David T. Dellinger (August 22, 1915 -- May 25, 2004) was an influential American radical, a pacifist and activist for nonviolent social change. Before reading [his autobiography], I knew and greatly admired Dave Dellinger. Or so I thought. After reading his remarkable story, my admiration changed to something more like awe. There can be few people in the world who have crafted their lives into something truly inspiring. This autobiography introduces us to one of them. — Noam Chomsky, from the dustjacket of From Yale to Jail en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_De... Thomas Emmet Tom Hayden (born December 11, 1939) is an American social and political activist, author, and politician, who is director of the Peace and Justice Resource Center in Culver City, California. Known best for his major role as an anti-war, civil rights and radical activist, Hayden is the former husband of actress Jane Fonda and the father of their son, actor Troy Garity. Hayden drafted SDSs manifesto, the Port Huron Statement, subtitled An Agenda for a Generation, which is credited with making the term participatory democracy common parlance.[4] The objective of the Port Huron Statement was the creation a radically new democratic political movement in the United States that rejected hierarchy and bureaucracy. This ideal would become the centerpiece of the student movement of the 1960s, a movement that came to be known as the New Left.[5] From 1964 to 1968, he lived in Newark, New Jersey, where he worked with impoverished inner-city residents as part of the Newark Community Union Project. He was also witness to the citys race riots of 1967 and wrote the book Rebellion in Newark: Official Violence and Ghetto Response (1967). In 1965, Hayden, along with CPUSA member Herbert Aptheker and Quaker peace activist Staughton Lynd undertook a controversial visit to North Vietnam and Hanoi. The three toured villages and factories and met with an American POW whose plane had been shot down. The result of this tour of North Vietnam, at a high point in the war, was a book titled The Other Side.[6][7] 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 that, We refuse to be anti-Communist, We insist the term has lost all the specific content it once had. [8] Hayden in 1968 played a major role in the protests outside the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois. Six months after the convention he and other protesters including Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin were indicted on federal charges of conspiracy and incitement to riot as part of the Chicago Eight. Hayden and four others were convicted of crossing state lines to incite a riot, but the charges were reversed on appeal. Tom Hayden made several other well-publicized visits to North Vietnam as well as Cambodia during Americas involvement in the Vietnam War, including an especially controversial one during 1972 to North Vietnam with his future wife, actress Jane Fonda. The next year he married Fonda and they had one child, Troy Garity, born on 7 July 1973. In 1974, while the Vietnam War was still ongoing, the documentary Introduction to the Enemy was released, a collaboration by Jane Fonda, Tom Hayden, Haskell Wexler, among others. It depicts their travels through North and South Vietnam in the spring of 1974. [9] Hayden also founded the Indochina Peace Campaign (IPC), which operated from 1972 to 1975. The IPC, operating in Boston, New York, Detroit, Santa Clara, mobilized dissent against the Vietnam War, demanded unconditional amnesty for U.S. Draft Dodgers, among other aims. Jane Fonda, a supporter of the IPC, later turned this moniker into a name for her film production firm, IPC Films, which produced in whole or in part, movies and documentaries such as F.T.A. (1972), Introduction to the Enemy (1974), The China Syndrome (1979), Nine to Five (1980), and On Golden Pond (1981).[10][11] Writing about Haydens role in the 1960s New Left, Nicholas Lemann, national correspondent for The Atlantic, said that Tom Hayden changed America, calling him father to the largest mass protests in American history, and Richard N. Goodwin, who was a speechwriter for presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and John F. Kennedy, said that Hayden, without even knowing it, inspired the Great Society.[12] 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.
Posted on: Tue, 03 Jun 2014 18:42:45 +0000
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