sentences:  Lermond, Parsons and Reed attended the June 1897 convention of the ARU which created the Social Democracy of America, but the BCC did not join the new organization, rejecting its "class struggle" thesis with a vision of a colony that would include middle-class professionals and "everybody who believes in cooperation" and not just "the laboring classes so called".Weakened by the loss of Debs and the defection of some of its membership to the new SDA, the BCC set out to start its first colony.By mid-1897 the BCC had about 2200 members in 130 local unions.