History

This SDS is known as the "new" SDS, but there was also an SDS in the 1960's. Those students learned from the labor and civil rights organizing traditions. They built chapters around the country and created the largest student movement in our nation's history. They helped end the Vietnam War, fought for civil rights and affirmative action, built student control in the universities, struggled for free speech in times of great government repression, and inspired a generation to change the course of America.

Sadly, because of the difficult times, government repression, and destructive behaviors like sexism and racism, the organizers of the old SDS gave up on the work of the student movement, and disbanded SDS. It ended a student movement that was a million strong.

The new SDS have learned from the successes as well as their mistakes of the old SDS. We will build a million student movement, and then take it further. We will care for one another and beat the oppressions that drive us apart. We will take back our schools first, and then our country.

The new SDS was born on January 16, 2006, Martin Luther King Jr. Day. A group of high school and college students, seeing the pressing need for a broad based group to unite fractured local student groups, worked with members of the old SDS to re-launch the organization. They issued a press release calling for a new generation of SDS to build a radical multi-issue organization grounded in the principle of participatory democracy. Since then, the new SDS has grown to over 150 chapters around the country, winning victories for over three years!

For more information about the history of SDS, check out:

• Wikipedia
• Rebels With a Cause film website
• The Port Huron Statement