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The Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was, historically, a student activist movement in the United States that was one of the main iconic representations of the country's New Left.^{[citation needed]} The organization developed and expanded rapidly in the mid-1960s before dissolving at its last convention in 1969.

SDS was the organizational high point for student radicalism in the United States and has been an important influence^{[citation needed]} on student organizing in the decades since its collapse. Participatory democracy, direct action, radicalism, student power, shoestring budgets, and its organizational structure are all present in varying degrees in current national student activist groups. Though various organizations have been formed in subsequent years as proposed national networks for left-wing student organizing, none has approached the scale of SDS, and most have lasted a few years at best.

In early 2006 SDS was "refounded" by high school and college students, with the help of former members of SDS from the '60s, and has grown rapidly through local chapters, regional and national conventions. The "New SDS" takes the name, inspiration and focus on participatory democracy from the original group, but is a completely new youth- and student-led organization.

Main article: Students for a Democratic Society (1960 organization)

SDS developed from the youth branch of a socialist educational organization known as the League for Industrial Democracy (LID) which descended from the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, started in 1905. SDS held its first meeting in 1960 at Ann Arbor, Michigan, where Alan Haber was elected president. Its political manifesto, known as the Port Huron Statement, was adopted at the organization's first convention in 1962, based on an earlier draft by staff member Tom Hayden. This manifesto criticized the political system of the United States for failing to achieve international peace and for failing to address social ills in contemporary society. It also advocated non-violent civil disobedience as the means by which student youth could bring forth a "participatory democracy." A faction that favored violent tactics splintered off and became known as the Weatherman group.

Main article: Students for a Democratic Society (2006 organization)

In 2006, an effort to revive SDS began to take shape and many university-based chapters were formed over the next several years. The war in Iraq was an important focus of coordinated protests.

Beginning January 2006, a movement to revive Students for a Democratic Society took shape. A small group of high school and college students reached out to former members of the "Sixties" SDS, to re-envision a student movement in the United States. They called for a new generation of SDS, to build a radical multi-issue organization grounded in the principle of participatory democracy. Several chapters at various colleges and high schools were subsequently formed. On Martin Luther King Day of 2006, these chapters banded together to issue a press release that stated their intentions to reform the national SDS organization.^[1]

• Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund