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AIM : Should foreign affairs leave those at home (both the people and government) unsettled?. Counter - Culture. Vocab SDS Columbia GYM CROW CORE Kent State Port Huron Statement “ Turn on, tune in, drop out. ” Democratic Convention in Chicago Pentagon Papers Essential Questions :
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AIM: Should foreign affairs leave those at home (both the people and government) unsettled? Counter - Culture
Vocab SDS Columbia GYM CROW CORE Kent State Port Huron Statement “Turn on, tune in, drop out.” Democratic Convention in Chicago Pentagon Papers Essential Questions: • What does the counter-culture tell us about American society? • How influential should the people be on the government political actions?
The Free Speech Movement (FSM) at the University of California at Berkeley During the Fall 1964 semester was the first of the 1960s campus student movements to make headlines all over the world. Lasting a little over two months, it ended with the arrest of 773 persons for occupying the administration building, the removal of the campus administration, and a vast enlargement of student rights to use the University campus for political activity and debate. In the longer term it contributed to the election of Ronald Reagan as Governor of California in 1966 (since he promised to quell campus unrest and bring things back to 'normal') but also improved freedom of speech on college campuses nation wide to this day.
“The university is the place where people begin seriously to question the conditions of their existence and raise the issue of whether they can be committed to the society they have been born into. After a long period of apathy during the fifties, students have begun not only to question but, having arrived at answers, to act on those answers. This is part of a growing understanding among many people in America that history has not ended, that a better society is possible, and that it is worth dying for.”
SDS was the largest and most influential radical student organization of the 1960s. At its inception in 1960, there were just a few dozen members, inspired by the civil rights movement and initially concerned with equality, economic justice, peace, and participatory democracy. With the escalation of the Vietnam War, SDS grew rapidly as young people protested the destruction wrought by the US government and military. Polite protest turned into stronger and more determined resistance as rage and frustration increased all across the country.
SDS Columbia University Chapter – GYM CROW From April 23-27, Columbia University is practically shut down as Columbia SDS launches an unprecedented antiwar demonstration. After the initial invasion of a university building where three school officials are taken hostage for 24 hours, on April 24, additional buildings are occupied by a growing mass of rebellious students, estimated to be 700 to 1,000 strong and extending beyond the original core of SDS (whose Columbia chapter consist of about 150 members) and the Students Afro-American Society. Student protesters ransack the university president’s office and go on to occupy a total of five buildings. On the sixth day of the disorders, more that 1,000 policemen enter the campus and clear the buildings in a violent and chaotic student-police encounter. Classes at Columbia come to a virtual standstill for the rest of the academic year.In the spring of 1968 several issues converged on the Columbia campus. The continuing war and the elimination of draft exemptions for graduating seniors and first-year graduate students intensified anti-war activities. These included demonstrations directed against military recruiting and training on campus, the Dow Chemical Corporation, and official University membership in the Institute for Defense Analysis. There was also a lot of anger about Columbia expanding its campus into Harlem which would increase the rent and change the neighborhood. They were trying to build a gym there - activists nick named this GYM CROW.
Massive Ideological Battle But in reality, striking students are responding to the totality of the conditions of our society, not just one small part of it, the university. We are disgusted with the war, with racism, with being a part of a system over which we have no control, a system which demands gross inequalities of wealth and power, a system which denies personal and social freedom and potential, a system which has to manipulate and repress us in order to exist. The university can only be seen as a cog in this machine; or, more accurately, a factory whose product is knowledge and [people] useful to the functioning of the [broken] system. The specific problems of university life, its boredom and meaninglessness, help prepare us for boring and meaningless work in the "real" world. And the policies of the university expansion into the community, exploitation of black and Puerto Ricans, support for imperialist wars also serve the interests of banks, corporations, government, and military represented on the Columbia Board of Trustees and the ruling class of our society. In every way, the university is "society's child. Our attack upon the university is really an attack upon this society and its effects upon us. We have never said otherwise.
Massive Ideological Battle The Movement at Columbia began years ago agitating and organizing students around issues such as students power in the university (Action), support of the civil rights movement (CORE), the war in Vietnam (the Independent Committee on Vietnam). Finally, Columbia chapter of Students for a Democratic Society initiated actions against many of the above issues as they manifest themselves on campus. Politically speaking, SDS, from its inception on campus in November, 1966, sought to unite issues, to draw connections, to view this society as a totality. SDS united the two main themes of the movement opposition to racial oppression and to the imperialist war in Vietnam with our own sense of frustration, disappointment, and oppression at the quality of our lives in capitalist society
Draft Dodger Rag by Phil Ochs Oh, I'm just a typical American boy from a typical American town I believe in God and Senator Dodd and a-keepin' old Castro down And when it came my time to serve I knew "better dead than red" But when I got to my old draft board, buddy, this is what I said: CHORUS Sarge, I'm only eighteen, I got a ruptured spleen And I always carry a purse I got eyes like a bat, and my feet are flat, and my asthma's getting worse Yes, think of my career, my sweetheart dear, and my poor old invalid aunt Besides, I ain't no fool, I'm a-goin' to school
And I'm working in a DEE-fense planT I've got a dislocated disc and a wracked up back I'm allergic to flowers and bugs And when the bombshell hits, I get epileptic fits And I'm addicted to a thousand drugs I got the weakness woes, I can't touch my toes I can hardly reach my knees And if the enemy came close to me I'd probably start to sneeze
Ooh, I hate Chou En Lai, and I hope he dies, One thing you gotta see That someone's gotta go over there And that someone isn't me So I wish you well, Sarge, give 'em Hell! Kill me a thousand or so And if you ever get a war without blood and gore I'll be the first to go Yes, I'm only eighteen, I got a ruptured spleen And I always carry a purse I got eyes like a bat, and my feet are flat, and my asthma's getting worse And I'm working in a DEE-fense plant
