I remember the era of the "Students for a Democratic Society", SDS. I am sure that Joe and others on this board do also. I see so many aspects of the 60's going on today. However, unlike the 60's, the coverage is not on TV, but on the internet. In the 60's, the TV and independent papers picked up the news.

During the 60's there was the "New Left", the "Civil Rights Movement" and the Hippie influence.

To groove in the time period. The University of California, Berkley is located near San Francisco. Students from Berkley (which was dry at the time, but with a drinking age of 18) would go to Frisco to hang out and drink in the progressive area. As the 50's closed and the 60's started, the influence of the "Beatniks" in the San Francisco area curved into the hippie movement. It is estimated that around 100,000 people traveled to San Francisco in the summer of 1967, the SUMMER OF LOVE. (Although "Love" in this context was not about sex, sex was happening bigtime and there was no HIV AIDS in this era.)

August 1964 was the Gulf of Tonkin incident which escalated the Vietnam War bigtime.
August 1963 was the famous Civil Rights march on Washington, DC. An estimated 200,000 to 300,000 demonstrators gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial, where King delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.

On October 1, 1964 the University of California, Berkeley exploded into the free speech movement. Led by a Friends of SNCC* student activist named Mario Savio, more than three thousand students surrounded a police car where a student, arrested for setting up a card table against a ban by the University, was being taken away. The sit-down stopped the police car from moving for 36 hours. The demonstrations, meetings and strikes all but shut the university down. Hundreds of students were arrested. SDS leaders watched and learned from this lesson.
Mario Savio: Sproul Hall Steps, December 2, 1964 VIDEO (Less than 2 minute video) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcx9BJRadfw

*{ The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (or SNCC, pronounced "snick") was one of the principal organizations of the American Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s.}

SDS Started in Chicago.
In the school year 1962-1963, the President of SDS was Tom Hayden, who later became famous. See this famous document, the "Port Huron Statement" written by Hayden.--> http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/documents/huron.html
Hayden has a rich history of involvement and can be seen interviewed by Cosmos of TruthAction.org
( http://www.truthaction.org/ ) --> 911 Truth: Tom Hayden Wants Continual Media And Hearings VIDEO http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KihxuZXVUw

The draft became a very real issue in the lives of students in America. The 1965 demonstrations in Washington, DC attracted about 25,000 anti-war protesters and SDS became the leading student group against the war on most U.S. campuses.

"For the first time at an SDS meeting people smoked marijuana; Pancho Villa mustaches... blue workshirts, denim jackets, and boots were worn by both men and women." These were people generally raised outside of the East, many from the Midwest and Southwest.

The University of Chicago's administration building was taken over in a three day sit-in in May. Protests and sit-ins spread to many other universities. The summer convention of 1966 moved even farther west, this time to Clear Lake, Iowa.

The Winter and Spring of 1967 saw more militancy of the protests at many campuses. Harassment by the authorities was also on the rise. The hippie movement really began to take hold. The 1967 convention spoke on the draft and resisting within the Army itself, and made a call for immediate withdrawal from Vietnam. Also, a women's liberation vote was passed for the first time.

That Fall saw more anti-war actions. The school year started with a large demonstration against the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Wisconsin on October 17 for letting Dept of War recruiters on campus. Peaceful at first, the demonstrations turned to a sit-in that was violently broken up by the Madison police and riot squad, causing many injuries and arrests. A rally and a student strike then closed the university for several days. Demonstrations against the draft led by members of the Resistance, the War Resisters League, and SDS added fuel to the fire of resistance. After regular civil rights tactics of peaceful pickets, the Oakland California Stop the Draft Week ended in mass hit and run fights with the police. The huge (100,000 people) October 21 March on the Pentagon saw hundreds arrested and hurt. Night-time raids on draft offices began to spread.

In the spring of 1968, National SDS activists led an effort on the campuses called "Ten Days of Resistance" and local chapters held rallies, marches, sit-ins and teach-ins, ending in a one-day strike on April 26. About a million students stayed away from classes that day, the largest ever student strike in the history of the United States. It was mostly ignored by the New York City-based national media, which was more focused on the student shutdown of Columbia University in NYC, led by an inter-racial alliance of Columbia SDS chapter activists and Student Afro Society activists. Because of the Columbia Student Revolt, "SDS" became a household name in the United States for a few years; and membership in SDS chapters around the United States grew greatly during the 1968-69 school year.

Because of violence & infiltration, the SDS movement quickly died during the following years. **

** Important Sidenote:
"DISINFORMATION AND DAMAGING ASSOCIATIONS"

Here is an 8 Minute Video as a prelude to this subject: http://www.911blogger.com/node/17344
Here is the referenced article on 9/11Blogger which helps to clarify big and little pieces of mistaken information, disinformation, and damaging associations. http://www.911blogger.com/node/17206

Here is a great article on Wolsey's site: http://www.visibility911.com/reports-cointelpro01.php

---Something to listen to while reading....
Wont Get Fooled Again