Broward Community College - Silver Sands Yearbook (Fort Lauderdale, FL)

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parental repression. They look for this in these radical and contro- versial organizations. The New Left is a conglomera- tion of splinter groups which have very little formal connection with each other. The largest and most influential is the Students for a Democratic Society. It is largely non-communist and intellectual. it believes in community organiza- tion and effort, and is opposed to leadership by an Establishment. XVhile it is non-comnnmist, it ob- iects to the uunreasoningu and paranoic nature of anti-commu- nist sentiment in this country on the grounds that it weakens free- dom, restricts debate, and inhibits action. SDS leaders talk about the development of new institutions and new organizations. and of new forces to work the social changes they seek. They have not as yet come up with a specific program. They staged the suc- cessful March on 1Yashington in which more than 20.000 students participated on April 17 of this year. Currently, the organization has about 2,500 members on more than T5 college campuses. Since SDS is the largest of the radical organizations, it is obvious the membership of the New Left is still rather small. The most far out of the far-left is the Progressive Labor Party. lt is considered to espouse the Red Chinese line. At its recent con- vention in New York, it an- nounced, Americans in the ghetto streets will not go along with the gas chamber plans of this coun- try's ruling class. The PLP dc- clares that the peoples needs re- quire revolution, and that it will- be prepared to wage the struggle on whatever forms and levels are necessary. Members played a large part in agitating for the Harlem race riots last summer. Actually, some of its members are simply rebelling against society in gen- eral. Started by two Communists in 1962. the PLP is reputed to have in its possession a letter from Communist China declaring that 4 this organization is following the 'Konly true Linen of socialism in America. It has a growing mem- bership of about 1,000. The Young Socialists Alliance is the young and militant arm of the Trotzkyites. They are Xlarxists who think Russia has been Nde- mocratizedn and bureaucratized. They organized the unsanctioned trips to Cuba. Until his death, Malcolm X was one of their he- roes, along with Fidel Castro. Since its founding in 1962, it has never signed more than 1,000 members. have a membership of close to 1,000. It would not be fair to call the New Left a Communist front. It is not like the g'Popular Fronti' of the 19I30's. Yet, there is no deny- ing that the Communists have played a part in the advancement of this grass-roots movement. The degree of the commitment depends on the organization. The Students for a Democratic Society do not have the Communist control that the DuBois Clubs have, nor do the Communists have the same degree of influence in it. The New Left oontr mo 1 y y., 0 TH E ROCK A 0 ' 'f'x'l1,' df? 4 . T515 ff ' ix fm if ' ll l il -- -- M y ' J A S H-T HE XV. E. DuBois Clubs, named for a founder of the NAACP who became a Com- munist at the age of 93 and died soon after in Ghana. is the closest thing to a youth movement among the traditional Communist Party- U.S.A. Alongside the PLP and the YSA, the DuBois Clubs are almost moderate and their leadership in- cludes non-communist radicals. They prefer to call themselves so- cialists but the over-all organiza- tion is unquestionably in the hands of the Connnunists. I. Edgar Hoo- ver, head of the F.B.I., has identi- fied the DuBois Clubs as a Com- munist youth group. Located in S5 clubs throughout the country, they does not feel itself threatened by communism, and is, in fact, ac- commodating with it. Therefore, the Nlarxian threat to this nation cannot be ignored. All of these groups have adopted some of Maris program. This is the real danger. XVhy this turn to the left? WVhy this sudden resurgence of political activity on the campus? One reason is the emergency of john F. Kennedy. This college generation was in high school when he assumed the office and powers of the presidency. By his stirring challenge to go with him to The New Frontier and his

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and more than ever before, the world situation. Students huddled around the radio listening to Roos- evelt's fireside chats or Hitler's frenzied rantings. They pieketed factories and tried to organize university janitors. They burned Hitler and Musso- lini in effigy and formed the Vet- erans of Future Wars. They dem- onstrated, paraded, and sometimes landed in jail. Radicals, pacifists, socialists, communists, and liberals were everywhere. The main theme of the 1930,s was a liberal attitude towards, and a tolerant view of Communism. These were the years of the Share the Wealth movement of Huey Long, the old-age pension move- wage '65 ment of Francis Townsend, and the violently nationalistic, anti- Semetie, inflationistie, and some- times socialistic propaganda of the radio priest Father Coughlin. In the 1940,s, college students were too involved in World War Two and in the fight to save the world from fascism to be inter- ested in picketing and parading. The Silent Cenerationn was the name given to the students of the 1950's. These were the se- rious students who, due to the interruptions of VVorld War Two and the Korean Conflict, were be- hind in their academic plans. They had not come to a univer- sity to play at politics or to be intellectually challenged by the outdated theories of Marx. They came to learn and to get an edu- cation. N the 1960's, there was a re- vival of Conservatism. It was a reaction to the New Frontier. But its growth was stunted when Barry Goldwater was defeated. Po- litical action in the Young Repub- lican and Young Democratic clubs exists, but it is not as vocal nor as imaginative as the Far Left. Todayis college generation is faced with a movement that had its quiet beginning with Fidel Castro's victory in Cuba in 1959, and with the first student civil- rights sit-in in Greensboro, N.C. in 1960. It was not until the sum- mer demonstrations of 1963 that the face of the movement became public. And it is not until now that the truth about it, along with its dangerous potentialities, is be- coming known. The college student is very much concerned with the present. He feels that he does not have to be overly concerned with the future. He is more sophisticated than his predecessors, and yet is exceedingly self-conscious. He has little faith in either of the two parties, although there is a ten- dency to try to work for changes through the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. If the political- ly motivated student, whose key words are action and personal commitment, cannot find what he is looking for in the legitimate major parties, he must turn else- where. Some of the students are turn- ing to the New Left. At tables on university campuses through- out the nation, students are sign- ing up for trips to Cuba, picketing churches, businesses, public and private projects, demonstrations against segregation and for other popular causes, and parading in front of the WVhite House. And this is happening more and more as students are becoming politi- cally aware. Although the New Left is a small minority, it is vocal, active, and growing. The New Left is a loose con- federation of socialist and com- munist organizations. It got its start with the tremendous student interest in the case of Caryl Chess- man. Despite some feeling that he was innocent, Chessman was executed in California's gas cham- ber on May 2, 1960, for kidnap- ping. Then came the Castro take-over in Cuba, the civil-rights sit-ins. the student peace movements, and the rioting and demonstrations against the House Un-American Activities Committee. And so a movement came into being. Students realized for the first time they could par- ticipate in a social revolution. The New Left manifests itself through peaceful demonstrations and picketing, through distribution of literature, through unsanetioned trips to Cuba, through sit-ins, through lie-ins, and through sleep- ins. They demonstrate against ra- cial diserimination, against the war in Viet Nam, against the rules regulating sex, against high rental rates in Harlem, against Barry Coldwater, against the House on Un-American Activities Commit- tee, against nuclear testing, and limitations on the right of free speech. The adherents of these ideas have fonned clubs, leagues. and associations which maintain full-time staffs. The propagation of the ideals and goals of the New Left is a vocation in life, to some as religious a vocation as the priesthood. HE young revolutionaries are in agreement on three major goals. One is freedom now for the American Negro. Thou- sands of these radicals joined with the NAACP and SNCC in Nlissis- sippi, Alabama, and Florida to march and picket for the equality of the Negro. The second goal is that the United States should re- treat from Viet Nam and stop fighting revolutionary socialism throughout the underdeveloped world. They feel the U.S. is inter- fering with the revolutionary proc- ess. The third goal is one of a longer range. The New Leftists want the United States itself to go socialist, or at the very least, to organize a new democratic society from the grass roots up based on a planned economy. A latent sub-conscious goal is self-expression. These young peo- ple feel strongly the need for self- expression and the unburdening of 3

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espousing of Liberal ideas and methods to get this country mov- ing againf President Kennedy captured the imagination of the students. When he was assassinated in Dallas on that tragic Friday in November, the collegians felt his death very keenly. As flags all across the nation flew at half mast, the American Youth felt as if a close relative had died. Three out of five students queried in a Newsweek pool said that they felt the Kennedy years to have been a special time. Some of them went DOWN WITH 'if HI snail' on to say, he made the young people of today feel that life was worth living, and he was an ideal man for someone of my gen- eration to follow. According to the students, he made politics seem an attractive profession. He returned to it some of its lost honor and added to it his own special style. The Massachusetts statesman appealed to the youth of the nation and was able to com- municate with them as no other American politician had been able to do in a long time. The nation,s youth were attracted to politics because of the style and brilliance of this man. HE second reason is the stu- dents have been encouraged in their turn to the New Left by their college professors. Using such methods as teach-ins. the col- lege professors, who were the radical and left-leaning students of the 1930s Popular Front Nlove- ment, have in some cases, espe- cially in the Berkeley incidents. strongly encouraged political dis- sent and demonstrations. The third reason is the intel- lectual appeal of liberalism. The philosophy of Karl Marx and Fred- erick Engels still attracts some of I Vi, those individuals who reason and weigh everything intellectually. The fourth reason is a form of rebellion against the conservatism of parents. Many of the leaders of the New Left are graduate stu- dents who come from the upper- middle-class homes where politics are conservative. In order to prove their independence, they rebel politically. The final reason is the einer- gence of the other-directed person in the urban centers of the coun- try. In David Riesmans The Lonely Crowd, he defines the model of the other-directed person as a member of society whose typical conformity is insured by his tendency to be very sensitive to the expectations and prefer- ences of others. To this person, the peer group and its opinions are most important. Anxiety is the mode of insuring obedience. Con- formity is primary. The inability of the child to take the roles of his parents as his models forces him to search elsewhere for them. The peer group replaces the par- ents in importance. ln the peer group, he can find acceptance and a meaningful relationship which satisfies his needs. ln acceptance by the peer group he finds his purpose fulfilled. ln effect. in modern society, when he pickets or peacefully re- sists, he is accepted by his peer group. XVhen he does not, he be- comes an outcast. The importance of acceptance by his peer group has been internalized in him by his parents and by society. It be- comes a subconscious but primary necessity. The most ironic aspect of the New Left is that most of these groups have been begun by inner- directed persons. To the inner-di- rected person, his goals and the fulfillment of his goals in the proper manner is the most impor- tant thing. This also has been internalized in the inner-directed man by his parents and by society. Only in this case, the parents play a greater role. He enters politics to protect what he has or to get something he wants. Yet, it is the inner-directed man who is the moralizer. He has a greater con- sciousness of self than the other- individualist. The result is that the inner-directed lead, while the other-directed follow. The movement of the New Left has really just begun. Its success or failure will depend on the yer- dict rendered by this college gen- eration. XVill the future leaders of the United States who are among the college students of today ac- cept and embrace the radical so- cial ideas of the New Left, or will they turn in another direction? The choice is theirs. 5