Rebels With a Cause

Buy This Item Rebels With a Cause by Zeitgeist Films  Available from Amazon  $26.99  on 11-26-2008     Deftly charting the sweeping socio- political changes of the Sixties that began with the Civil Rights movement and culminated with angry protests against the U.S. war in Vietnam, REBELS WITH A CAUSE is told through the eyes of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). Begun in 1960 with a handful of members and high ideals, SDS became a nationally powerful antiwar organization with over 100,000 members. But in 1970 the group began to disintegrate amidst internal conflict and government counterintelligence crackdowns. In the aftermath, some went militant as the ill-fated Weather Underground; others channeled their activism through prominent careers as journalists, politicians and professors. Mixing eloquent contemporary testimony from SDS members such as writer/professor Todd Gitlin, Senator Tom Hayden and NPR commentator Juan Gonzalez with scintillating archival footage from the front lines of the movement, Helen Garvy's REBELS WITH A CAUSE chronicles the values, motivations and actions of a generation that lost its innocence-and helped change America. Reader Reviews Truth be told, I have some mixed feelings about what is known as "the 60s." First, it's true that some of the best remembered activists were at some of the finest, most elite institutions in the country. What's more, much of what happened was of the "youth movement," i.e., by people who didn't have car payments, mortgages, etc. to worry about. So they could say and do a lot without much consequence. But many of them DID care. And that's what I like about that era. The story starts with a bunch of white students concerned about the way black citizens were being treated in the American South. They went down there, a place most of them had never visited, and found communities with no electricity, no paved roads, and a white population nearby that might kill them for siding with the poor blacks. That provided a platform for the development of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). Then the Vietnam War grew bigger and bigger. One of the activists who made up the film's "panel," I think it was Bill Ayers, was working for a military contractor. That company had been conducting a study on raindrops to find how to most effectively use defoliants in Vietnam and he was aghast. Americans wouldn't do that! Anyway, all those the filmmaker--also an SDS activist--talked with reminisced what was going on then, despite some of their "self-importance" to which Bernadine Dohrn referred. And that's why I say it was balanced; they didn't lose track of the fact that they WERE "youth culture," and had traits one would expect of a younger activist. What helped open my eyes was that several of those interviewed said that whatever paranioa they may have suffered didn't hold a candle to what was really happening. Some of them had reviewed FBI documents related to their roles in the "movement." There had been active campaigns by Cointelpro, part of the FBI, to infiltrate their organizations, even possibly to kill some of their leaders. (In fact, that's one reason I gave the film only 4 stars. I wish they had covered a little on the Fred Hampton murder for which Cointelpro was responsible.) So all we hear and proclaim about our political freedom turned out to be myth: the US Secret Police really did undermine anyone dissenting against even the most ruthless war crimes for which the country was responsible. How much that infiltration had to do with it I don't know but eventually the SDS battle became internal. The Weathermen Underground undermined the SDS. When, as the DVD shows, a few Weatherman activists blew themselves up, SDS effectively died. (I recommend too the Weatherman Underground DVD that covers more of that issue. Even amoung the Weathermen there was dissent. The bomb was to be used to kill some people for essentially symbolic reasons, not what may have been determined as an "effective target." To that, some Weathermen objected, but it's moot point since the would-be bombers blew themselves up first). I thought the point of the story was a good one, that the SDS and related movements really DID institute a lot of change. People who discount the decade and its "movements" forget that the world is a far better place because of the patterns set by groups such as the SDS. What's more, those they interviewed are not all insurance company executives, as some would have us believe. They're educators, activists, and still believe in what they did. Their values are still "activist" and they HAVE changed the world. The only other reason I give it 4 stars, though, is that the Special Features, including the moving Port Huron Statement, are all script. And I can't stand reading from a DVD. Overall, though, I recommend this film. There's quite a lot to learn from it, and it may encourage some optimism for our future.

Rebels With a Cause Available from Amazon Price: $26.99 Updated on 11-26-2008.

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