Customer Reviews

Students for a Democratic Society: A Graphic History

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I was disappointed with this book. As a history of SDS it is episodic and disjoint. There is no attempt to give the viewpoints continuity. Some of the voices were cynical some were just egocentric, none were very informative. Did HSP really disolve into drug abusing powerlessness? What did it matter anyway?
As a separate issue the drawings are boring. The protestors break thru security lines to the lawn of the Pentagon. Without the text, it looks like a dull dull dull picnic.With the text it looks like there wasn't much of a protest going on. That is typical of the illustrations. The text says that women and men were taking equal part in the housekeeping at one 'project house'. Graphic shows women cooking, men talking. Kent State is condensed into two pages at the end. Throughout the book words in the text are in bold face type; the words in boldface seem to be chosen randomly.

Graphic Format can be used to bring an added dimension to an historical account. This book is an example trying to exploit the current interest in graphic format with a second rate text and ill planned pictures.

This graphic history of "Students for a Democratic Society" brings to life an important effort at participatory democracy and protest that had 80,000 to 100,000 activists at its peak in the late sixties. SDS disintegrated for a combination of reasons, some interpersonal, some external disruptions from the FBI The COINTELPRO Papers: Documents from the FBI's Secret Wars Against Dissent in the United States (South End Press Classics Series), and also the splintering off of more militant groups like The Weather Underground. Nevertheless, SDS was a learning experience for many and contributed to the growing women's movement, the gay rights movement, the environmental movement and so forth. Many SDS members created new approaches to social change, such as Tom Hayden becoming involved in politics and writing books such as Ending the War in Iraq, Michael Albert who helped to found Z Magazine and has written and lectured widely on alternative economics Realizing Hope: Life beyond Capitalism, and Thom Hartmann who has become a nationally syndicated radio host and author on such topics as Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights. Even the more militant figures of SDS are today contributing to progressive social change, such as William Ayers, who is a professor in Illinois Fugitive Days: A Memoir.
Additionally, an all-new SDS movement is developing with over 110 chapters worldwide. While their activities are ignored by the corporate media, members have taken part in courageous actions such as a blockade of the Port of Tacoma where the U.S. military was loading Stryker vehicles for Iraq. Many SDS members attended the U.S. Social Forum in Atlanta. So, while it is true that A Hard Rain Fell: SDS and Why It Failed, a new SDS has grown out of the manure of the current administration of our plutocracy, and its many activities include plans to protest the Republican National Convention in St. Paul.
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What ever happened to this style of activism? Where is it when it is needed most? The 60's mantra of 'One generation got old, one generation got soul' can't possibly be limited to just that generation can it? This should be must reading on H.S. reading lists when it comes to 60-70's history. Not only does it tell a story that will never find its way into regulated reading lists, it also does it in a way that would be engaging to students (not that that is ever a consideration of course). I participated in those times, so of course I loved the book. Let others learn from our mistakes and hopefully catch our unbridled enthusiasm while reading about those bygone days.

Yeah, there were lots of aspects of the S.D.S., and student protest organisations like of like orientation, that earnestly ideology-driven scholars examining the 1960s and 1970s ignore when they concentrate too unduly and solely on ideological aspects (those of the groups and of the authors themselves writing about them).

As an undergraduate student at U.. Mass. Boston, I joined one of the Marxist-Leninist groups, Students Against War and Fascism, that differed in some obscure way from the S.D.S. itself; there were lots of splinter groups, which differed in their "take" on Marx, Engels, and Lenin, or which were latter-day votaries of Trotsky, Che Guevarra, and/or Mao, and they were every bit as "devoted to the cause" as the S.D.S. itself, and manifested many of the same traits. I never could understand why the groups made such a fuss about their divergent interpretations of the great Marxist-Leninist founders' writings, but these rival viewpoints meant a great deal to the leading student figures of the various groups. It seemed to me then, and, in hindsight, even more now, that an united Marxist front would have accomplished more than the various splinter groups did achieve.

I was then and largely remain rather liberal in my socio-political convictions (although later, and I hope wiser, in life I reverted to Catholic Christian belief), but at the time I never completely grasped what these organisations really were about, or perhaps rather I did not feel the need to assert their Marxist dogmas in full or according to the same interpretations. I was interested in Marx, Che, et alia in a broader and more general way than the genuine zealots of the organisations, but I went along, more or less, with the rest of the members, even if I lacked their rather narrow zeal for Marxist-Leninist doctrine as they interpreted it.

Initially, I got involved in S.A.W.F., that very S.D.S.-like group, because my gay boyfriend was so active in it! My Christian convictions during those university years were at a low ebb and my hormones were in ever higher gear, something that was the case with so many other students during those effervescent years! Also, there were two enticingly good-looking male junior professors who shepherded us most agreeably! At Kent State University, too, the Marxist groups were often a good source for "gay boyfriend material", though, of course, these organisations were not "gay fronts" per se. In Boston, I bailed my boyfriend out of jail when he got caught trying to bomb a building at another university in Boston. It was fun and rather dramatic, and students do have a lot of energy to burn off ideologically and sexually.

Pekar grasps the mixed emotions and motivations of those who got caught up in the S.D.S. or organisations like it. We who were students during those times had lots of ancillary reasons, conscious or unexpressed, that drove us and the sometimes serious, occasionally silly, antics of the S.D.S. and of groups like it. It is about time that someone depicted the S.D.S. with an eye for what they did and how much exhileration (intellectual, emotive, sexual, and all the rest of it) there was in doing it! Pekar conveys at least a lot of that exuberance, if not all of its multifacted aspects, in the pages of this book.

I learned a little about the SDS, but this seems designed as an adventure comic to spur memories for those who were there, not for me. Page after page of snooze-inducing, poor retellings of Baby Boomers proudly recalled 'triumphs.' Only there's very little you could describe as a triumph. Many of the stories end on a petulant 'nyah nyah!' note. The protags are generally overly earnest figures sharing even details about sexual impotence ("I couldn't perform" p 62). Little gets visualized other than people talking directly to the reader. Some of the episodes end abruptly after a single page and you'd need to have a mind baked by weed to even agree that something occured. They just sort of end on the first panel where a complication is introduced (p 52, 114, 122, 124, and worst of all the one-pager on 90) "Oh, that was the whole point of that story?"

The stories have the credulousness of jejeune teens, which is seriously inappropriate looking back in your 60s. The book crushingly documents the half-heartedness with which dabblers pursued these goals.

Wow. Have you ever listened to a person reminisce about something that was *SO INTERESTING* the last time they were drunk/stoned? This book is so full of addled disconnects and inside-story miniutia that it is virtually unreadable.

Here are my big take-aways.

This book chronicles the Glory Days of pettiness and power struggles and revolutionary purity, when saying the F-word was the height of sophistication. It's a cry from the heart from 60's radicals that we're not Useless! We're Intellectuals (Ineffectuals)!

Again and again in this book, we see the would-be rabble rousers sidestepped by the "rabble". Self-important white college students go out to radicalize inner-city blacks, and the blacks decide we can do this just fine without these rich white people being our "leaders". Same for the women's movement, same for urban violence. What is a disaffected college-educated white person to do? Oh, the humanity! Indeed, we see in this book that the revolution... Ahem, the Revolution... has no place for whites at all (p. 41)

So the pitiful self-importance of these white people who express a perception of themselves as "oppressed", while offering the reader a bit of comic irony, is just total baloney. This book emphasizes the failures of 60's leftist radicalism... just another ism on the dustbin of history. The 60's radicals became the bureaucratic infighters and foot-draggers and status-quo-upholders they were working so hard to overthrow. Judge these people by their intentions, not by their paltry results and NOT by their lawless actions.

This is a great book for True Believers who still think that aborting minority babies is more important than raising and educating them; who think that the rioter who terrorizes a minority neighborhood and loots a minority-owned store is striking a bigger blow for liberty than the man or woman who built the business.

Pretty sad. Good synopsis on why middle class poseurs and college-educated malcontents are not the future of America.

Growing up in the 60's was a fun time. We were going to change the world. But the world was not ready for change then. This book lets you relive those times.