SDS Visibility Working Group

The appeal is available here!

As always, if you have any questions feel free to contact us: sdsfundraising@gmail.com

To join the fundraising working group, sign up here:
http://groups.google.com/group/sds-fundraising

To make sure people who don’t want national announcements don’t have their inboxes filled with them, and that people who DO want to receive them as well as perhaps send them have a simple and accessible way to connect with national SDS, we’ve created a new National Announcements Listserv.

We want this list to be helpful for SDS Organizers and not barrage people with unnecessary email, so messages will generally go out in a “Weekly Digest” format, with relevant announcements compiled on a weekly basis, except for emergencies or pressing announcements that will be distributed individually.

As moderators of this new list, volunteers from the Visibility Working Group will evaluate announcements we receive by referring to the following List Guidelines.

The National SDS Announcements listserve exists to serve SDS Chapters and Members and will be used strictly for:

* Weekly Digests of consolidated reportbacks and announcements from national working groups, caucuses, projects, regions, and chapters.

* Conference call announcements for all national working groups and national event planning.

* The National Convention and Action Camps.

* The SDS News Bulletin.

* One-Time Notices for Large regional events or projects that can support national involvement.

* Emergency Notices.

It will not be used for:

* Chapter Specific Announcements and Meetings.

* Repetitive Regional Announcements.

* Discussion or Responses.

* Political Theory, Position Papers, or other opinion documents.

* Announcements which do not directly aid/benefit SDS organizing

To send an announcement, please use this address: sdsannouncements@googlegroups.com

Again, this is how national announcements will be communicated in the future, so if you’d like to receive future announcements about everything from the National Convention to issues of the News Bulletin,

please SIGN UP here:
http://groups.google.com/group/sdsannouncements (sdsannouncements@googlegroups.com)

The due date is July 18th, don’t delay!

The application is listed on our wiki page:

Action Camp Application

Hope to hear from you!
? The Action Camp Planning Team

August 15-17th 2008
Asheville, North Carolina!

A couple of workshops we’re already planning include legal trainings, street
medic training, and community organizing skills. We’ve also been working
with many professors on our campus who are interested in teaching or giving free lectures. So join the crowd who are volunteering to jump in, and give us a holler!

–Administration–
This the biggest update that we have to share. We met with our
administration about a month ago and they did not react as we hoped they
would to this project. We continue to work with them to find a useful way
for us to collaborate, but they are proving quite deaf to our offers to
negotiate and compromise (Surely not a new phenomenon to all you other
student activists out there!)

Because of the administration’s negativity, we have two important things to share:

1. We can no longer qualify Macalester as a completely “safe space.” After a suggestion from a friend of ours, it can be better characterized as a “contested space.”
What does this mean? It means that, unless things change for the better (which is quite possible!) the convergence space at
Macalester could be the target of repression by the police. This is not as
scary as it sounds: all the other convergence spaces in the Twin Cities will
be like this. And Macalester has the added buffer that the cops can’t come
onto campus just because they don’t like the looks of you all; they can only enter campus if the administration invites them. We had hoped that by keeping the administration on our side, Macalester would be completely safe. We don’t want to make anyone worried or not stay here because chances are pretty good that nothing is going to happen and the administration is just huffing and puffing. But we want to be honest and upfront with folks about risk.

2. If you know, via family, friends, or connections, any Macalester alumni, PLEASE put them in contact with us immediately. If you have contacts with churches, community leaders, or respected activists in the Twin Cities, PLEASE do the same. We are doing everything we can to put as much pressure on the administration to make this a safe space. This is incredibly important and we need your help.
Again, none of this is to discourage folks from coming to the convergence,
but rather in the interests of full disclosure. We remain completely upbeat
about our plans and are confident that we can bring the administration on
our side with enough pressure. There are also options that remain completely safe, which brings us to…

–Housing–
The situation on housing remains focused on the idea of creating a tent city on the lawn at Macalester. This will be a time and place to build community with each other, with Macalester students, and with the larger Twin Cities population. The tents are the primary objection by Macalester’s
administration, but it is our primary focus. Other alternatives work on
small scales (more on that below) but not for the whole convergence. We want the tents to be a place to communicate and recover from the stressful downtown area. The idea of creating an alternative community of resistance and joy is important to our vision as SDSers and as progressives. PLEASE bring a tent and sleeping bag with you to Macalester if you can.

We do have an alternative housing option, which is what we’ve called the
Adopt-A-Protester program. This would be staying with a Macalester student for the duration of the convergence. This option is the only one that we can assure is completely safe. There are some drawbacks to this: spending 6 days dependent on the student you stay with may be rather stressful for you. We also are a small school,so space is limited. But this space will be safe, as you will be staying as a visitor of the student you are with. Because Adopt-a-Protester is both totally safe and requires no tent, priority will be given to working class and/or vulnerable people.

No matter which option you choose, we are practically begging for you to
register for housing at our website (www.minnesotasds.org/housing) While we are committed to taking any student/youth people who come to Macalester on August 29th through September 4th, it makes our lives so much easier if you register for housing. This allows us to keep in touch with you via a contact person. Additionally, if you need to stay with in Adopt-A-Protester, you absolutely need to register.

Registration takes two seconds, do it now!

–Other Convergence Updates–
= Traveling to the RNC? Wanna keep abreast of updates more regularly? Want to chat with other Convergence-goers? Living as we do in the internet age, we’ve set up an online forum for ride boards, updates from organizing, and other cool stuff.

It’s located here:
http://rncatmacalester.informe.com/forum. Register today!

= We have decided to formally declare the convergence to be a sober space. This is a safety concern and reasserts our priority as protesting the RNC, not getting messed up. So leave the liquor/drugs at home. If you really have to partake, there will be places off campus where you can do so. We are quite serious about this decision, please respect our space and our community.

= There are three concerts being planned for the weekend of and during the RNC at Macalester. They are tentatively themed as a hip-hop show, an indie rock show, and a hardcore show. TV may have killed the radio star, but the music lives on!

–Okay, So Now What?–
Here’s what you can do right now to help us organize this monster of a
convergence:

1. Register for housing at minnesotasds.org/housing
2. Join the internet forum at rncatmacalester.informe.com/forum
3. Fundraise with your friends/affinity group/chapter/organization. Get
yourself the following things: a tent. a bail fund. supplies for the
protests. supplies for us (PVC pipe for constructing giant tents, etc)
4. Be the awesome people that you are.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us at
RNCatMacalester@gmail.com. We plan to send out more bulletins as the summer wears on.

Solidarity and see you in September,
The RNC Committee of Macalester Students for a Democratic Society

Visibility WG,
Students for a Democratic Society

Sign up at:
http://groups.google.com/group/sdsannouncements

Send submissions for next week’s digest to:
sdsannouncements@googlegroups.com

Also, add/bookmark the SDS National Calendar to keep track of the calls and deadlines happening every week in SDS!

- Visibility Project

August 15-17th
Asheville, North Carolina!

We need your help setting the agenda, finding facilitators, and doing outreach to chapters!

Join our listserv!

Our calls are Wednesday nights @ 10pm!
Call number 616-597-8000
Call code 392429

Register TODAY for the 2008 SDS National Convention!

Hey SDSers!
The fundraising working group has put together this sweet letter for you to circulate among your friends and family to ask them to support your work in SDS. It outlines the work we’ve been doing and the work we will do if we get
the funding we need. As we’ve said before, your friends and family do not have to agree with your political views for you to ask them for money - it should be about them supporting you and your mission to improve the world.
As always, feel free to contact sdsfundraising@gmail.com
if you have any questions. To join the fundraising working group, sign up here:
http://groups.google.com/group/sds-fundraising

Note: Please do NOT hit “fwd” and send this entire message to your address
book. The letter below is meant to copied and pasted into a *NEW* message
that you can send as is or add your own personal touch to (and really,
people are a lot more likely to give if you talk about what SDS has meant to
you personally).

Thanks for all the awesome work you all do!

- Robin, Philly SDS
and the rest of the fundraising team

letter to cut and paste below!
———————————————————————————————–

Dear Friends,

In just two short years, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) has become
one of the largest and fastest growing student led organizations, with over
120 active, dynamite chapters in high schools and colleges all over the
country. Last summer (2007) was a turning point for us. We had our first
Action Camp and our second National Convention, two critical events that
involved hundreds of SDSers and strongly shaped the work that happened
during this year. As summer rolls around again, we’re planning another SDS
Action Camp, our third National Convention, and actions at the RNC and DNC.
The National Convention and the Action Camps will again bring about 300
SDSer’s together for training, movement building, and friendship. That means
we need to provide for food, mentors, and housing. Most importantly, we need
funds to make sure that SDSers from working class backgrounds or far-away
regions are able to come and participate. That’s right - we need money to
make democracy work!

We’ve been winning campaigns and organizing successful actions all year -
SDS chapters in the Northwest helped organize the Port Militarization
Resistance to block US military shipments to Iraq in Olympia, Washington;
Virginia Commonwealth University SDS won their campaign to get a sexual
assault resource center on their campus; Harvard SDS won higher wages for
their campus security guards through a dramatic hunger strike; and DC SDS
organized the largest single action in the country on the 5th anniversary of
the US invasion of Iraq. At the same time, SDSers have been increasingly
targeted for repression. In the past few months, SDSers in DC, Tuscaloosa,
Alabama and New Brunswick, NJ have all been brought up on outrageous/sham
criminal charges related to actions in their communities. Just recently,
SDSers in Tuscaloosa who had engaged in a mock US Army raid as in Iraq with
a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) had their bogus charges
dropped!
These are signs that SDS has grown tremendously this year in size and
influence. But the hard work of organizing is what sustains SDS. Lancaster
SDS, a high school chapter, has built a presence in 6 area high schools and
epitomizes the successful slow approach of community building and
organizing. Chapters around the country are organizing around issues such
as opposition to the war in Iraq, environmental justice and sustainability,
gentrification in their communities, and building student power on
campuses. In the coming year, we hope to organize a national campaign
around student debt relief, and continue our work to build a strong, vibrant
student movement.
Please donate as generously as you can to support the exciting work of
Students for a Democratic Society. All donations are tax deductible through
our fiscal sponsor, the Alliance for Community Trainers (ACT). You can make
a donation online by going to www.newsds.org, or you can send donations to:

SDS
741 Morton St NW
Washington DC, 20010

**please make checks payable to ACT and write “SDS” in the memo line**

If you would like to receive updates from SDS on how the money is being used
and what work we are doing, please include a note with your e-mail address
along with your check or money order.

Questions, comments, concerns, or ideas? email sdsfundraising@gmail.com

Thank you so much for your support!
The SDS Fundraising Working Group

On Sunday June 29 at 9pm EST, there will be a conference call to plan the Collective Liberation Agenda for the National Convention.

Members of caucuses like the Working Class Caucus, People of Color Caucus, and Womyn’s Caucus, which submitted facilitation plans to meet at the convention, are welcome and encouraged to attend, as are all members of the National Convention Agenda Working Group!

Sunday June 29, 9pm EST
Number: 616-597-8000
code: 392429#

Greetings all sds’rs!

Its finally here, the sds Flickr account is up and running! This is an amazing opportunity for all of our members to contribute to creating the visual history of our organization. Miss an action or want to see what our work looks like around the country? Now we have the chance for everyone to see what we’ve all been up to.

If you already have photosets on Flickr, join the sds Flickr group. If you don’t have a Flickr account but have photos you would like to post to the group you can email me at jakemayday@gmail.com for the password to the sds.photo Flickr account. For posting in the group or the account, please follow the group tagging rules found in the admins note on the group page.

in solidarity,
jake mayday (rva/vcu sds)

Are you not quite sure what to do with your summer? Looking for a way that you can spend your summer fighting capitalism and defending the environment, while learning new skills and meeting new folks from
around the country? If you have a week or a month or three months to spare, there’s an exciting and important campaign that could really benefit from your help.

read full Call to Action…

Where can I find out more?
Check out http://stopi69.wordpress.com or email gdobyns@lclark.edu or
marysackley@gmail.com. People are happy to take an active role in
plugging in any SDSers into the campaign and helping folks settle in,
so don’t worry if you don’t know anyone here!

Together we can stop this road, build a stronger student movement, and
attack global capitalism at its roots.

In solidarity,
Guy Dobyns
Mary Sackley
Lewis and Clark/Little Beirut SDS
Portland, OR currently in Evansville, IN

UPDATE!
Arrested! I-69 TREE SIT UNDER ATTACK

The Class Privilege WG (the corresponding privilege group to the Working Class Caucus) now has a listserv!

Follow the link to join:
http://groups.google.com/group/sds-natl-class-privilege-wg

The caucuses and privilege groups are fundamental to the internal and external anti-oppression work SDS does. To learn more about the caucuses/privilege working groups, check out the complete list on the visibility working group’s site:
http://studentsforademocraticsociety.org/visibility/?page_id=6

About Us
The SDS Visibility Working Group is a national working group that seeks to make national SDS work visible, accessible and accountable. Our group will function to link up working groups with one another, to share information and build effective communication into our national organization, thus we will actively encourage SDSers to get involved in National Working Groups, Caucuses, and Campaigns. In order to effectively keep track of the aforementioned activities, and help them progress, this project will include at least one point person from each national working group, caucus, and campaign. Additionally, the group will be open to everyone in SDS who wants to work on connecting working groups and tracking their progress. The Visibility Working Group’s first tasks are to create a National Calendar and a National Announcement Listserve that will serve to help SDSers stay informed of national events and projects.