Biography/History

1943	Paul Booth was born in Washington, D.C.
1960, Fall	He first demonstrated his organizational abilities when as a freshman at Swarthmore College he helped found the Off-Campus Issues Committee.
1961, Dec	Became a member of the National Executive Committee of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).
1962, June 11-15	Attended Port Huron convention.
1962	Elected vice president by that convention.
1963	Re-elected vice president of SDS. Todd Gitlin was elected president.
1964, June	Graduated from Swarthmore, finished his term as vice president, and moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he and Todd Gitlin directed SDS's Peace Research and Education Project (PREP), which primarily studied ways of converting the U.S. military-industrial complex to peace-time production, the inequities of the draft, and corporate investment in South Africa.
1965, March 19	SDS sponsored a demonstration in front of the Chase Manhattan Bank in NYC for its loans to apartheid South Africa; Booth was among the 43 arrested. This was SDS's first official act of civil disobedience. PREP did not survive this demonstration, as increasing U.S. involvement in Vietnam made continuing peace research seem pointless.
1965, April	Booth joined SDS's National Office (NO) as Washington Coordinator for the First March on Washington to End the War, 4-17-65.
1965, June 9-13	Attended national convention at Kewadin, Michigan, and was elected to the National Council of SDS.
1965, Sept	The spirit of local initiative decided upon at Kewadin left the NO in a shambles. Booth left his work organizing new SDS chapters in an Economic Research and Action Project (ERAP) in Oakland, Cal. and returned to the NO, which several members of SDS's Old Guard were trying to re-order so that it could again give some national focus to the. organization.
1965-1966	Booth accepted position of SDS's National Secretary in the Chicago NO. His tenure was the last for a member of SDS's Old Guard, and he was sharply critized by many new members for not being radical enough and for issuing a Vietnam position paper without consulting the membership.
1965	His support of the National Conference for a New Politics (NCNP), which sought to elect progressive candidates within the confines of establishment politics, also alienated many newer SDS-ers.
1966, June	Booth's term ended, leaving him physically and emotionally exhausted.
1966, Summer	Booth accepted a position as research director for the United Packinghouse Workers of America.
1966, Fall	He began to participate more actively in NCNP.
1966, Winter	Became a member of NCNP's Steering Committee and helped lay the groundwork for the August 1967 national convention which futilely tried to find an alternative to the two party system in the U.S.
1966-1967	Helped to develop the School of Community Organization in Chicago, a project that was jointly sponsored by SDS and by local civil rights and political reform activists. The aims of the project were to do research into the bases of political and economic power in Chicago and to develop a cadre of knowledgeable and experienced organizers able to challenge and change the power structure of the city. There were several municipal electoral campaigns aided by the project.
1969	Worked for the Labor Workshop, an action committee of reform-minded labor organizers seeking to revitalize, re-educate, and re-direct the American labor movement. There, Booth helped to plan a conference on workers' education and the future of the labor movement which was held at Morgantown, West Virginia on October 12, 1969. That winter, he also started working on the workshop's newsletter, New Directions in Labor.
1970	Continued to help edit New Directions in Labor. In the fall, he helped organize Chicago students' support for striking General Motors' workers.
1971 to the present	Booth and his wife, the former Heather Tobin, have continued to be active in Chicago politics. He founded the Citizens Action Program, which helps citizens in their disputes with local government and businesses; and in 1972 they founded the Midwest Academy, which trains community organizers.

For additional information on Paul Booth's involvement in SDS, see Kirkpatrick Sales' SDS (New York: Random House, 1973).