And yet, Hayden stood for hope and so must we. Click here to donate by check. and. Why the numbers behind Mitch McConnell's re-election don't add up, Fox News airs point-by-point fact check of wild election fraud claims during 3 of network's most pro-Trump shows, Meet the Republican senator blocking stimulus checks for 382 million Americans, Trump's increased absences have associates worried about his declining mental state: report, Career military officials 'stunned's as Trump's Pentagon chief bans Biden transition team: report. Helpful. For all of us today perceive existential threats to the human race, and to the entire planet. ''While most people haven't read it, it's still extremely relevant'' for its guiding principles, said David Graeber, an anthropologist and anarchist who has been active in the Occupy movement. The Students for a Democratic Society sought to “If anything, the brutalities of the 20th century teach that means and ends are intimately related, that vague appeals to “posterity” cannot justify the mutilations of the present.”, As in 1962, our moment doesn’t seem auspicious. “It is this potential that we regard as crucial and to which we appeal, not to the human potentiality for violence, unreason, and submission to authority.”, Such ideals go beyond party, beyond the organization of government, beyond technique and technicians. I am 69. Only radical change could address the human predicament. He wrote, “As a social system we seek the establishment of a democracy of individual participation, governed by two central aims: that the individual share in those social decisions determining the quality and direction of his life; that society be organized to encourage independence ….”, Now more than 50 years since Hayden’s statement was created, many Americans, of all ages, share the same desire to openly revolt against the troubadours of expedience, and the masters of war, the architects of disenchantment. Hayden and friends saw “disturbing paradoxes” between America’s stated aim of protecting the world from totalitarian domination by threatening anti-democratic forces with nuclear weapons that would also destroy the world. Just as Hayden searched, as he wrote in the statement, “for truly democratic alternatives to the present, and a commitment to social experimentation with them,” we also search for alternatives to an American world order that seems, if not insane, than ineffective; if not immoral than unequal and deaf to the need for effective alternatives. Print PDF eBook Blue Water Healthy Living is proud to present to you… “Port Huron Past & Present” “Port Huron Past & Present” is a series of historical videos created by Port Huron native Bob Davis. That Hayden and his generation failed to achieve the radical transformation in American self-governance that they sought only highlights the value that their vision has for the youth of America today, for all Americans. A PDF file of a scan of the draft document is also available. Tom Hayden's Legend Started With the Prescient and Still Relevant Port Huron Statement, Support progressive journalism with a one-time contribution to AlterNet. Even today, Hayden’s words can be read profitably by the activists engaged in the Occupy and Black Lives Matter movements. Noted historian of the 1960s-era, Michael Kazin, wrote the following reflection for Dissent on the Port Huron Statement's 50th anniversary in 2010: No document better frames and explains the 1960s than the Port Huron Statement. What should be done? When we were kids the United States was the wealthiest and strongest country in the world; the only one with the atom bomb, the least scarred by modern war, an initiator of the United Nations that we thought would distribute Western influence throughout the world. Help ensure AlterNet remains independent long into the future. Excellent book that inspired the Sixties, much of it still relevant today with an updated introduction. 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