SDS Throws Down the Gauntlet in New York

This past Monday saw a significant uptick in anti-war activity in New York, with an insurgent Students for a Democratic Society taking the streets of Lower Manhattan. They led a radical march to a downtown recruitment station, occupying it for 2 hours in protest of the ongoing war and occupation of Iraq.

It took a mixture of NYPD and feds came to break it up. The SDS chapters involved took just over 20 arrests in the process.

As the new jacks on the scene, it's clear that SDS has taken (almost by necessity) to find the opening to move away established patterns of protest and shake things up a bit. The particular action was phrased by organizers as a "Moratorium" on the Iraq War, an invocation of the 1969 Vietnam Moratorium demonstrations.

As a movement vet, Jimmy over at Fire on the Mountain has a far better analysis of the particularities of the Moratorium parallel than I ever could. I think, however, it is time that the established forces in the anti-war movement take a clue from the self-organization of their ostensible base: the people want something beyond either the lowest common denominator protest that makes Iraq seem like just another economic issue, and they do respond when organizations articulate anger into action.

So the gauntlet has been thrown. As we enter a week likely to be full of actions -- the same old as well as actions of new types -- there's a challenge being presented. It's best to heed the call.

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