ABSTRACT
The strong and lasting influence of Student Nonviolent Co-ordinating Committee (SNCC) on Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) has been remarked, and is a key factor in assessing the 1967–8 developments SNCC was fast becoming a shadow, and the Panthers had taken over their ‘vanguard’ position. But SDS’s rapid expansion is a basic factor in its own crisis of identity and organization. The Movement had neither time nor capacity to organize the influx of new people, let alone absorb them into its ideals and style; it was ‘instant participation’. Even the personality-cultism of the dominant media was reflected in SDS behaviour and Movement icons – such as posters of Che, Huey Newton and Ho Chi Minh, which dominated SDS offices and demonstrations. The growth of factions advocating hyper-militancy was a further aspect of the growing sectarian division within SDS, culminating in the Weatherman ‘Days of Rage’, a conspicuously para-military exercise organized by the Weather-group in Chicago in October 1969.
