just going to happen on a local level I guess. People want the whole campaign proposal itself to be just giving a mandate allowing SDS’ers to work on it at a local level.
Basically, on the electoral thing: Neither side got a mandate to do whatever they want to on the local level in the name of national SDS, whereas the student accessible education one did get that mandate from the national student body.
It’s like “Yes, this is an issue facing students and we have to do something about it nationally.”
* * * * *
Kasama: Is there anything you want to say that I didn’t ask?
Freddy: Yes: Why should revolutionary communists join SDS?
Kasama: Well, why should they?
Freddy: I think you have here a mass organization that has rapidly taken on a radical consciousness nationally. I think you have here an organization and a form to address a larger, younger organization with revolutionary communist politics and change people’s views towards that aim. As I said before, a lot of people in SDS, the majority probably, define themselves as revolutionaries they just don’t know what that means or how that’s going to look, and that sort of vision’s lacking in SDS. it’s like we all agree: social transformation, anti-oppression, collective liberation, whatever they want to say it is – but they don’t know what that is effectively going to look like and how we’re going to do it. So we need that political leadership in SDS.
* * * * *
This interview originally appeared on the website of the Kasama Project (http://kasamaproject.org)
Skwisgaar said
Small correction: CAN is the Campus Antiwar Network, not campusactivism.org. The latter is an independent website of on-line resources for student activists started by a former activist from the Student Environmental Action Coalition.
Mike E said
Thanks Skwisgaar. Error fixed.
Iris said
What Freddy says about putting politics out there and expecting people to gravitate reallu resonates with me. i feel like we did that in WCW alot, and that it isn’t unique to RCP type organizing. It seems like something really easy to fall into.
The way the RCp starts in immediately by saying to a person “we have the leadership for you” really bothers me. How do they know that? because you say? What level of partisanship should activists demand from people right off the bat? In relation to this SDs interview–how do you really organize.
Iris said
Are those revisionist questions?
will said
freddy i really liked your interview.
Comrade Martin said
As an old comrade of Fred’s, I’d like to thank him personally for being out there with the interview. It was high quality stuff.
I’d merely like to add stress to the importance of joining on SDS work *now,* and not waiting a single minute. Folks, we have to realize, realistically, that the SDS may not last far beyond this election if the Iraq War comes to a definitive end. Its a sad but historically probable reality. This new spark of revolutionary/radical thought among students, while in part already well-rooted before the SDS existed, is fueled primary by our Imperialist actions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and our stepped up threats against basically the world. If somebody like Obama is elected, he’ll do his utmost (as per the will of his sector of the Bourgeoisie) to stem this growing network of radical left thought by placating the populace with some rather appealing concessions (his promises alone have already created ripples among radicals).
The old SDS met a similar fate with the end of the Vietnam War. If that is the situation for the new SDS, it would be in our best interests to do all we can to, as Fred says, “put the politics out there.” Let people gravitate towards revolutionary thought on their own, and if you can hook up with these people on a real level, we can retain them if the SDS ever falters.
If you aren’t sure about joining the SDS because you don’t think it has much potential as an organization, at least join to ensure we do everything we can to solidify its members’ revolutionary ideals. If we can’t make the SDS work for revolution, we should work to make its members revolutionaries who we can work with in a post-SDS atmosphere.
Kaz said
you tell em Freddy.
I think alot of what you said really gravitates around your last thoughts. SDS desires political leadership (whether people know it or not, i’d argue)to tackle difficult questions of practice, theory, and principles. The question becomes, what politics will lead? Political ideas that were rampant in SDS’s first year, are viewed as laughable by its former adherents the next year, and on and on and so forth. People have been putting there politics out there, leading people, but then people start to realize at some point there ideas are not working and they begin to look for something else. I am glad your ideas Freddy seem to be outlasting some of the others. Interveiws like these are essential for continuing the political struggle within SDS, so thanks.
Jose M said
I have an important question:
i will be going to college in about month (moving in as a freshman) and the only (at least) progressive thing there is a Progressive Students Club. Hopefully, the SDS can stay up.
anyway: how can I begin an SDS chapter in what is known to be a rather conservative school? no doubt, there will be radicals and even communists, and those are the ones I might to reach. and, why SDS? why not a Kasama collective instead?
just some questions
hegemonik said
Hate to play fact-checker here, Cde. Martin, but the original SDS fell through in 1969. The end of the Vietnam War wasn’t until much later (at least in activist-years).
It’s understandable that it’s easy to conflate the anti-war movement and/or youth movement with SDS, but the fact was that the anti-war and youth movement had a momentum unto themselves. The real tragedy is that SDS wasn’t around to give some level of discipline to the explosions on the campuses after 1969, which were easily bought off by concessions, mostly because not as much was riding on them.
Comrade Martin said
Hegemonik, fair enough on that timeline correction. Although the point I was getting at was that the war period is what sparked radicalism. Once that period passes, particularly if the SDS can’t whip itself in to a more ideologically cohesive revolutionary organization, we’re likely to see the momentum disappear – and with it, any organic formation that has come as a result of it.
Nando said
I think Martin is right (in general) that we have to seize the time.
We have to grab each moment and its contradictions and use it to advance the revolutionary movement — especially building on the organic elements of fusion between revolutionary thinking and broader sections of the people.
However… there are some elements in his brief notes that I’d like to explore more.
First, I don’t think there is a lot of chance of contadictions getting dampened in any long term way. We live in the rapids of history. If one war (Iraq) were to be mitigated, others would jump up. There are numerous long term and intensifying trends (new challenges to U.S. hegemony, the economic breakdown of earlier social compacts etc.) that make it unlikely that the political situation will ever be placid and devoid of potential. But our organizing needs to be precisely revolutionary in the sense that we are based on a critique and challenge of this system, not a “one issue approach.”
Second, i really don’t think that Obama is simply or necessarily a pacifier. His rise (and even his election) could intensify contradictions as much as mitigate them. That future is unwritten too.
For example, a Black president could greatly stir and raise the hopes of the poorest black people — hopes that this system is reluctant to meet and that can have explosive potential if dashed.
Another example: This system has unpredictable ways of dealing with its own figures. Will obama be elected? Or dissed? or neutralized? or elected but then sandbagged in the White House? Or all of the above? Or will he simply expose himself to the people by carrying out some new horror, with all the consciousness and anger that process would generate?
gangbox said
Question – why exactly are college students’ demands around accessable education (tuition reductions, reducing student debt ect) “student syndicalist”?
And even if they are, does that necessarily make them bad demands?
Skyrocketing tuition and student debt are very real barriers to entry that deny many working class youth the opportunity to go to college.
And there’s a racial edge – tuition increases, along with the gutting of affirmative action, have blocked hundreds of thousands of Black youth from going to college.
In a way, it’s a form of academic ethnic cleansing.
This can bee seen clearly in the City University of New York, which was tuition free when the schools were overwhelmingly White (1847 – 1975) but where tuition was imposed when students of color became the majority.
For the last few years, CUNY tuition has beeng going up and up and up – and as the cost of attendance goes up, the CUNY schools get Whiter and Whiter.
Now maybe you’re right, it’s “student syndicalism” to support struggles agaisnt tuition increases.
But in that case, maybe the “student syndicalists” are right.
Iris said
Woo! Just found out I’m going to the DNC! The Mayor has denied the ability to camp overnight in the park. So maybe the whole thing will be dashed the first night, when they attempt to contain 50,000 people who want to see RATM, but have no place to sleep….any sugestions on that front?
Full reports immanent!
count the beans said
Who’s paying for this RATM concert? Rock concerts cost a lot of money just to set up and run never mind payments to the performers…and prima donna “artistes” like De La Rocha definitely don’t work for cheap…I mean Coachella tickets are what $250 minimum?
I guess De La Rocha’s bank account must finely be running low and suddenly he wants to work again…
count the beans said
Oh, of course…looks like De La Rocha made some bad real estate investments and now has to go back to work after his money disappeared in the bubble!
When the economy was booming under Bush there wasn’t a peep to be heard from this guy then suddenly the real estate market goes sour and suddenly he decides to come back to work. How convenient. I wouldn’t even go see this rich phony for free nevermind $250.
redflags said
Blah blah blah.
Thanks, Beans, for demonstrating the radical politics of yesterday.
redflags said
I love, I mean loooove when anonymous fools denounce radical artists for giving free concerts. It’s like a punchline with out a joke.
Iris said
Lmao, RATM is picking up the tab! Literally!
ShineThePath said
Gangbox, -as a CUNY student who every semester has his classes cancelled and fights to be enrolled – there is a distinction I make between Student Syndicalism and fighting tuition hikes as a part of the political process of developing a revolutionary student organization.
Let me be clear, especially in school with the character like CUNY, there is an absolute necessity in fighting tuition hikes. Undoubtly. For most students at CUNY tuition hikes, even hikes which are considered small in comparison to the standards of other Universities, means the differences from attending and not attending. But there are two things here.
First a struggle that is bound to just the fight against tuition hikes or even the funding of certain programs is a struggle that needs to be connected to a revolutionary pole in order to raise the consciousness of people.
The most successful and by far the most interesting student grouping at CUNY was SLAM. In comparison to other historical groupings and movements which came out of the struggles at CUNY, it might have been smaller and less focused on tuition hikes, but it was by far the most polarizing force. There was a basic lining in their politics that challenged the economist approach of fighting for the bread and butter of working people at CUNY. To use a old biblical quote, they understood people “don’t live on bread alone.”
Secondly, the conditions of CUNY are significantly different than most other universities, even other public universities. A national movement against tuition, student debt, etc. is just logistically impossible and not worth it. The old SDS embarked on a similiar campaign, Carl Davidson (a frequent respondent on this site) wrote an article on the very concept of “Student Syndicalism” [this is not something I coined; it is historically developed and concieved]. I don’t believe a national student movement against student debt is possible, and I think SDS chapters should rather pay attention to any particular conditions they face and should fight. SDS should be organized on the lines of a developing and emerging radical politics, fighting Imperialism, Patriarchy, and White Supremacy…I don’t think we’ll get anywhere nationally doing Student Syndicalist work.
ShineThePath said
Also something I didn’t mention. Student Syndicalism is inherently limiting, the political aim of power at a campus level seems already defeated to me. Why not develop power in our communities, or dare I say maybe thinking of state power?
gangbox said
Shine The Path,
Wasn’t SLAM decisivly defeated precisely because of it’s neglect of day-to-day “student syndicalist” issues when they ran the student government at Hunter College?
You may say that folks “don’t live by bread alone” – but, you can’t live without any bread at all, a fact that working class students are very viscerally aware of.
In other words, before you can even get to the big ticket high politics stuff, you have to deal with the burning immediate issues that hit people in the belly and the wallet.
And as I’m sure you’re aware, every college educated person in America (with the exception of the very wealthy) graduates with thousands of dollars of debt hanging around their neck.
Coupled with the sub prime mortage crisis and the health insurance crisis, this is a burning day to day issue with millions of people.
Now, you can ignore it, and say that it’s economist to talk about it – and you can even say it’s important, but it’s somehow logistically impossible to fight this on a national level (I belive the second statement is more reflective of your views on this).
But, here’s the problem.
If you ignore people’s burning demands and needs, do not be surprised when they ignore your big ticket high politics “not by bread alone” activism.
You’ve got to start at the belly and the wallet, and work your way up from there.
Apparently, your fellow SDS convention delegates who wanted to address the tuition and student debt issues very well understood that question (hell, if they were at all representative of the typical American undergrad, they were probably going through tuition increase/student debt related problems themselves!!!)
Iris said
Isn’t the issue that you shouldn’t focus solely on economic issues because it is asking for concessions from the b? I mean, if there is a focus on economic issues, it should be done in the context of the system, to expose the system further. Right?
ShineThePath said
Gangbox, two things.
As I have already made clear, I am not saying the revolutionary students shouldn’t fight tuition hikes and other cuts where it presents itself. But this is a particularly conditional problem that has to be met at each particular university. The conditions at CUNY are not the conditions Columbia, and they’re not the conditions of SUNY, etc. A national coordinate movement against these issues seems not worth it, the fight has to be taken to each private institution and each state, what is the other alternative here?
Secondly, SLAM falling apart probably had little to do with focusing on tuition cuts and more to do with internal dynamics, univeristy repression, etc. Further, it was student organization that lasted for 10 years…give props to that, student groupings are lucky to last for 5 years.
leftspot said
Folks may be interested in another assessment of the SDS convention, by UNC-Asheville SDS member Doug Michel. You can find it here: http://leftspot.com/blog/?q=node/577
saoirse said
A point of clarification, SLAM was originally a city-wide student organization that emerged out of the anti-budget movement in 1995. SLAM had chapters at Brooklyn College, John Jay, Hunter, City and members and supporters at a number of other private colleges and CUNY schools. Hunter SLAM which took over student government in 96 (?) and had developed beyond a students rights organization lasted 10 years. SLAM as a city wide student movement lasted 2-3 years.
leftspot said
A minor correction to Saoirse’s correction: I suppose it’s more or less true that SLAM as a CUNY-wide organization with groups called SLAM on multiple campuses died out after 3 or 4 years. But SLAM at CCNY didn’t die – in fact it remained an active and vibrant student organization until last school year…just over 10 years. Actually, Hunter SLAM died out as a functioning student organization before CCNY SLAM did.
At CCNY, SLAM never took over student government like at Hunter (though members of SLAM put together slates w/others and won seats on student government), but CCNY SLAM was a vibrant and active campus presence.
And to address the ’student syndicalism’ question as it relates to SLAM…while I think there might be a slight grain of truth in saying that SLAM made errors at times in the proportion of energy spent on campus vs off campus issues, I think it is overall an incorrect criticism that ignores the ton of work done both at Hunter and CCNY on ‘bread and butter’ issues of concern to students on campus. At Hunter, by necessity, SLAM had to spend a huge amount of its energy addressing day-to-day student concerns since it controlled student government and was therefore responsible for doing so. At CCNY, SLAM also was heavily involved in day-to-day student concerns. For example, people associated with SLAM at CCNY helped lead successful campaigns to stop the arming of campus security guards, as well as to stop implementation at City of the corporate-sponsored “CUNYCard” ID. This in addition to the building and fighting for funding of a wide variety of student projects and groups, as well as initiating the CCNY Messenger newspaper, which covered CCNY life in detail, and often came out more frequently than the ‘official’ student publication.
All of this of course is not to mention that for a number of years SLAM was the leading force fighting against tuition hikes and cuts to SEEK and other programs, while also leading the fight to save Open Admissions and remedial classes at the senior colleges.
I just want to counter the perception that SLAM *only* or even mainly focused on city-wide anti-police brutality work, Free Mumia, or other such issues. SLAM did focus on those issues, and succeeded in mobilizing significant numbers of students around them. But that was not all of SLAM’s work, just one aspect of it.