Carl Oglesby, "Ravens in the Storm"

"It isn't the rebels who cause the troubles of the world, it's the troubles that cause the rebels."

Carl Oglesby was elected to be president of Students for a Democratic Society at the 1965 convention, only a short time after he'd heard of SDS and a shorter time since he'd joined. He went on to serve various other elected positions in the group before he left for other things. As many of the SDS "Old Guard" have done, he recently published a memoir of his experiences in SDS and in the Sixties, titled "Ravens in the Storm." It's a fairly easy, short read. Nothing really disappoints or excites, but Oglesby includes a couple of reminisces of remarkable conversations with Bernadine Dorhn. These really served, to me, to show the striking tension between the moderate/liberal/left-of-center side of SDS and the side which outright rejected liberalism and anything associated with it (and went on to build bombs, "pick up the gun," etc). Ultimately Oglesby was put on trial by Dorhn and other leaders of the late SDS for his moderate-liberal views and his organizing strategy of converting centrists over to the cause, then essentially kicked out. The book is really remarkable in showing one man's disappointment with the way an organization (and some of his friends) turned out after he put so much effort into it.