Word: sds
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These students view themselves as an underprivileged class, defined as any class of society which has its decisions legislated for them. The New Leftist can thus sympathize with other underprivileged groups, such as Negroes or unemployed workers, who, in the SDS view, have not taken full advantage of their political rights. The students see a common bond with such groups which the groups themselves often do not share. An SDS expedition to organize the meatpackers in Haymarket Square against the Vietnam war found themselves harassed and jeered by the workers. "So that's the proletariat," one student commented...
...Vietnam war has drawn many liberals into the New Left camp this year. As one tutor in Government sympathetic to SDS explains, "As soon as you start to talk about Vietnam, you begin to have doubts about your government." Michael S. Ansara, an executive of the national chapter of SDS at Harvard, however, attributed the growth of SDS to the new image of the Left at Harvard. "The view of the mindless radical has gone out. We think before we act," he says...
...Harvard SDS began the year with less than one hundred members and has since doubled its membership, not including 200 other students who think of themselves as "close to SDS...
According to Ansara, the group does not actively solicit its membership, but instead concentrates on building a "solid base of educated members." As he explains, "students usually start out on one issue. They think the war is bad, or poverty is bad. But once in SDS, there occurs this broadening of their perceptions and their commitments." Consistent with their emphasis on decision-making, they begin to ask "who runs things," while at the same time developing a commitment to "direct action" to solve specific problems...
...provide their members with "a consciousness of what's wrong with society," Harvard SDS conducts seminars taught by both students and faculty members. The SDS seminar on "Theories of Social Change" attracted about thirty-five people this year, while several ten-man groups investigated the problems of labor and Vietnam. Next year, SDS plans to create a Free University in Boston, similar to the one in New York, where participants in this year's program can teach an even larger group...