The Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was a student activist movement in the United States. 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.