SLAM [Student Liberation Action Movement]
This was a multiracial radical student organization based in colleges in New York City from
1996 to 2004, especially Hunter College in Manhattan.
In early 1995 the City University of
New York (CUNY) announced a major tuition increase and threatened to end (and later did end)
the policy of open admissions, which had been won through earlier student stuggles in 1969.
In response the students, under the leadership of an ad hoc coalition, organized a protest
of 20,000 people which surrounded City Hall. This demonstration was attacked by the police,
but the coalition continued and in 1996 transformed itself into the Student Liberation Action
Movement. The group spread to CUNY colleges in all parts of New York City, and worked to
construct a “left culture” among students. But over time the movement gradually lost force,
and SLAM was disbanded in 2004. It did, however, leave a powerful imprint upon the many
college students involved.
See also:
http://SLAMherstory.wordpress.com
for an oral history project by many of the women students involved in SLAM.
SLASH-AND-BURN AGRICULTURE
See: SWIDDEN AGRICULTURE
SLAVE SOCIETY
The first form of class society, based on private ownership of property and
the outright ownership and exploitation of individuals of one class (the slaves) by
individuals (or groups of individuals) of another class (the slave owners). Slave society
developed out of primitive communal society, and was replaced by
feudalism (though the existence of some
chattel slavery continued to exist well into the
capitalist era and even still continues today, though nowhere is it the dominant form of
exploitation any more. Sometimes people being held in slave conditions (often as prostitutes)
are even found in advanced capitalist countries like the United States.
SLAVISHNESS
See: BLIND FOLLOWERS
SLUM
[To be added...]
See also:
FAVELA
Dictionary Home Page and Letter Index