Notes on the Left:

...If anything wall help get the Communists off the ground, it is the prize of martyrdom at the hands of the FBI or the Un-American Activities Committee...

...on the other, they have been the most important single force in the general campus revival...

...The National Student Association (NSA) held a special meeting in Washington, with student government representation from across the nation...

...Often they had the quality of political goldfish swallowing—as in the case of a "Noah's Ark party" at the University of Chicago which combined a college bash with a moral gesture against the Bomb...

...The student radicals today are out of step with society...

...Recently in Atlanta, for example, there was an internal dispute between the students and a section of the adult Negro community over direct-action projects and the policy of "jail, not bail...

...There were occasional outbursts of protest during this period...

...SDA went through a series of crises, mainly as a result of the conflict between the ADA's concern with Democratic and Republican party politics and the emphasis on principled liberalism in its youth affiliate...

...various college administrations tightened up the restrictions on dissident groups and speakers...

...Usually, these writers are imposing their own disillusionment upon a movement which they see from a great distance...

...The "Green Feather" campaign, for example, started when an Indiana patriotic group sought to ban stories about Robin Hood from the public schools...

...Others, primarily the Yipsels and Socialist students, look for a realignment and restructuring of American politics...

...But such incidents were sporadic and without important consequence...

...But all of them are repelled by the issue-less kind of Madison Avenue political competition which is so prevalent at the present time...

...The entire country was in the throes of social upheaval, and there existed a kind of continuum of protest from the campus to society at large...

...J. Edgar Hoover and Representative Francis Walter (D.-Penn...

...Trade unions in the '50s stagnated organizationally and lost much of their élan...

...They would welcome a call to sacrifice, but it would have to be quite specific and considerably more substantial than any of the various political appeals made by the major parties in the United States today...

...After the election, the themes of cold war and McCarthyism dominated the nation and the campus...

...The one exception to this rule is the considerable sympathy and support for the organization of agricultural workers...

...they have no place to go...

...If the present surge continues, it is likely that more and more students will become consciously political, the core organizations will grow and the entire development will lose its heavy emphasis upon the moral gesture...

...The spirit was one of folk-singing and moral fervor...

...Some observers have internationalized the image by linking the youth of America with students in South Korea, Japan, Turkey and Britain to make up a picture of world-wide rebellion among the young...

...Some of the youths who later were to lead the sit-ins came up from the South...

...In the March 6 issue, we published an article by Lewis S. Feuer entitled "Youth in the '60s," which noted some recent indications of increased political awareness on American campuses and compared the present generation with the youth of the '30s...

...Recently, however, the emphasis has changed...

...Organized pro-Communist sentiment centers around an Organizing Committee which is quite weak and without substantial influence in most of the areas of active student protest...

...During the campaign the liberal organization, Students for Democratic Action (SDA, youth affiliate of Americans for Democratic Action), numbered about 5,000...

...Richard Armour...

...A few thousand students across the country took up the cause of disarmament, usually with a tendency toward a radical, unilaterialist position...

...The pall of McCarthyism discouraged students from joining any political organization...

...In some cases, this second generation is bound together by strong personal ties from summer camp days or youthful friendship...

...This situation is particularly serious for the labor movement...

...Disaffiliation has always been a minority tendency on the American campus...

...Last year the demonstrations in support of the sit-ins were followed by activity on the Chessman case, the opposition to the House Committee (which probably involved 4-5,000 students), participation in the civil rights demonstrations at the Democratic party convention and student involvement in the drive of the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee...

...Students for a Democratic Society (the youth affiliate of the League for Industrial Democracy) held a conference of Midwestern civil rights groups at the University of Michigan and assembled more than 200 delegates from 25 colleges and universities...

...Still, its chapters and broad campus clubs probably constitute the largest organized network of student liberals in the United States...

...Here Michael Harrington, editor of the Socialist party bi-weekly New America and Consultant to the Trade Union Project of the Fund for the Republic, returns to the subject and examines the new awakening of political consciousness among the youth of the left...

...In the case of peace and civil rights —and in the Chessman campaign or the attack on the Un-American Activities Committee—the dominant note has been one of moral gesture, of "witness" in the Quaker sense of the word (the American Friends Service Committee, in fact, has played an important part in the whole movement...

...Two main groups of students compose this organizational core...

...Yet, this cannot be done through some slick formula or an organizational maneuver...

...The first sign of the new mood appeared in the various peace walks...

...To be sure, the broad mass of involved students are not ideologically committed, but their impetus usually comes from conscious radicals: the sign-painters, the leafletwriters, the activists...

...The Negro sit-in students are middle class youths, employing radical methods to break down segregation...

...In a matter of weeks, thousands of students were wearing Green Feather pins as a sign of their opposition to McCarthyism...

...The leaders of various liberal, radical and cause groups today were students in the '30s...

...UPDATING TEDDY ROOSEVELT "Speak softly and carry A big stick," said Teddy, A President chary Of speech, and yet ready...

...have made irresponsible and inaccurate statements in recent months about the Communists' role in demonstrations such as the one which took place in San Francisco last year...

...In the '30s, the campus radical or liberal could look forward to joining various adult organizations and movements...

...student politics managed to survive nevertheless...

...but the Young Progressives, the youth movement for Henry Wallace, had several times that number...

...And they are deeply involved in the religious tradition of the Southern Negro...

...Still, even in the sit-in movement, the influence of a conscious pacifist like the Reverend James Lawson— perhaps the most popular young Negro leader in the South—is great...

...The democratic Socialist youth groups numbered about 1,000...

...While the sit-in movement did not develop out of the same background as the Northern campus revival, it nevertheless has played an enormous role in sparking protest throughout the nation...

...Hundreds of students came by bus from as far away as Chicago...

...They do not have the kind of responsibilities and ties which the racists can exploit in order to immobilize them...

...But if the peace issue was the first to stir the campus, civil rights soon took over as the center of attraction...

...Probably the most intensive political period on the campus in more than a decade took place during the winter and spring of 1960...

...I want to get my degree and find a good job...

...From then on, the political pendulum on the campus began to swing in the opposite direction as student awareness of politics gradually increased...

...The "Yipsels" played a major role in the Youth Marches for Integration and they are an important element in the growth of the Student Peace Union, a radical, direct action group...

...I remember walking into Washington, D.C...

...Some of them identify themselves with the left wing of the Democratic party, particularly in areas where it has taken a grass-roots, organizational form (as in the case of the Council of Democratic Clubs in California, or the liberal section of the Democrats in Texas...

...In the '30s, if a student was in favor of civil liberties, civil rights and against war, it was axiomatic that he was also a partisan of the labor movement...

...These students are holding out for real changes in American society...

...This LAST POINT suggests the most basic problem facing the student movement in the '60s: the adults...

...For the most part, the Negro youths who take part in the sit-ins have not shared in the Northern experience of the decline of an existing student movement...

...the Congress on Radical Equality (CORE) is much closer to their mood...

...There is an element of paradox, too, in the relation between the sit-in movement in the South and student protest in the North...

...A new vocabulary was developed to talk about youth in the '50s: Beat, Cool, Hip, the Silent Generation...

...Above all, student activists today find themselves frustrated by the realities of major party politics in the United States...

...It is in flux, and the first movement in American society which recognizes its potential and offers it a home will have found an enormous human resource...

...In some cases, this feeling is intensified by the bitterness of a parent who went through the Communist mill...

...The Communists themselves are a small, quite limited force in the youth movement...

...It is not Communist in any organizational or ideological sense of the word, yet its passion for peace sometimes leads to illusions about the Soviet Union...

...They were concerned with issues that had a moral, rather than an economic basis...

...Indeed, one of the most striking phenomena of the new incipient studenl movement is the way in which concern over one issue leads to generalized political involvement...

...And commitment and involvement today affect only a fraction of the American college community...

...They came fresh to their rebellion...

...The social inheritance of the '30s had been spent, and the '50s saw the rapid decline of campus political groups...

...But San Francisco may be a sign of an important direction in the current student movement...

...In view OF the weakness of radical and Socialist organizations in American society as a whole, it might come as a surprise to learn that Socialist clubs and students are more often than not at the heart of the student movement...

...Yet, the campus will never be the same again...

...At present, the New Frontier does not seem to be capable of becoming the focus of this process...

...By the mid-'50s, campus political movements were involved in a fight for survival...

...I remember speaking during this period at a "Hyde Park Day" (a combination freak show and rally for academic freedom, with a wide range of radical speakers holding forth) at the City College of New York...

...While we were speaking, a group of fraternity boys paraded around in kilts, demonstrating their disinterest in politics...

...The picketing of Woolworth's has declined, and some of the students who were stirred at a protest meeting or two have simply gone back to the books...

...As a result, some of the more talented youth leaders tend to stay around the movement long after they graduate (the author of this piece was once the oldest Young Socialist in the United States...

...For one thing, many students who continue to hold illusions about Russia or who come from Communist families do not want to have any thing to do with the party itself or any of its institutions...

...In recent years, they have grown considerably, and on some of the more political campuses represent the main focus of discussion and action...

...Like the Communist party, the LYL lost much of its strength, and officially dissolved in 1956 after the Khrushchev revelations and the Hungarian Revolution...

...The student Socialists dwindled to a handful...

...Like the Yipsels, they are quite serious about politics...

...with perhaps 500 young people...

...The Communist-oriented Labor Youth League (LYL) had about the same strength...

...This is not so in the student movement of the past few years...

...A whole generation of student radicals and liberals is growing up without any positive attitude toward trade unionism...

...The issue of civil rights has made them conscious of many other issues...

...The broad mass of non-Communist students are rightly incensed at efforts to make the Communists appear more important than they really are...

...Organizations with the drive and spirit of the current student movement simply do not exist off campus...

...no other locality has approached it in sheer amount of activity...

...Even among the Negro sit-in students, this difficulty is present...

...The low point was reached by about 1956...

...The first question from the audience was simple enough: "What do 1 care for this politics stuff...

...Two things are important to note about this new revival of political interest: its concern with ethical issues, and the role of small groups of organized radical students...

...If the Southern Negro activist has difficulty in relating himself to his adult community, what must the problem be for the Northern student...

...The newspapers, now so concerned with the youth rebellion, virtually ignored the whole affair...

...The second march had the air of a crusade about it...

...The Washington police wouldn't let us sing once we were inside the city limits, and routed us through the Negro section to keep us away from the main streets...

...The San Francisco area situation still remains something of an exception...

...Students emerging into activity tend to be radical, not liberal, and find it difficult to relate to any adult force involved in the compromises and frustrations of realpolitik...

...The San Francisco Bay area is probably among the most politically active areas of the student movement...

...It is made up of the sons and daughters of former Communist party members or Wallaceites...

...Some recent commentators have written eulogies to the non-ideological character of the youth movement...

...The Youth Marches for Integrated Schools, organized by Bayard Rustin, brought 10,000 students to Washington in the fall of 1958, and about 30,000 in the spring of 1959...

...Articles by other contributors will continue the discussion in future issues...

...In a sense, the developing student generation of the '60s is not yet committed to adult political life...

...The great dividing line in American student political concern was the Presidential election of 1948...

...they were able to find a place for themselves in the adult community...

...a minority of those who were aroused by the drama and appeal of the sit-ins have stayed on in politics...

...During the course of the 1960-61 school year, the tremendous enthusiasm of the first phase of the sit-in campaign has waned in the North...

...The Young Peoples' Socialist League (YPSL), the youth affiliate of the Socialist party, has fewer than 1,000 members...

...The Negro sit-in movement which began early last year, the student demonstrations against the House Un-American Activities Committee in San Francisco and the movement seeking clemency for Caryl Chessman have helped create a new image of youth engagé, of protest and radicalism...

...Throughout the nation, groups formed to support the Southern students...

...For some years, there has been a campus political party, Slate, which has sought to relate the world of the campus to the world of politics...

...The second major group is harder to define since it is not formally organized...

...If the link between the students and organized labor is not restored, this could have very real consequences for the future of unions...

...Yet, paradoxically, the core of these demonstrations was, and still is, a group of radical students with a sophisticated political point of view...

...fraternities, careerism and plain apathy remain powerful forces...

...Students who were drawn to the liberal movement were either ignorant of unions or hostile to them (regarding them as "just another bureaucracy" in a bureaucratized society...

...Although the issue of civil rights provides the one major exception to the notion of a schism between youth protest and adult protest—the civil rights movement is a dynamic one, represented throughout the nation and at all age levels—the sit-in students still represent a much more radical and advanced tendency than that expressed by organizations like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP...

...unlike them, they have no formal organization...

...they are without jobs, bank accounts, cars and the like...

...The background has not been one of vast domestic social upheaval and of dynamic movements in adult society...

...These students are immediately concerned with the future, for they face a post-graduate world of Jim Crow in which their skills will not be justly rewarded...

...consequently, there have been few ideologically oriented, radical young people among them and they have not played a decisive role...

...But to beat our foe quick, No fiascos or quizzes, Let's be sure our big stick Is bigger than his is...

...In sum then, the new student movement has two contrasting aspects: a broad mass of young people summoned to action by moral issues, and a much smaller, but growing, core of radicals and Socialists...

...Yet, there is something new abroad on the campus, and if, at this point it is too tentative and inchoate to support a definition of a new generation, it is still worth examining...

...Both these contrasting images contain an element of truth—and both are exaggerations...

...Today, however, this continuity does not exist...

...On the one hand, the Southern students come from a completely different background and are unrelated to the forces which have made for youth radicalism on the Northern campus...

...It became fairly common to explain why young people, and students in particular, had disaffiliated from society and abandoned politics to seek an answer to theirs and the world's problems "on the road" or in "Zen...