Student Power for

Accessible Education

Resources

CAMPAIGN ORGANIZING GUIDE:

Learn how to organize a chapter, build a mass movement at your school, run a student power campaign, and win accessible education victories! Excellent tips from experienced SDS chapter organizers!

Download, Print, Distribute! Be a leader, make sure every member of your chapter has one!

View the guide online:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=UPNP3FVK

Print this version:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=6YBEYIHB

(enter the three letters in the box in the top right, then click “free download”)

HOST A TEACH IN:

Use this powerpoint presentation to educate students on how to deal with their debt - incredible for outreach, building support + reputation for your group, providing important services for students, and becoming an expert on the issues!

student-debt-relief-teach-in.ppt

ADVERTISE WITH THESE MATERIALS:

Here’s a flyer:

ae-debt-half-sheet-flyer.pdf

Here’s a poster:

ae-debt-poster.pdf

Here’s a letter for your actions at the Dept. of Education:

Dept of Education Letter

Free Our Schools -

Our Education,

Our Lives,

Our Decisions!

On November 5, 2008 SDS will be in solidarity with students from France, Liberia, Canada, Ireland, Germany, and more countries participating in an international student day of action against the privatization of our schools and lives. Since in America this happens to be the day after the presidential election, people will be distracted and it’s not a strategic day to act. So, instead of one day of action, on the 5th SDS will launch a national Week of Education and outreach, building up to a national Day of Demands on November 14th.

Week of Education:

The goals for this week are to educate, agitate, and organize. We need to GROW! This is a great chance to recruit new people to SDS. We’re also mobilizing students for the national Day of Action immediately following this week.

During this Week of Education SDSers across the country will educate ourselves and fellow students on important topics including, but obviously not limited to:

• student debt
• politics
• power
• oppression
• social change
• student and labor movements

… you know - all the important things our schools are typically NOT teaching us or are teaching us WRONG!

We will use creative and participatory education methods such as:

• student-led workshops
• teach-ins
• street theater
• puppet shows
• parades
• panel discussions
• movie showings
• radical art shows
• banner hangings/ banner drops
• invite speakers (Iraq Veterans Against the War, dissident authors)
• interactive games
• political parties (as in fiestas!)

… and more!

Try and have a daily presence on your campus! Be creative and fun with your outreach!

Let’s remember everyone’s minds will be on the election results, so be relevant and talk about those results! Everything discussed during the Week of Education should be connected to our role as students and the need for us to organize ourselves for social change!

Which leads us to our…

Day of Demands:

On November 14th we will take a step toward transforming the movements for student power and accessible education that we’re building in schools around the country into a Student Movement that can and will make demands at the level necessary to transform the entire educational system. We will, with much fanfare and merrymaking, publicly make our demands to the people and institutions that control our education system; the Department of Education, our school Administrations, Student Loan Companies, and the rest of the unaccountable folks who ignore our needs and profit from our exploitation.

The goal of this Day of Demands is to announce the arrival of a militant, radical, and dedicated student movement and make public our vision for a democratic, liberatory, and accessible education system. It is to take the power we have been building at our schools and in our communities, and by mobilizing collectively allow ourselves to make demands more sweeping and more far reaching than anything we can accomplish at our individual schools.

On the Day of Demands SDS chapters from across the country will organize marches, rallies, and parades that will end in public presentations of both our local and national demands to the targets chosen by local chapters. Media teams will make sure the whole world hears us.

The Department of Education has 10 regional offices in cities across the country which we suggest chapters target if they’re close enough. Office locations are:

• Boston, MA
• New York, NY
• Philadelphia, PA
• Atlanta, GA
• Chicago, IL
• Dallas, TX
• Kansas City, MO
• Denver, CO
• San Francisco, CA
• Seattle, WA

Specific addresses and contacts for each regional office, along with the states they represent can be found here: http://www.ed.gov/about/contacts/gen/regions.html.

Of course, their headquarters is in Washington DC.

Most of the student debt in this country is through federal loans from the Department of Education. Not to mention all the horrible policies they’re responsible for (standardized testing, No Child Left Behind, funding public schools according to property values, etc.)

We need your help to make the Week of Education and Day of Demands possible and successful!

Join the Accessible Education campaign group at http://groups.google.com/group/spfae.

If this week’s done right it could mean that our 2009 national convention will have to be held in a STADIUM!

Join the Student Power Network!

If you are an SDS member, sign up for our announcements list:

http://groups.google.com/group/sdsannouncements

You will get updates on:

Trainings and Regional Conventions all around the country!

Dynamite Actions and Events!

Opportunities to get involved as a leader and build your skills!

We need every SDS member on this list to build a strong student movement!

PRINT and DISTRIBUTE to your Chapter, Campus and Community!

The SDS News Bulletin Working Group is proud to bring you our fifth issue, the best yet. From front cover to articles to action reports to poetry to art, we loaded this issue up for maximum pleasure, and once again you made it all possible by sending in your work, thoughts, ideas and love.

Now here’s the result:

http://newsds.org/bulletinfiles/final_bulletin5.pdf

(You will need to have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your computer to view the PDF file, which is FREE software you can downloadHere)

Enjoy! and Distribute widely!

Send us your stuff to be published in Issue 5:sds.bulletin@gmail.com

Want to join the bulletin working group? Get involved by signing up for our email listserv:http://groups.google.com/group/sds-news-bulletin

-The SDS News Bulletin Working Group

Join SDS, and Win Change with Student Power!

Seize Student Power:

Join our network of 100+ chapters in the struggle for Student Power and Democracy!

Become a Member:

http://www.studentsforademocraticsociety.org/join/sds_membership.cgi

Seize the Spotlight:

Join our SDS Announcements List to plug in to national SDS actions, events, and opportunities!

http://groups.google.com/group/sdsannouncements

Seize the Stage:

SDS National Convention! July 24th-28th, Washington DC!

Sign up on facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=15142267434

Check out our wiki page to learn more :
http://newsds.org/wiki/index.php?title=2008_SDS_National_Convention

Seize the Schools:

SDS Action Camp! August 15th-17th, Asheville North Carolina!

Sign up on facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=20325463834

Check out our wiki page to learn more :

http://newsds.org/wiki/index.php?title=Action_Camp_2008

Support student-led

grassroots change!

SDS Members: Take our fundraising survey:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=h_2fEQ2rJdQKCXvkheH8IFhg_3d_3d
**************************************************************************

In two short years, SDS has become one of the largest and fastest growing student led organizations, with over 120 active and dynamite chapters around the country. Heroic thanks to all our student leaders who make it possible!

This summer, the National Convention and the Action Camps will again bring over 300 SDS student organizers together for training, movement building, and friendship. We need to work together and raise the money to provide stipends, food, housing, and support for our student organizers.

We are asking SDSer’s to make fundraising commitments to help our organization grow.

Everyone can get involved by making a chapter commitment, and a personal commitment to fundraise for SDS! The money we put into our convention and action camps (and other projects) directly empowers and trains grassroots organizers from around the nation. Here’s how to get involved in some of SDS’s most important work.

At the chapter level:

We are asking that each chapter commit to raising $100 this summer. (With over 120 chapters, that’s $12,000 dollars if everyone does their part!) You can do this by holding an easy benefit show or party, a community yard sale or bake sale, asking each member to commit $10, or any combination of things. These are also great opportunities to build and publicize your chapter with an action or a raffle!

We need you to RSVP to sdsfundraising@gmail.com and tell us that you’ll bring this up at your next chapter meeting! Please get in contact with us NOW if you’re going to relay this question to your chapter! Then we can follow up with you and see if your chapter can commit to fundraising for this summer!

This is how we build a strong, democratic organization, so we really appreciate your help. We need this work to grow and keep up with the new chapters that join every day!

As a member:

We are asking each of our members to raise $100 - $300 (or however much they can) from their parents, relatives, or friends if it is appropriate for your family’s financial situation. Please ask your family to support the work you care about. If you MIGHT be interested raising money from your family, please RSVP (right away!) to sdsfundraising@gmail.com!

We will send you a “how-to” packet and support you : (we know it’s not easy)! It will include a fancy letter and presentation with snazzy photographs of our incredible 2-year history, to demonstrate what a wonderful organization we are and to show your parents that the money will be well spent.

We figure, this isn’t about getting your parents to support SDS’s sweet progressive politics, it’s about showing their love and support for their children’s interests by joining and helping your movement. And there’s no reason to feel hesitant or embarrassed! This is how we build multi-generational commitment and wide community involvement in SDS. If you are financially able, please consider asking your parents to use their resources to help support you and this empowering organization.

If you might be interested in asking your parents for money, please RSVP to sdsfundraising@gmail.com. We will send you a full packet of information that will make your request super easy! Trust us, your folks will love it and be really proud of you.

To our great SDS organizers:

Those are the two ways that you can help us build this key part of SDS. Please take leadership by asking your chapter to raise $100+ at the next meeting, and by asking your family to support your interests with $100- $300.

Please RSVP to sdsfundraising@gmail.com *right now* so we can support you and make this work as easy as possible! Or email us with any questions!

Take our survey at:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=h_2fEQ2rJdQKCXvkheH8IFhg_3d_3d

To make a donation:

*To make a donation to SDS, you can go to the website *- http://newsds.org . Click on the *”Make a Donation”* button or you can make a donation by mail - please make checks out to “ACT” and make sure to write SDS in the memo lin.

Checks can be mailed to:

SDS 741 Morton St NW Washington, DC 20010

If you are an SDS member: To get involved with this awesome, productive, working group and help build a strong national organization, join us at: http://groups.google.com/group/sds-fundraising

<3 We will build and we will win<3 Donate today for real grassroots change!

The Visibility Project (see our group statement: http://newsds.org/wiki/index.php?title=Working_Group_Visibility_Project) is ecstatic to bring you 2 offerings to help make SDS work more visible and accessible:

1. The *NEW* SDS National Announcements Listserv = http://groups.google.com/group/sdsannouncements (send your announcements to: sdsannouncements@googlegroups.com)
2. The *NEW* SDS National Calendar = http://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=4bpt7d1susgr1icar99egh0vj4%40group.calendar.google.com&ctz=America/New_York (Press the little “+ Google Calendar” button on the bottom right of the screen to subscribe!)

The *NEW* SDS National Announcements Listserv
http://groups.google.com/group/sdsannouncements (sdsannouncements@googlegroups.com)

Students for a Democratic Society, as a national organization, needs a way of communicating important national announcements, for example about our National Convention that’s coming up this summer.

To make sure people who don’t want national announcements don’t have their inboxes filled with them, and that people who DO want to receive them as well as perhaps send them have a simple and accessible way to connect with national SDS, we’ve created a new National Announcements Listserv.

SIGN UP here:� http://groups.google.com/group/sdsannouncements

We want this list to be helpful for SDS Organizers and not barrage people with unnecessary email, so messages will generally go out in a “Weekly Digest” format, with relevant announcements compiled on a weekly basis, except for emergencies or pressing announcements that will be distributed individually.

As moderators of this new list, volunteers from the Visibility group will evaluate announcements we receive by referring to the following List Guidelines.

The National SDS Announcements listserve exists to serve SDS Chapters and Members and will be used strictly for:

• Weekly Digests of consolidated reportbacks and announcements from national working groups, caucuses, projects, regions, and chapters.
• Conference call announcements for all national working groups and national event planning.
• The National Convention and Action Camps.
• The SDS News Bulletin.
• One-Time Notices for Large regional events or projects that can support national involvement.
• Emergency Notices.

It will not be used for:

• Chapter Specific Announcements and Meetings.
• Repetitive Regional Announcements.
• Discussion or Responses.
• Political Theory, Position Papers, or other opinion documents.
• Announcements which do not directly aid/benefit SDS organizing.

Our first “SDS Announcement Digest” will be going out on Saturday May 24th, and digests will continue to go out on a weekly basis. Announcements for the Saturday digests should be submitted not later than the previous Wednesday by midnight to: sdsannouncements@googlegroups.com

Again, this is how national announcements will be communicated in the future, so if you’d like to receive future announcements about everything from the National Convention to issues of the News Bulletin, you need to SIGN UP!!!� http://groups.google.com/group/sdsannouncements

The *NEW* SDS National Calendar
http://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=4bpt7d1susgr1icar99egh0vj4%40group.calendar.google.com&ctz=America/New_York

The other tool we’re introducing is an integrated National Calendar, which will display national SDS events and conference calls, so you can keep track of what is happening and when.

This calendar is a google calendar that will be updated by volunteers from the Visibility Project.� We are also inviting Point People from the various national working groups to use this calendar as a way to publicize their conference calls and/or events.� Already the calendar is being used to display the many conference calls happening every week.� Take a look!

http://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=4bpt7d1susgr1icar99egh0vj4%40group.calendar.google.com&ctz=America/New_York

You can subscribe to the calendar by pressing the little “+ Google Calendar” button on the bottom right of the screen, so that if you have a gmail or google account, in the future you just have to click on “Calendar”, and you will see all the national SDS events appear right on your normal Google Calendar!

Sweet!

Both of these new tools are also publicized on the Visibility Project webpage: http://studentsforademocraticsociety.org/visibility/

If you’d like to get involved in the Visibility Project, please join our google group listserv here: http://groups.google.com/group/sdsvisibility

And if you have any questions, comments or concerns, please shoot them to Laurie Rojas, Chicago SDS - laurie.rojas@gmail.com

PRINT and DISTRIBUTE to your Chapter, Campus and Community!The SDS News Bulletin working group is proud to bring you our fourth issue, the best yet. From front cover to articles to action reports to poetry to art, we loaded this issue up for maximum Dangerousness, and once again you made it all possible by sending in your work, thoughts, ideas and love.

Now here’s the result:

Print Version
Online Reading Version

(You will need to have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your computer to view the PDF file, which is FREE software you can download Here)

Enjoy! and Distribute widely!

Send us your stuff to be published in Issue 5: sds.bulletin@gmail.com

Want to join the bulletin working group? Get involved by signing up for our email listserv: http://groups.google.com/group/sds-news-bulletin

-The SDS News Bulletin Working Group

For the past year UF SDS has been working on a campaign that would ensure UF’s 1.2 billion dollar endowment is not invested in war, environmental destruction, and human rights abuses. We took on this campaign because it looked like a practical and achievable goal that would help our movement in its fight for a more just, sustainable society. After a year of working on this issue and being consistently ignored, misrepresented, patronized, and denied, we felt it was time to bring the campaign to the next level. We considered a multitude of different options and finally decided that a hunger strike had the best potential to achieve our desired result.

On April 9th, 2008, members of UF SDS shared a “last supper” on the steps of Tigert Hall. At least 11 people have committed to some level of participation in this hunger strike, including some that will be consuming nothing but water until our Socially Responsible Investing proposal is accepted by the University of Florida. We need your help in letting the administration know that they can no longer ignore us and our proposal.

We are aware of the seriousness of the step we have taken, and can only reiterate the seriousness of the problem we are confronting - the systematic subjugation of people, cultures, and ecosystems before the almighty dollar. This system operates because it is profitable, and it is profitable because everyday people and institutional investors like UF have sacrificed their own values to cash in on the madness. Our proposal is an attempt to disconnect UF from this cycle and restore some sense of dignity and honor to higher education in the US.

Call school president Bernie Machen and let him know what you think about his refusal to put UF’s money where its mouth is. Ask him if he thinks it is okay if our university is profiting off of war, environmental destruction, and human rights abuses.

Phone: (352) 392-1311
Fax: (352) 392-9506
Email: President@ufl.edu
Office of the President, 226 Tigert Hall, PO Box 113150,
Gainesville, FL 32611

Other administrators you can talk to:

Student Body President: president@sg.ufl.edu

Office of Sustainability Director Dedee DeLongpre: dedee@ufl.edu, (352) 392-1336

Ask them to publicly declare their support for the hunger strikers and their SRI proposal.

Also, please sign our petition: http://www.petitiononline.com/srisds/petition.html

And, join the facebook group for updates: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=14624337562

Can you organize a call in and letter writing day with your chapter? Every little bit helps. Thanks for your support!

In solidarity,
Gainesville Area SDS

Here is a sample call-in or letter/email script:

Hello, my name is ________ from __________ (school). I am (calling/writing) to urge you to support the socially responsible investment proposal submitted to you by Students for a Democratic Society. Currently, the SRI policy passed by the Board of Trustees provides no measure of accountability to the students or the public. If the University of Florida is to live up to its mission statement of working for the public good, it must realize that its investments should be held to the same standard. I implore you to meet the demands of the students who are on a hunger strike and ensure that the University of Florida will remain at the forefront of the fight for sustainability and responsibility. Thank you.

Beth Slutzky (Sarah Lawrence SDS) and Christa Hendrickson (Drew SDS) were interviewed on The Joy of Resistance: Multicultural Feminist Radio on WBAI (an independent radio station in NYC).  They discussed how combating sexism and promoting liberatory politics within SDS.  It aired April 3, 2008 @ 11am and you can listen to it online at: http://archive.wbai.org/

It will be up for 90 days.  It is listed as: Shared Timeslot Thursday - 11AM to Noon Thursday, April 3, 2008 11:00 am  - WmnCollectiv,LrgstMinority,JoyofResist