To watch the complete independent, weekday news hour, read the transcript, download the podcast, and for more information about Democracy Now!, please visit, http://img.youtube.com/vi/7tvnkvQ8Mtk/0.jpg. Life gets mighty precious when there's less of it to waste. A final word: Hayden wasnt a hater. She had short dark hair and big eyes that seemed to be searching for something far away. "[3], Hayden grew up attending a church led by Charles Coughlin, a Catholic priest noted for his anti-Semitic teachings, and who was also known nationally during the time of The Great Depression as the "radio priest". Tom died last October surrounded by people who loved him. It struck me as a putdown of the poor, and racist as well. whose plane had been shot down. He was there to witness the 1967 Newark Riots which, in Rebellion in Newark (1967), he tried to place in a larger social and economic context. Perhaps most importantthis is 1967-68, remember, when the US was waging war in Vietnam while cracking down on dissent at homeKennedy Jr. noted that Hayden sought to persuade those who would listen that a nation behaving like an imperial power abroad, would not have true democracy at home. Please read and accept our website Terms and Privacy Policy to post a comment. We need to withdraw our stamp of approval and our tax dollars from supporting the occupation. But by that time, my allegiance had shifted to Bobby. Forty years would pass before I would experience again the hope I had before August of 1968, before we would dance in the streets again, as so many did when Obama was elected. It was from a prison cell in Albany, Georgia, where their ride was to land him, that Hayden began writing the SDS manifesto. But for his hubris in persisting to escalate the Vietnam War, Johnson might have entered the history books as one of America's greatest presidents, carried there by his commitment to civil rights and the elimination of poverty. What a soaring speaker Tom was. I wanted to believe the words of the song were true, but I really didn't feel that way. Two of the Chicago 7 defendants,Rennie Davis and John Froines, were at the memorial. Some inner cities exploded in anger. "[17], In 1965, while still committed in Newark, Hayden, along with Communist Party USA member Herbert Aptheker and Quaker peace activist Staughton Lynd, undertook a controversial visit to North Vietnam. "[20], In 1968, Hayden joined the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam ("the Mobe"), and played a major role in the protests outside the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois. Which is why, while we were gathered to memorialize him and his time is now gone, this was and is Tom Haydens moment. Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information, Desperate mountain residents trapped by snow beg for help; We are coming, sheriff says, Hidden, illegal casinos are booming in L.A., with organized crime reaping big profits, Look up: The 32 most spectacular ceilings in Los Angeles, This fabled orchid breeder loves to chat just not about Trader Joes orchids, Elliott: Kings use their heads over hearts in trading Jonathan Quick, 19 cafes that make L.A. a world-class coffee destination, Newsom, IRS give Californians until October to file tax returns, 12 reasons why Sycamore Avenue is L.A.s coolest new hangout, Best coffee city in the world? (Hayden, teary- eyed, joined a small honor guard . Soft-spoken and anything but radical, he impressed on us the necessity of cutting long hair and beards and putting on white shirts and ties to go "Clean for Gene" when we knocked on doors to get out the vote. [18][19] Staughton Lynd later wrote that the New Left disavowed "the Anti-Communism of the previous generation", and that Lynd and Hayden had written, in Studies on the Left: "We refuse to be anti-Communist. He served as the editor for the school newspaper, and in his farewell column in the newspaper, he used the first letter of successive paragraphs to spell "Go to hell". Bonnie Raitt Wins Song of the Year for Just Like That at Grammy Awards. William Hayden Kennedy (86) passed away Tuesday, January 26, 2021 at his home in Wheeler. [12] By the end of 1964 ERAP had ten inner-city projects engaging 125 student volunteers. She was fighting hard to hold back tears as she told me her horrifying tale. "[27] Staughton Lynd, though, was critical of the Port Huron and New Left concept of "participatory democracy", stating: "We must recognize that when an organization grows to a certain size, consensus decision-making is no longer possible, and some form of representative government becomes necessary. Even then, I felt a bit sorry for him. Two years later, he would be elected president of Chile, thus setting off a three-year American effort to destabilize his government. The 1965 protest was the beginning of what historian Howard Zinn called the greatest antiwar movement the nation had ever experienced, a movement that played a critical part in bringing the war to an end. Speakers and performers at the 2015 conference included Julian Bond, Congresswoman Barbara Lee, Daniel Ellsberg, Vivian Rothstein, Luis Rodriguez, Tom Hayden, former Congressmembers Ron Dellums, Pat Schroeder and Elizabeth Holtzman, Staughton Lynd, David Harris, Marilyn Webb, Rev. It was a profound departure from the doctrinaire, ideological view of the old Left and it brought hope and inspiration to a new generation of young activists who came together as SDS: Students for a Democratic Society. I watched the news footage of Kennedy on the floor of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, bleeding to death. 2022 Redwing Records, LLC. SDS Founder, Tom Hayden on Participatory Democracy From Port Huron to Occupy Wall Street, http://img.youtube.com/vi/AJeAF3E2yl0/0.jpg, DemocracyNow.org We speak with Tom Hayden, principal author of the Port Huron statement 50 years ago, the founding document of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). . 1443, 35 L.Ed.2d 706 (1973). William Hayden Kennedy (86) passed away Tuesday, January 26, 2021 at his home in Wheeler. [5] The Haydens divorced in 1965. One of Bobby Kennedy's qualities, or perhaps it was a quality of the times, was an easy and growing familiarity with the New Left. Hayden lived in Los Angeles and was married to his third wife, actress Barbara Williams, at the time of his death. Jackie Ward reports. Those who claim to care about marginalized voices have nothing to say about those who have no voice at all. The result of this tour of North Vietnam, at a high point in the war, was a book titled The Other Side. He understood that progressives had to be prepared to take power and learn to govern, not just protestsomething else we would do well to think about for today. Again, dont we need CEDs today-in every state? Tom Hayden, a 1960s anti-war activist whose name became forever linked with the celebrated Chicago 7 trial, Vietnam War protests and his ex-wife Jane Fonda, has died. Just be a bit more patient and we'd all see it. You watched them in the sky. the "Chicago Seven" after Bobby Seale's case was separated from the others. At the end of the month, I was invited to attend an event called the Hemispheric Conference Against the War in Vietnam being held in the Canadian city of Montreal. I always wanted to explore the Holocaust on a deeper level. ARLINGTON COUNTY, VA - JUNE 9: Pallbearers (including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., John Glenn, Douglas Dillon, LeMoyne Billings, Lord Harlech, James Whittaker, Steven Smith, David Hackett' Robert S. McNamara and Rafer Johnson) carry the coffin of Senator Robert Kennedy to the grave site at Arlington National Cemetery on June 9, 1968 in Arlington He was a bum, Hayden critic Anthony Imperiale of the Newark Citizens Committee was shown saying to a burst of laughter and applause in Royce Hall. I was far from the only one in tears as I heard them speak about Tom. Broken Hearts & Dirty Windows: Songs of John Prine, Vol. [15] His profile in Newark attracted the attention of the FBI. During 1999, Hayden made a speech for the Seattle WTO protests. Hayden told HuffPost Live how empowering it was for him and his fellow student leaders to deliver a proposal to Kennedy and witness Kennedy carry it out in the . She had come to the conference with several other student leaders from the Olympic protest. Their rhetoric was loudly anti-American and pro-socialist. In 2015 Tom wrote: Following Barbaras song, members of theFirst AME Choir Tom Morello, Holly Near, Bonnie Raitt and James McVay and myself joined Barbara on stage for a rendition of Aint Gonna Let Nobody Turn me Around, appropriately ending the memorial with everyone on their feet and singing along. Both spoke of how Tom had believed in them despite their troubled pasts. While things were looking up, we had no idea of what to expect on the evening of March 31, when we gathered in the student union at the University of Wisconsin to watch a "special announcement" from the president. A growing body of New Left analysis, including C. Wright Mills' The Power Elite and G. William Domhoff's Who Rules America? Hayden was dubbed "the liberal rebel" by George Skelton of the Los Angeles Times . (Hayden, teary- eyed, joined a small honor guard watching over RFKs casket at St. Patricks Cathedral, at midnight before the next days funeral. [40], Hayden maintained that he remained radical towards the end of his life, commenting, "I'm Jefferson in terms of democracy," he said, "I'm Thoreau in terms of environment, and Crazy Horse in terms of social movements". "Mr Hayden," judge Hoffman tells him. Distributed by ADA. On April 2, I voted in my first election ever. Even Tom Hayden, the SDS radical, was a pallbearer. Solar power is the last energy resource that isn't owned yet - nobody taxes the sun yet. Document 86A: Casey Hayden (aka Sandra Cason) and Mary King, "Sex and Caste," November 18, 1965, Michael Finnegan (October 23, 2016). Those who didnt know him didnt really get it, but Hayden, though often accused of arrogance, didnt put on airs. His hair was braided down his back, and he wore a beaded headband and black rubber sandals that the Vietnamese had made out of the tires of a downed U.S. plane. [10], Convinced, in the words of the Statement, that students must "look outwards to the less exotic but more lasting struggles for justice," and with $5000 from United Automobile Workers, Hayden's first SDS initiative was the Economic Research and Action Project (ERAP). DeWayne, born in Watts, and Alex who as a child immigrated from El Salvador to escape the bloody civil war that ravaged his mother county. With his big victory in California, Kennedy would surely have sailed to the Democratic nomination and almost certainly defeated his Republican opponent. Yes, our ground troops were coming home but the air war was beingescalated unbeknownst to most Americans and, in the south, our allies were imprisoning, torturing and corruptingVietnamese civilians in our name. Bobby Kennedy Jr spoke about Tom's Irishness and why the Kennedy family asked Tom to be one of the pall bearers at Robert . The strategy worked. [34] Student representation fees are used to support the operation of the Student Senate for California Community Colleges. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. ", They released the doves to fly.