Early SDS grew through face-to-face organizing, not media strategy

Evidence

SDS was not focused on large demonstrations, and had rarely thought about interacting with the media. It was a small group aiming to directly organize students, without a mass communications strategy. Its members were hesitant to create rigid structures or leadership positions with clear duties, which was a radical deviation from the way older organizations like unions and political parties had always operated. In the first half of the 1960s, SDS grew slowly through face-to-face outreach and personal connections as it experimented with new forms of political organization. But in 1965, an unexpected surge of attention engulfed the organization. — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 72

Categorization

• SEED: Useful data point for essays on how pre-viral/pre-social-media movements scaled: SDS’s face-to-face model broke down under sudden media attention in 1965.
• XREF: connects to: SDS’s defining innovation was building movement structures that prefigured the desired society — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 82; Media coverage can bestow a movement more reach than its own organizing ever could — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 73

Broader Connections

• Media coverage can bestow a movement more reach than its own organizing ever could #contradicts (0.85) — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 73
• SDS’s defining innovation was building movement structures that prefigured the desired society #expands (0.75) — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 82