Inspiring Participatory Democracy: Student Movements from Port Huron to Today

Tom Hayden

Dec 2015 · Routledge

About this ebook

The famous 1962 Port Huron Statement by the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) introduced the concept of participatory democracy to popular discourse and practice. In Inspiring Participatory Democracy Tom Hayden, one of the principal architects of the statement, analyses its historical impact and relevance to today's movements. Inspiring Participatory Democracy includes the full transcript of the Port Huron statment and shows how it played an important role in the movements for black civil rights, against the Vietnam war and for the Freedom of Information Act. Published during the year of Port Huron's 50th anniversary, Inspiring Participatory Democracy will be of great interest to readers interested in social history, politics and social activism.

About the author

Thomas Emmet Hayden was born in Royal Oak, Michigan on December 11, 1939. He received a bachelor's degree in sociology from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor in 1961 and did graduate work there in 1962 and 1963. While a student, he was a co-founder of the Students for a Democratic Society, participated in sit-in protests and voter registration drives in the South, and joined the Freedom Riders on interstate buses in the South. In 1968, he helped plan antiwar protests in Chicago to coincide with the Democratic National Convention, which resulted in a riot. He was a defendant in the Chicago Seven trial. He was a peace activist who went to Hanoi and escorted American prisoners of war home from Vietnam. In 1974, he and his then wife Jane Fonda traveled across Vietnam and talked to people about their lives after years of war. They produced a documentary film entitled Introduction to the Enemy. He eventually became a politician and author. He was an assemblyman in the California Legislature in Sacramento from 1982 to 1992 and a state senator from 1993 to 2000. He wrote several books including The Other Side, Rebellion in Newark, Trial, Reunion, and Listen Yankee!: Why Cuba Matters. He died on October 23, 2016 at the age of 76.