Posted on 02/12/2005 2:45:19 PM PST by Calpernia
Ping
Yes, that thread and another, http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1209454/posts, I posted the research from Leonard Magruder of the VIETNAM VETERANS FOR ACADEMIC REFORM, about the signers of the“People’s Peace Treaty.”
His piece showed the auxiliary connections of the SDS, DSA, Not in Our Name, ANSWER and all. This is another piece too that shows the auxiliaries.
Students for a Democratic Society
Students for a Democratic Society was the most influential socialist youth group in American history. It began life as the Student League for Industrial Democracy (SLID), a student group affiliated with the League for Industrial Democracy (LID). In January of 1960, SLID changed its name to Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), so as to have a broader appeal among students. The group started small, in 1960 it only had nine chapters on various campuses.
At a 1962 convention in Port Huron, Michigan, SDS delegates worked on a draft originally written by Tom Hayden which would become the Port Huron Statement. Michael Harrington from LID, SDS's parent organization, attended the convention and fought with the SDS members over the statement, especially what he considered its softness on being anti-communist, as well as SDS allowing an observer associated with the Communist Party youth organization to be present at the convention. When the convention was over, the fight between SDS and LID continued, with LID even locking the doors of SDS's New York office, but SDS and LID managed to patch things up. Some consider this convention as the break between the Old Left and the New Left. The Port Huron Statement found an audience on much of the student left such as with the National Student Association.
In September 1963, SDS began the Economic Research and Action Program (ERAP), where college students would go into poor areas and organize. One of the program's first successes was organizing in Chester, Pennsylvania near Swarthmore College. Eventually hundreds of college students would move into the ghettoes and organize.
On October 4, 1965, SDS was growing, becoming more radical, and more involved in anti-war work as the Vietnam War escalated.
In February of 1966 members of the May 2nd Movement (M2M), which the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) exercised great control over, disbanded M2M, and many of the M2M members joined SDS, in an attempt to recruit SDS members into the PLP. SDS began feeling the influence of the M2M members (PLP) almost immediately.
SDS had began shunning formal structure in 1965, which carried into the 1966 SDS convention in Clear Lake, Iowa. Steering committees and formal hierarchy was shunned, and consensus and "prairie power" was emphasized. Boston SDS'er John Maher made a proposal at the convention which indirectly targeted the Progressive Labor (PL) SDS'ers - A February/March 1967 article in Progressive Labor by Jeff Gordon suggested a worker-student alliance.
On April 23, 1968, 19 days after the assassination Martin Luther King, Jr., a student strike began at Columbia University, many of the leaders of which were "action faction" SDSers. This would be followed by student strikes on other universities in the coming days, months and years throughout the country (and throughout the world - students went on strike in France a month later, almost bringing the French government down when the strike spread to become a general strike among workers).
At the SDS convention in June 1968 at Michigan State in East Lansing, Michigan, the PL-affiliated SDS'ers began to try to openly dominate SDS. Following democratic centralism, in a manner some said was even stricter than CPUSA democratic centralism, they were a united front in SDS. They were also well-organized, and their Marxist theory was well-worked out as opposed to "vaguer" ideas and theories presented by non-PLers. The anti-PL "new working class" SDSers caucused at the convention.
After the convention, the SDS PL'ers began pushing the Worker-Student Alliance (WSA) idea more. The PL'ers were not much involved in what became militant protests of the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois which many SDS'ers participated in. In a December 1968 SDS National Council meeting in Ann Arbor, Michigan, PL-WSA succeeds in passing its Marxian resolution on racism (which said that racism is a byproduct of the class war). Toward a Revolutionary Youth Movement by an anti-PL faction which would become called Revolutionary Youth Movement (RYM) passed as well.
From June 18-22 of 1969, SDS held its ninth annual convention at the Chicago Coliseum, mostly because it was unable to find a meeting place on any Mid-western college campus. At this convention, fighting between the PL-WSA faction and the anti-PL faction (collected together as the Revolutionary Youth Movement) came to a head. On June 21, Saturday night, hundreds of RYMers marched out of the coliseum, permanently splitting with PL-WSA. This more or less was the end of SDS - the two largest, but still relatively small factions, PL-WSA and RYM continued to exist as the rest of SDS, much of whom were marginally attached students, disintegrated.
The Revolutionary Youth Movement, which had always been a loose group united in their oppositon to PL-WSA, split up into the two groups it had been more or less composed of - RYM I, which would become the Weathermen, and RYM II, which included members of the Bay Area Revolutionary Union and other groups. In a month or two, the rift between RYM I and RYM II became permanent, after which RYM II itself began breaking up into different groups. They went on to form the Democratic Socialists of America, provisionally named "The Alliance".
"Organization" was too limiting a term for The Alliance because it seeks to become much more than a conventional action organization or coalition. Rather, it seeks to become a decentralized and highly democratic yet well-organized network of progressive individuals and organizations seriously dedicated to cooperating with each other in a variety of ways to wrest power away from large corporations and to put it in the hads of ordinary people. The Alliance's ultimate goal is to become, or to become part of, an international democratic citizens' movement.
So, in essence, the National Alliance is the Al Qaeda of the progressive movement.
Thanks. I remember that thread--that was a good one :-) As I'm rereading it I see some things now in a new light. That connection you stumbled onto between the World Peace Council, the British Peace Council October-November 1969 protests, and the October-November 1969 VMC protests is very interesting.
Anyway, getting back to the current thread, I was following you on the connections between LID/SLID, SDS, DSA, NON, ANSWER, etc. Where I was getting lost was the connection from that to the National Alliance and the National Socialist Party. I see now where you're getting the "Alliance" part from, but it looks to me like the Alliance you mention in this post in relation to RYM and DSA was a different group than the National Alliance you were linking to in Post 23.
I have no historical background of any of this. I've taken a crash course since Kerry was running for President.
So be patient with me.
Anyway, a 'members sign in view' on ANSWER has this:
- ACE Party
- African People's Socialist Party
- Alaskan Independence Party
- American Beer Drinkers'Party
- American Conservative Union
- American Falangist Party
- American Heritage Party
- American Independent Party
- Americanist Party
- American Nazi Party
- American Party
- American Reform Party
- American Synthesis Party
- America's Party
- Capitalist Party of America
- Centrist Party
- Christian Alliance
- Christian Coalition
- Church of God Party
- Commonwealth Party of America
- Communist Party U.S.A
- Conservative and Populist Party
- Constitution Action Party
- Constitutionalist Party
- Constitution Party
- Creator's Rights Party
- Democratic Libertarian Party
- Democratic Party
- Democratic Socialists of America
- Expansionist Party of the United States
- Family Values Party
- Federalist Party
- Freedom Socialist Party
- Fusion Party of America
- Future Voters of America Party
- Hawaii Nation
- Heart Political Party
- Hui Kalai`aina/Political Party Hawaii
- Independent American Party
- International Socialist Organization
- Labor Party
- Legal Party
- Libertarian National Socialist Green Party
- Libertarian Party
- Light Party
- Multicapitalist Party
- National Alliance
- National Disability Party
- National Socialist White People's Party
- National Syndicalist American Falangist Party
- Natural Law Party of the USA
- New Democracy
- New Liberty Party
- New Party
- New Union Party
- Our Party
- Pansexual Peace Party
- Partido Nacional La Raza Unida
- Patriot Party
- People's Independent Party
- Progressive Labor Party
- Progressive Party of Vermont
- Prohibition Party
- Reform Party
- Republican Party
- Royalist Party of America
- Social Democrats
- Socialist Equality Party
- Socialist Labor Party of America
- Socialist Party USA
- Social Nationalist Party
- Southern Independence Party
- Southern Party
- The Greens/Green Party USA
- Third Party
- United States National Official Monster Raving Loony Party
- United States Truth Party
- Workers World Party
- Working Families Party
- World Socialist Party of the United States
PLP and National Alliance are listed.
Now, nw_arizona_granny has a link at http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1341941/posts?page=13#13 of the DSA's own website where they name themselves PLP
And a statement from a big wig is quoted at http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1341941/posts?page=25#25
Thoughts?
No worries, Calpernia; you're doing great work :-)
I'm about to go eat supper, so I'll look at that closer later, but offhand I'd assume the National Alliance in the ANSWER-related list you give here is probably the same as the one from Post #23, rather than the 60s-era Alliance linked to SDS. Ramsey Clark has links to some anti-Semitic groups including both Nazi and Muslim groups, which I'd suspect may be how National Alliance and some of the other Nazi groups listed here got involved with ANSWER. PLP on the other hand probably is coming into ANSWER from the old SDS/New Left network. I think ANSWER is designed to pull subversive groups from a number of different areas--New Left/FREEZE, environmentalist, Nazi, Muslim--in under a common umbrella.
>>>I'm about to go eat supper, so I'll look at that closer later,
No problem. I'm cooking while doing this so I'm back and forth.
>>>>>I'd assume the National Alliance in the ANSWER-related list you give here is probably the same as the one from Post #23,
Yes, I also have a law enforcement site that agrees:
http://www.dc.state.fl.us/pub/gangs/racial.html
Mentions that the National Alliance was inspired by Hitler. That is consistant with that statemtn in post http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1341941/posts?page=25#25
>>>>rather than the 60s-era Alliance linked to SDS. Ramsey Clark has links to some anti-Semitic groups including both Nazi and Muslim groups, which I'd suspect may be how National Alliance and some of the other Nazi groups listed here got involved with ANSWER.
This is where I reference the research from Leonard Magruder:
http://www.i-served.com/v-v-a-r.org/022104_KerryTooNaive_part1.html
Magruder shows that the 60's era ANSWER and SDS are todays Not in Our Name. Which shows it is the same groups.
Quote from link:
(snip)
Among those who signed the various documents represented here, basically the major leaders of the anti-war movement, we list the following:
· Al Hubbard - Vietnam Veterans Against the War
· Jane Fonda - actress
(both signed the People’s Peace Treaty of 1971)
· Noam Chomsky, MIT
· Rev. William Sloan Coffin, Jr. Yale
· Rennie Davis, May Day Collective
· Rev. Daniel Berrigan,S.J.
· Dave Dellinger, People’s Coalition for Peace and Justice
· Daniel Ellsberg - MIT
· Richard Falk - Princeton
· Tom Hayden - Berkeley
· Abbie Hoffman - WPAX, NewYork
· Sidney Peck - People’s Coalition for Peace and justice
· Bobby Seale- Black Panther Party
· Benjamin Spock, doctor
· Gloria Steinem - author
· George Wald, biologist, Havard
· Cora Weiss - Women Strike for Peace
(Many of the people who signed the various documents in this book appeared again as signers of the recent “Not In Our Name” ad that appeared in papers all over the country, denouncing Bush and the wars on terrorism and Iraq.)
Sorry if this is being confusing, and I hope I'm not being too frustrating. I had to read a couple times to figure out where we're getting signals crossed, so please be patient with me as well.
I follow you on NION, ANSWER, VAIW, and today's antiwar groups being directly descended from New Left groups like SDS. I also follow on the part about the National Alliance being connected with ANSWER today. The part I'm wondering about is relating today's National Alliance to the Alliance group that was part of SDS in the 60s, because it looks to me like these are two different groups, even though as you point out the National Alliance is now linked to today's offshoots of SDS through the antiwar movement. The quote in Post 38 describes the 1960s Alliance as related to the RYM faction of SDS:
The Revolutionary Youth Movement, which had always been a loose group united in their oppositon to PL-WSA, split up into the two groups it had been more or less composed of - RYM I, which would become the Weathermen, and RYM II, which included members of the Bay Area Revolutionary Union and other groups. In a month or two, the rift between RYM I and RYM II became permanent, after which RYM II itself began breaking up into different groups. They went on to form the Democratic Socialists of America, provisionally named "The Alliance".
Now this is why I'm seeing the 1960s Alliance and today's National Alliance as two different groups. RYM was not a white supremacist group like today's National Alliance group. They were a faction of SDS which supported the Black Panthers (which was the source of their conflict with the PLP faction of SDS--see Review of Alan Adelson's SDS for a summary of the split within SDS over the Black Panthers). Here's a link briefly describing RYM:
Revolutionary Youth Movement II
Revolutionary Youth Movement was the section of Students for a Democratic Society which opposed the Progressive Labor Party. It eventually split. Revolutionary Youth Movement I became the Weather Underground Organization. Revolutionary Youth Movement II became the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist), and the Revolutionary Union. Leaders of Revolutionary Youth Movement II include Bob Avakian, C. Clark Kissinger, and Michael Klonsky.
So RYM was part of this development, which occurred back around 1969 within the anti-PLP faction of SDS. The National Alliance that's involved with ANSWER today emerged in 1974 out of a faction of a group called the National Youth Alliance:
The National Alliance has its roots in the Youth for Wallace campaign, established by Willis Carto, the anti-Semitic founder of Liberty Lobby, in support of the 1968 presidential bid of Alabama Governor George Wallace. After Wallace's defeat, Carto renamed his organization the National Youth Alliance and attempted to recruit college students to his increasingly radical cause. In 1970, William Pierce, who had been an associate of George Lincoln Rockwell and the American Nazi Party, left the National Socialist White People's Party, the successor to the ANP, to join the National Youth Alliance. In addition to Pierce, the National Youth Alliance attracted several former ANP activists, and they ultimately led the organization away from Carto's influence.
By 1974, the organization had split into separate factions, and Pierce's wing became known as the National Alliance. Since then, Pierce has run the group and edited its magazine, National Vanguard (originally titled Attack!), as well as an internal newsletter, National Alliance Bulletin (formerly called Action). He is also in charge of the group's "American Dissident Voices" weekly radio address, and controls other businesses associated with the NA: National Vanguard Books, Resistance Records and Cymophane Records.
So that's why I'm seeing the two "Alliances" as being two different groups. I hope that helps explain what I meant better. Thanks for your patience with my nitpicking over fine details of obscure radical groups :-)
bump for tomorrow.
Another from your list that I have now copied.
Thanks.
BTTT
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