where is today's SDS
People on 'The Weather Underground' message boards keep asking, 'where is today's SDS?'. Well, without even touching on the Green Party and Ralph Nader, here's a list of current political activity that people I know in their teens, twenties and even early thirties are into:
Revolutionary Communist Party:
http://rwor.org/rcp-e.htm/
A group closely related to the R.C.P. :
http://www.refuseandresist.org/
There is also another Communist party, 'The Sparticist League'.
All of these groups have been recruiting at both Punk and HardCore shows since the whole early 1990's 'Alternative' culture boom. We had both Communist/Socialist kids and Libertarian/Civil Liberties kids at most area middle schools and high schools when I attended (1990's/early 2000's Massachusetts). There was also a local 'Refuse and Resist' chapter (mid to late 90's) of mainly high school aged people that later evolved into a group named 'Cyrkle' after a number of Libertarian leaning kids joined. Though many local chapters of 'Refuse and Resist' still exist.
The number of young people involved with these groups dropped a bit at the beginning of this decade after the whole 1990's "I want to be 'Alternative'/'Alt. Culture" thing cooled a bit. But there are still many, many young people in their teens/twenties/thirties etc. politically active. They just work from two points of view. One group from the Civil Libertarian/individual freedom point of view. The other group from redistribution of wealth/we all become one point of view.
Kids with all kinds of points of view have worked with or started a local 'Food Not Bombs' chapter to feed the hungry in their neighborhood, city or town:
http://www.foodnotbombs.net/
Kids from both point of views have worked on the campaign to free Mumia Abu-Jamal:
http://www.freemumia.org/
People from a more Socialist/Communist view work on the Anti-World Trade Organization campaign which has large protest all over the world starting with the 'Battle in Seattle' in 1999:
http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/wto/
You also have to remember the large protest outside both the Democratic Party Convention in Boston and the Republican Convention in New York City in 2004. I was at both and both were attended by large amounts of young people of all political persuasions.
To read more on current Socialist and/or Communist activism try No Logo run by activist Naomi Klein:
http://www.nologo.org/
or
The Revolutionary Worker
http://rwor.org/
For Libertarian/Civil Liberties activism try:
http://www.libertarianrock.com/
or
http://www.theadvocates.org/
Two very different takes on 'freedom' but nevertheless two active points of view from young people today.