ee ie ek ae a ee 5 ee | WAS one of 120 people who 1 Came from all over the coun- try to the University of Wa- 90 to attend the Second Con- “nce of the Student Union for Boece Action (SUPA) called for 1 &c. 28 to Jan. 2 to assess va- t les and Strategy. There were members, people in the ~ompany of Young Grane Unaffiliated put interested ob- oy from Waterloo), Contingent of peopl Som Halifax, including several d *€Sroes, -and Smatterings of ious sections of including me. a er] " Ter pe Some revision, consisted Rae Sessions in which we = be addressed by visiting like imperialism, analysis, : nalism, commu- Banizing, etc., and base », 1 which individuals Ting up any problems ed them. On the z _ Btouns ats within and ‘without fre given a hearin a ote Sa) g. = Visiting speaker had his UPAre ticular solution to ems, and the world’s prob- _ Prof, Ge i orge 10 Luthe ge Hager of Water- Bupa ran University wanted - politi 0 organize a socialist a ak party based on the = ae Communications expett ane ordon, a professor at Invade e Said that SUPA should Be nS Tadio stations, which “That th €sperate for material 4 €y will let us use them to Drovag : ate our F Both message. athetically, but neither aS Widely accepted. SUPA Jected political i ne part of th parties as * turn inwards and “alienating” condi- Brad Bi Possible, and concen- i rganizin educating rather than ite a Re young people to cre- Punts er Society. Power cor- some Said, and the power “would Y to win a revolution Bties Tes the revloution- Bian Subverting its ends. ‘Tritely aN delegates: were defi- 4 pai t satisfied with retreat- escane fs Counter-community to * Ste om Society; they want- Bias, oe It, and Prof. Good- is A a commenting on ‘ism yf c doctrinaire Marx- 1 © found in Canadian as radical s “a oy. See Bo Speeches were listened © of the Members of SUPA demonstrating before the U.S. consulate in Toronto. Impressions New Left | By TIM WALSH In the first worshop on class analysis, the workshop leader Suggested that the chief agent of social change is not the working class, or at least not organized labor—they’ve sold out, or at least they’re about to be auto- mated out of existence—but ra- ther the white collar workers and professional, and-the dis- possessed: the unemployed, the Negroes and Indians, the unor- ganized. This prompted a rebuttal from other delegates who gave exam- ples of unions which had taken good-stands on the war in Viet- nam, of the struggle of unions Over automation which went be- yond bread and butter issues, and of student syndicalism in Quebec, and later started ex- pounding on the need for social- ism. The poor workshop leader complained bitterly about the Communist conspiracy to over- whelm her, and the issue re- mained one of the outstanding differences between the New Left and the Old Left. _In the second workshop on “The Role of SUPA and the New Left,” SUPA members criticized themselves for intellectualizing too much, for having no sense of direction, and for having joined SUPA for personal salva- tion. It was pointed out that the motive for joining SUPA was less important than the direction SUPA gave to people once they had joined. An attempt on my part to suggest that SUPA spend less time fighting “Old Left” ide- ology and work for unity within. ‘ et ee On ee Se a eee ee ee Ee SUE er a eee eee ; PRA REY ENR = WIRE OBS oy iad the Left was dismissed as irrele- vant, but the question of what direction SUPA should take was still open. Those were the only two workshops I could attend dur- ing the first two days of the con- ference, yet I found out that generally the discussions had been stimulating and educa- tional. However, no conclusions were arrived at, and some peo- ple were getting frustrated with “SUPA’s habit of getting bogged down trying to reach a consen- sus. By the third day, at a plen- ary session on “Organizing the Middle Class,” a Negro delegate from Halifax could contain him- self-no longer. “SUPA is a farce —it’s going nowhere!” he cried, and proceeded to detail the con- ditions of the Halifax Negro “while SUPA sits around dis- cussing the poor alienated mid- dle class.” This outburst changed the tone of the conference. The rest .of the session was spent discus- sing SUPA’s recard throughout the country. SUPA concentrates heavily on community projects: -they send out student activists to work among the poor and or- ganize them around local issues, like housing and job discrimina- tion, and among university stu- dents around university demo- cracy. Two of the projects SUPA has initiated have been remarkably successful —the sheltering of American draft-dodgers and the organization of a community of Negroes in Halifax. But the rest of them were, to a greater or lesser degree, failures. SUPA found itself speaking too much to itself rather than the world at large, and so was forced to “undergo its own “agonizing re- appraisal,” not unlike the one all political organizations have been engaged in this past year. The delegates. decided that the conference would have to become more strategy oriented. Accordingly, the base-groups were dissolved in. favor of stra- tegy-planning groups; half of the workshops were terminated, and the rest started talking ac- tion. It was decided to “infil- trate” the University of Water- loo, convincing students to force the administration to change the curriculum to unite theory and practice in studies, and concen- trate on problems and participa- tion rather than facts and me- morization, and a number of stu- dents volunteered to start or- ganizing next term. The Spinx report was to be fought — the residence rules of various uni- versities opposed—the _ student governments made more repre- sentative. The “Golden Horseshoe” area was selected as the best place for community organizing as it contained the bulk of the indus- trial power. The unions as well as the universities must be worked on—each group organ- ized around the issues that affect them. It was generally agreed that power must be as- sumed if society is to be chang- ed, and that counter-communi- ties, although they provide an example of an alternative to our society, must not be the main pre-occupation' of SUPA, be- cause it is more important to speak to society. Seven people were elected to draft a program for SUPA in conjunction with the rest of the membership. A report on the Chicago conference of students which planned the National Stu- ‘|- dent Action for Peace for April 8-14 was given by an American delegate, a press release on the war in Vietnam was read out, and a collection was taken to cover the $1,000 deficit the con- ference* had incurred ($850 was raised) . It was. suggested that the con- ference be concluded with a novel type of demonstration in front of the U.S. Consulate to protest the war: some people would hold up paintings of chil- dren and birds and flowers and bees; the rest would play chil- dren’s games and hold balloons and sing songs. Suddenly the games and singing would stop, the balloons would be burst, and the. paintings defaced by black paint reading .WAR, HATE, KILL, and LBJ. The suggestion was greeted with enthusiasm by most of the delegates, although some thought that since we had accomplished so little at the conference, a de- ‘monstration would be a phony way of pretending we had done something. In typical SUPA fashion, the point was debated for over an hour, until some ex- asperated delegates decided to protest this absurd turn of events by staging a “smooch-in” on the floor of the meeting room. ~ I came away with the feeling that the New Left cannot be dis- missed as just another anarchist group whose arguments can be refuted by reading Lenin’s de- bates with the anarchists of his time, as some Communists have implied. They have some anar- chist tendencies but they encom- pass many. other political view- points, including Marxist, and appeared at this conference to be moving away from anarchism towards Marxism. The New Left arose partly be- cause of the failure of the Old Left to speak adequately to the needs of the people in the Sixties; people who may be af- fluent but are still unsatisfied. Composed mainly of students of - middle-class background, the New Left concerns itself less with material standards than ~ with questions of democracy, alienation and humanism. They have done a lot of research in these areas and we can learn from them, by talking to them and reading RIPP publications. The Communist Party has just passed a resolution calling for dialogue with the New Left and the presence of a few Com- munists at the conference was a good beginning. Let’s have more of it in the future! January 20, 1967—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 3