The Port Huron Statement: The Vision Call of the 1960s Revolution (Paperback)

~ Tom Hayden (Author) "OUTSIDE OF PORT HURON, MICHIGAN, WHERE A DENSE thicket meets the lapping shores of Lake Huron, the careful explorer will come across rusty and timeworn..." (more)
Key Phrases: New York, United States, Democratic Party (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Four key periods in American history have most influenced what America is like today: the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, World War II, and the 1960s. No document better frames and explains the 1960s than The Port Huron Statement.

The statement was a generational call for direct participatory democracy in which Americans would have greater say over the decisions affecting their lives. It called for the extension of democratic principles to the workplace as well as the electoral arena. It opposed the dominance of the military-industrial complex with the hope that social movements could reform the Democrats as a party of progressive opposition. In its vision, greater democracy would lessen individuals' alienation. The manifesto’s 1962 publication preceded the phenomena of the counter-culture, hippies and back-to-the-land.

Tom Hayden, who drafted the Port Huron Statement in 1962 when he was 21 years old, was among the founders of Students for a Democratic Society, a Freedom Rider in the segregated South, a community organizer in the slums of New Jersey, an opponent of the Vietnam War who was indicted by Richard Nixon, and eventually served in the California Legislature for 18 years.

About the Author

Tom Hayden, who drafted the Port Huron Statement in 1962 when he was 21 years old, was among the founders of Students for a Democratic Society, a Freedom Rider in the segregated South, a community organizer in the slums of New Jersey, an opponent of the Vietnam War who was indicted by Richard Nixon, and eventually served in the California Legislature for 18 years. He currently teaches at Occidental College and writes on the nature of social movements in Los Angeles. He is the author of nine books, including THE LAST GOSPEL OF THE EARTH, THE WHOLE WORLD WAS WATCHING, and IRISH HUNGER. The New York Times cited his 1988 book, REUNION, as one of the best of the year.

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: PublicAffairs (August 24, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1560257415
• ISBN-13: 978-1560257417
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #263,958 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Editorial and Egotistical Distortions Notwithstanding, June 19, 2006

By	Daniel Raphael - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The editorial blurb provided here at Amazon states that the PHS was intended to "reform" the Democratic Party. That is false; no such agenda is to be found in the Statement.

Equally false is Mr. Hayden's grandiose presentation of the PHS as "launching" the "revolution" (there was none, by the way) of the 1960s, as social ferment, suffering, and struggle all preceded and indeed gave rise to the Statement as a response to events that had already occurred. The Civil Rights movement did not begin with the Statement, nor did other, later, struggles for justice--though the PHS *did* play a role in articulating some of the concerns that characterized what we called The Movement.

A passage from the PHS asserts that "the point is not to have one's own way but to have a way that is one's own." If anything, for all the externals of hair, dress, and bodily adornment typically touted by mass media as evidence of "freedom," we are today more enmeshed in both the struggle to have our own atomized/individual way while doing so in response to a steady stream of commercial slogans and jingles--thus ensuring we have no way authentically our own.

There has been no revolution, though thankfully some worthwhile reforms emerged from the cauldron and killing of the Sixties: people of color can vote and hold office, women are better situated to deal with discrimination against them in the workplace and home, gay people are similarly better organized to demand recognition of their simple humanity. The basic problems--loss of control of our government; the subordination of what advances we have made here to the globalization of the profit principle before all else; and now even the visible destruction of the world's ecosphere--have grown worse and more acute.

There has been no revolution, but the case for the urgent need of one has deepened. Paradoxically, the greatest virtue of this document from the past is to show how far we have come--but in a dangerous direction. The questions embodied in our national anthem are very much alive, and what a truthful response to those questions might be, is very much in doubt.