Education: Hard Times for S.D.S.

(2 of 2)

The Weathermen,* led by former Columbia Student Mark Rudd, take a more mystical and violent approach. Larry David Nachman, a radical political theorist at City University of New York, calls them "Marxist-Romantics." The Ruddites insist that the true revolutionary vanguard will emerge from underprivileged youth. To that end, the Weathermen desperately try to act tough in ways that supposedly appeal to the machismo of street kids. The Weathermen actually believed that their "Days of Rage" in Chicago last month would touch off such a contagion of disorder that the "pig power structure" would tremble, if not collapse.

White-Skin Privileges. R.Y.M. 2 is an indefinable refuge for S.D.S. regulars fleeing the crazed R.Y.M. 1. A grab bag of left-liberals and radicals who abhor the Weathermen, R.Y.M. 2 believes that young people should act as the "revolutionary consciousness" of the working class. R.Y.M. 2 stresses the racism of white workers and asks them to renounce "white-skin privileges" in deference to their revolutionary black brothers. R.Y.M. 2 emphatically shares the Black Panther view that adventures like last month's Weatherman rampage are suicidal and "Custeristic."

Then there are growing divisions within divisions. The W.S.A.-controlled chapter at San Francisco State stridently denounced the Moratorium as "a phony," thus isolating itself from a popular campus cause. The W.S.A. chapter at Harvard grudgingly supported the Moratorium but quickly found another popular student cause to oppose: the recent demonstrations against the Instrumentation Laboratory at M.I.T., which they felt would take jobs away from workers.

By their own estimate, the Weathermen number only 1,000 members—more than the W.S.A. and probably R.Y.M. 2—and they control at least half of the S.D.S. campus chapters. Despite their problems, which they claim include growing harassment by police, the Weathermen clearly intend to carry on their maniacal drive for revolution. That prospect threatens to give protest a bad name generally and betray the majority of students who yearn for effective and peaceful reform of U.S. social problems.