Madison Commemorates 50th Anniversary of Port Huron Statement

This June will be the 50th anniversary of the completion of the final draft of the Port Huron Statement. According to Kirkpatrick Sale’s SDS, published in 1970 (and still the most comprehensive history of the Students for a Democratic Society), the Port Huron Statement “may have been the most widely distributed document of the American left in the sixties,” with 60,000 copies printed and sold for 25 cents each between 1962 and 1966.

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The Port Huron Statement: 50 Years Later

A discussion on participatory democracy featuring Jon Wiener, Abe Peck, Robert Scheer and Tom Hayden at the 2012 Los Angeles Times Festival of Books.

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Revisiting Port Huron at MIT

The Port Huron Statement, this year celebrating its 50th anniversary, was the manifesto of Students for a Democratic Society and a foundational text of the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s. Tom Hayden, the statement’s primary author, joins Noam Chomsky, Boston Review, and the MIT Center for International Studies to consider the Statement five decades after its publication.

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SDS Founder, Veteran Activist Tom Hayden on Participatory Democracy From Port Huron to Occupy Wall Street

Democracy Now! speaks with Tom Hayden, principal author of the Port Huron Statement 50 years ago, the founding document of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). The Statement advocated for participatory democracy and helped launch the student movement of the 1960s. Tens of thousands of copies of the 25,000-word document were printed in booklet form.

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On Liberation Theology and Participatory Democracy

The mainstream of the civil rights movement was mainly Christian but also ecumenical. Protestant leaders were there as National Council of Churches. Jewish rabbis and leaders mainly from Reform Judaism. Gandhi’s philosophy of a “soul force” and nonviolence as a way of life strongly influenced Lawson, Dr. King, and Bayard Rustin, the organizer of the 1963 March on Washington, among many others. Malcolm X is credited with leading the Nation of Islam into active support of desegregation and black power, recruiting many Muslims who were victims of mass incarceration. Malcolm before his death would evolve in an ecumenical direction, after taking a pilgrimage to Mecca and parts of Africa, where he saw people of many different colors in the Islamic faith.

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From Port Huron to #Occupy: Thank You

Updated on Monday, March 19, 2012 at 7:47AM by Tom Hayden

Tom Morello talked, performed and inspired at the March 6th UCLA conference on Student-Led Democracy Movements from Port Huron to #Occupy Wall Street.

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On Environmentalism

The Port Huron Statement says little about the environmental crisis; the environmental movement accelerated in the late 60s, propelled by earlier movements and stirrings.

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After 50 years, Message of Participatory Democracy Marches On: Students Explore Student-Led Democracy Movements at 10 Conferences

Famed musical artist and troubadour of the Occupy movement, Tom Morello, will speak and perform at a special class on student-led democracy movements at UCLA Mar. 6. Also speaking will be Gionconda Belli, former information minister of Nicaragua’s Sandinistas, now a celebrated poet, novelist and feminist. UCLA students will discuss the need to take action against a grim future marked by rising tuition, disappearing jobs and the shadow of global warming.

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Notes on Occupy and Labor

Because private corporate power had so many public consequences, the Port Huron Statement (PHS) argued for an economic democracy in which the “major resources and means of production should be open to democratic participation and subject to democratic regulation.” And workplace democracy experiments. The ethical issues was that work should involve incentives worthier than money or survival, educative, not stultifying, creative, not mechanical, self-directed, not manipulated…because this experience has crucial influence on our habits, perceptions and individual ethics.”

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American Students Led a Peace Movement for the First Time

The student movement on a mass scale against the Vietnam War was the first and only in American history. It was also fundamental to a “student-led democracy movement” because it opposed at least two undemocratic structures: first, 18 years olds could not vote, and second, they could be conscripted (drafted for war). The same movement also brought about the War Powers Act, a 1973 Congressional measure to make the executive branch more accountable.

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