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Title: The Student Left Author: Tom Watt Date: 2015/06/25 Language: en Topics: NO! Against Adult Supremacy, adult supremacy, child liberation, youth, student rights, students Source: NO! Against Adult Supremacy Vol. 5. Retrieved on 2020-05-02 from https://stinneydistro.wordpress.com/2015/06/25/no-against-adult-supremacy-issue-5/
The history of the oppression of youth goes back to the origins of
society, the imposition of the Patriarchy, and the division of society
into classes, (freeman and slave). But at every stage in the development
of class society; youth have, in rebelling against their specific
oppression as youth, played a role in the overall class struggle and
helped to advance the struggle of humanity to liberate itself from all
oppression.
History advances in waves and several revolutionary waves have swept
across America, each gaining in depth and force. And in each, youth have
been the most active element and have increasingly come to the fore as
youth in their own cause and under their own organization. Between the
high tides there have been periods of retrogression but each new wave
builds upon the last: Each revolutionary generation stands upon the
shoulders of the preceding generation and takes the struggle higher.
From the early days of European colonization of America, Native American
youth played the most active role in resisting the colonizers. It has
become a Hollywood cliche for the Old Chief to say that he cannot
control the “young bucks.” In reality, many young braves did rise
rapidly to become leaders of rebellions and whole Indian armies, such as
Teedyuscung of the Lenape, Oceola of the Seminole, and Blue Jacket and
Tecumseh of the Shawnee. [Actually Blue Jacket was originally a white
youth adopted into the Shawnee nation after being taken captive.]
Masses of white Youth came to America as indentured servants, many of
them to die under the harsh conditions of servitude, and many of them
ran off to join the Indian nations as did many Black slave youth. Most
of the slaves that were kidnapped and brought on the “middle passage”
from Africa were youth, or children, and many of them died along the
way, or shortly after arrival in the new land. Conditions of living for
slave children were deplorable. They were denied any type of two parent
family life, and usually their parents were worked for very long hours,
and they had little time or energy left to rear their children, who were
often raised under the care of older children or women too old for the
master’s to exploit another way. When they got sick they often died.
Both white indentured servants and Black slaves played an active role in
Bacon’s Rebellion of 1676, which was a foretaste of the War of
Independence a century later. Youth organized as the RMohawks” played an
important role in the popular movement led by the RSons of Liberty.” as
did student leaders like Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton. Tom Paine
was a young English radical who came to America and became the
Revolution’s most noted propagandist along with young Thomas Jefferson
who drafted the Declaration of Independence.
But the Revolution was dominated by and served the interests of the
rising middle class and land owners, and youth. women, Indians, and
slaves, as well as those without property, were counted out from the
Liberty that was won. To the new dominant classes of capitalists and
landlords, Freedom meant freedom to trade and develop the productive
forces in ways that would maximize their profits. This meant exploiting
the unpaid labor of youth under slavery or on the family farm and
exploiting the barely-paid labor of youth as workers in mines and mills.
The Abolitionist Movement gave rise to the first leader of a radical
student movement in the U.S., Theodore Welt, of the Lane Theological
Seminary in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1833–34, he organized the sons of slave
holders to publicly speak out against the institution of slavery at
meetings of students. Eventually, he and his core group were expelled,
and they transferred to Oberlin College, were they continued their
abolitionist activities and helped to organize the “Underground
Railroad.” They also campaigned for the right of free speech on
campuses. Abolitionist youth fought in Kansas and were with John Brown
in the raid on the arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, when he attempted to
initiate guerrilla warfare to overthrow slavery in the South. During the
Civil War, millions of youth (Black, white and Indian) answered the call
to take up arms against slavery. But the Civil War, which was a
continuation of the American Revolution, did not address the issues of
youth liberation, women’s liberation or even racism, class oppression
and exploitation, or genocide against the Native Americans. The
oppression and exploitation of youth intensified after the war as many
tens of thousands were forced into taking jobs in factories where they
worked twelve and thirteen hour days for half pay. In the South, former
slave plantations were turned into semi-feudal manors were poor whites
and Blacks worked the land as sharecroppers, including the unpaid hands
of children and youth. In the North, factory owners like Simon Slater
competed to see who could exploit children the most, even recruiting
orphans as young as seven or eight years old to work in their “sweat
shops.” In Rhode Island, where Slater had his mills, the census in 1875
listed 1,258 factory workers under twelve years old. The Industrial
Workers of the World (IWW), organized in 1905, took on the issue of
child labor, and on August 3, 1913, Mother Jones of the IWW led a march
of factory children from New York City to Washington, D.C. to protest
child labor and demand free public education. The Socialist Party had
been founded in 1901 by Victor Berger, Eugene Debs and Morris Hillquit.
In 1905, Jack London, Upton Sinclair and other students founded the
Intercollegiate Socialist Society (ISS). Sinclair wrote that, R…only a
few institutions would let us in under our own evil name, and we had to
disguise ourselves as…open forums and social science clubs’’ [Prospect
for Youth, p. 143]. After the First World War, the ISS was reorganized
as the Student League for Industrial Democracy (SLID). In a pamphlet
titled the Revolt of Youth published in 1923, Dr. John Holmes wrote:
0ur young people have come to the time when they propose to be free from
the domination of their elders – free to follow their own courses and
seek their own goals ... to my way of thinking, this declaration of
independence is as glorious as all previous declarations of the same
kind; and the youth movement, which embodies it, not a terror, but a
great hope to humanity” [Ibid, p. 144].
Early in 1933, a split in the SLID led by the Young Communist League
(YCL) led to the formation of the National Student League (NSL). The
first action of the NSL was a student expedition to Harlan County,
Kentucky, where miners were engaged in a tough armed struggle with
company goons known as the Harlan County War. This was followed by an
NSL-led student strike at Columbia University over the expulsion of the
editor of the Columbia Spectator. In October of 1934, The YCL led
several successful student strikes and demonstrations in the Chicago
high schools protesting racial discrimination. And in general the YCL
was active on many fronts of the rising worker’s movement during the
depression, particularly in building the Unemployed Councils and in
celebrating events such as International Worker’s Day (May 1^(st)),
International Women’s Day (March 8^(th)), and International Youth Day
(August 31^(st)). SLID continued under Socialist leadership, but it
continued to work with the Communist-led NSL on issues such as combating
racism and kicking ROTC off campus. Eventually SLID and NSL re-merged to
form the American Student Union (ASU). Throughout the 1930’s mass
student protests against war and fascism rocked American campuses.
During the April 12,1935 student strike, 10,000 students rallied in New
York City against war and fascism. In November, 20,000 rallied on the
different campuses in the city. Together with other progressive student
and youth groups, the ASU organized the walkout of a million collage
students in protest of the war in Europe in April of 1937.
In 1934, the American Youth Congress (AYC) was formed under the slogan
RPeace. Freedom and Progress,” and it adopted RThe Declaration of the
Rights of American Youth” at its second congress on July 4^(th), 1935.
Together with ASU, AYC succeeded in getting the American Youth Bill
before the 74^(th) Congress and organized a demonstration of more than
1,000 youth in front of the capitol to demand passage of the bill. It
was not passed. Both ASU and AYC participated in the American League
Against War and Fascism (ALAWF) which had been established in 1933. By
1939. ASU had a membership of some 12,000 students, 400 of whom
volunteered to go to Spain to fight fascism with the Abraham Lincoln
Brigade.
In 1959, SLID changed its name to Students for a Democratic Society
(SDS). In June of 1962, SDS leader Tom Hayden, presented a sixty-one
page document to the SDS convention at the AFL-CIO camp at Port Huron,
Michigan. It became known as the Port Huron Statement, and some 100,000
copies were eventually distributed by SDS. In April of 1965, SDS drew
20.000 students to Washington. D.C. in what was up till then the largest
anti-war demonstration in the capital’s history. For many students, the
Revolution had begun in 1964, during the RFreedom Summer” in
Mississippi, organized by the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee
(SNCC). More than 2,000 Mississippi Black youth were organized into
forty-two two-month RFreedom Schools” that stayed open despite KKK
terror, while other students organized voter registration. SNCC leaders
Stokeley Carmichael and H. Rap Brown would sum up that the SNCC civil
rights approach was wrong and mired in middle-class liberalism and
subtle white racism, and they launched the Black Liberation Movement
taking their cue from Malcolm X, who was assassinated in 1965. Also
inspired by Brother Malcolm were the Black Panther Party (BPP), born in
Oakland, California when Bobby Seale hooked up with Huey P. Newton at
the local junior college in 1966. The Panthers added a new dynamic into
the American Left by popularizing the “Little Red Book,” Quotations From
Chairman Mao, and openly advocating and practicing armed self-defense.
Parallel to the Black Panthers, and allied with them, were other ethnic
based revolution organizations centered among oppressed youth, such as
the Young Lords Party (YLP), later the Puerto Rican Revolutionary
Workers’ Organization (PRWO), The Young Patriot Party (YPP), composed of
hillbilly white youth, La Raza Unida Party, (Chicanos), l Wor Kun,
(Chinese), and others including the American Indian Movement (AIM).
Dennis Banks and George Mitchel founded AIM in 1968, consciously
patterning it after the BPP. The Panthers, by their example and through
the liaison work of Bob Avakain, had a profound influence on SDS as SDS
was having a profound influence on the growing anti- Vietnam War
movement. Picking up the chant first raised by SNCC outside the U.S.
Army Induction center in Atlanta, SDS rocked the Rivory towers” of
academia with “HELL NO WE WON’T GO!” and “HO – HO – HO CHI MINH, THE NLF
IS GOING TO WIN!” Student takeovers of buildings at Columbia and Harvard
in the spring of 1968, led by SDS and the Black Student Union (BSU), the
student wing of the Black Panthers, led to the rapid growth of both
organizations and severely hurt government attempts to sell the war as
“winding-down.” coupled with the Tet Offensive by the National
Liberation Front (NFL) in Vietnam, it marked the turning point in the
war. That spring marked the hightide of revolution internationally and
the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago was a showdown
between youth and the Cold War Liberal Establishment. Contrary to the
popular impression, the young demonstrators in Chicago were not, for the
most part, the hard core of the American Left. The Black Panthers and
most militants had heeded SDS’s call to stay away. The overwhelming
majority of demonstrators were unaffiliated with the revolutionary Left.
Many were supporters of anti-war candidate, Eugene McCarthy, or had come
for the Yippie! Festival of Life. According to the official Walker
Report, of the 668 persons arrested, 75.8% were twenty-five years old or
younger (64% were under 18) and roughly half were from Chicago or its
immediate suburbs. Forty-three percent were workers and less than a
third were students. Only 39 out of the 668 had been previously arrested
for political activity.
Following its convention after Chicago, SDS split apart into numerous
factions, one of which, led by the political line of Bob Avakain,
regrouped in the 1970’s as first the Attica Brigade and later as the
Revolutionary Student Brigade. Following the formation of the
Revolutionary Communist Party in 1975, it became the Revolutionary
Communist Youth Brigade. Other factions tended to form other
Marxist-Leninist parties such as the Communist Workers’ Party, Communist
Party (ML), etc. – joining the alphabet soup of the fractionalized
American Left. Most of these formations have since passed out of
existence.
In response to the revolutionary upsurge of the 1960’s and early 1970’s,
certain concessions were made to youth, such as lowering the voting age
to eighteen and discontinuing the draft in practice, (though it can be
reinstituted at any time). Most importantly, there has been an
acknowledgement that youth are a social, and potentially political,
power which must be considered.
The issue of Youth Liberation was raised in this upsurge and the results
can be seen in changes in the custody laws and the U.N. Convention on
the Rights of the Child, but it has yet to win decisive victories, and
only another and more powerful wave can accomplish this. The student
Left is at present quite weak, as is the Left generally in the U.S. The
Youth Liberation Movement will have the task of rejuvenating it, which
will ground it more firmly in youth issues and a youth perspective, but
it is important not to narrow or negate the revolutionary scope of the
student Left in doing this. Youth should discuss and deepen their
understanding of this heritage and prepare to enrich it as they move
forward to prepare a tidal wave of youth liberation in the 21^(st)
century.