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InResponse: Letters to the Editor

A call to arms for the Students for a Democratic Society

There are times for things to die and times for things to be reborn. It’s time for the SDS, Students for a Democratic Society, to be reborn. This rebirth is happening on college campuses throughout the country as the result of the hard work of a new generation of concerned students. It is time for SDS to be reborn because this latest stage of transnational corporate capitalism has turned a corner and has become a new kind of global empire unrestrained by nation states and unrestrained by national democracies. This global empire is ravaging this planet, causing unprecedented destruction of the natural environment, while it creates wars for resources and political diversion. The political elites of the United States that have a privileged place in this empire have lost all moral boundaries as they build a system of corruption and domination that undermines the very culture of democracy and replaces democratic discourses with public relations maneuvers and polling fraud.

What can we do? First of all, we can get together and talk. We need to put aside sectarian rivalries and dogmatic tendencies and create student councils that are politically animated and motivated. We need a kind of organization that brackets political ideology and begins with issues, first local and then regional and national. Some of us may still be committed to the assumption that the system can be reformed, and others might have a more revolutionary perspective, but we need to find points of agreement and new ways of organizing around mutual respect and open-minded inquiry. We must bring all of our talents, skills and awareness together in new creative political projects and direct action against these new global corporate evils we see arising. We need to put our education to use for each other and for the broader community and get out of the me-first and me-only attitudes we are being encouraged and even forced to maintain. We need an organization where radical democrats can get together and begin the long hard journey to a new more human, more fulfilling world that honors our place in nature and the cosmos. It’s time for real social, political and cultural change.
Mark Derderian • derderia@mscd.edu