Today, their “agenda for a generation” survives most famously as a punch line from the 1998 film “The Big Lebowski” in which the stoner protagonist proclaims himself an author of “the original Port Huron Statement, not the compromised second draft.” Purists like Jeff “The Dude” Lebowski might dissent, but last month the historian Michael Kazin pronounced the final draft “the most ambitious, the most specific and the most eloquent manifesto in the history of the American left.”. Where is the Port Huron Museum in Port Huron Michigan located? . . This movement recognizes you don’t have to preach to people that they’re alienated.”, In 1962, though, fewer people were. “The search for truly democratic alternatives to the present, and a commitment to social experimentation with them, is a worthy and fulfilling human enterprise, one which moves us and, we hope, others today,” the … The Port Huron Statement also had a familiar-sounding approach to the rest of the world. THE PORT HURON STATEMENT OF THE STUDENTS FOR A DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY, 1962 Courtesy Office of Senator Tom Hayden TABLE OF CONTENTS Introductory Note: This document represents the results of several months of writing and discussion among the membership, a draft paper, and revision by the Students for a Democratic Society national . It … It gave the youth an ideological argument for the transformation that they wanted to … Under Walter Reuther 's leadership, the UAW paid for a range of expenses for the 1962 convention, including use of the UAW summer retreat in Port Huron. On this assumption rests the monstrous American structure of military “preparedness”; because of it we sacrifice values and social programs to the alleged needs of military power. Learn vocabulary, terms, and more with flashcards, games, and other study tools. Do the students see communism as a problem? Second, the enclosing fact of the Cold War, symbolized by the presence of the Bomb, brought awareness that we ourselves, and our friends, and millions of abstract “others” we knew more directly because of our common peril, might die at any time. Those sentiments were echoed in Occupy’s founding principles — “constituting ourselves as autonomous political beings engaged in non-violent civil disobedience and building solidarity based on mutual respect, acceptance, and love.”, “Sure, there were important things we missed,” Mr. Hayden recalled. . As democrats we are in basic opposition to the communist system. The search for truly democratic alternatives to the present, and a commitment to social experimentation with them, is a worthy and fulfilling human enterprise, one which moves us and, we hope, others today. several years to galvanize. We are people of this generation, bred in at least modest comfort, housed now in universities, looking uncomfortably to the world we inherit. . .” rang hollow before the facts of Negro life in the South and the big cities of the North. A Students for a Democratic Society national council meeting in Bloomington, Ind., in 1963. “For the S.D.S, the prime enemy was apathy. In a participatory democracy, the political life would be based in several root principles: that decision-making of basic social consequence be carried on by public groupings; that politics be seen positively, as the art of collectively creating an acceptable pattern of  social relations; that politics has the function of bringing people out of isolation and into community, thus being a necessary, though not sufficient, means of finding meaning in personal life; . The two statements rely on the Declaration of Independence as the primary source of their arguments. Port Huron Statement. At academic conferences during this anniversary year, including one recently at the University of California, Santa Barbara, scholars and grizzled activists are revisiting the document. The Statements By Sharon And Port Huron. . The Port Huron Statement advocated "participatory democracy," and I do not think we have that even today. Declaration of the Occupancy of New York City. A. Professor Kazin, who teaches history at Georgetown and co-edits Dissent, recalled, too, that “for the anti-war militants who flooded into S.D.S. Many of us began maturing in complacency. . A PDF file of a scan of the draft document is also available. . He called it “participatory democracy” and, while S.D.S. We are people of this generation, bred in at least modest comfort, housed now in universities, looking uncomfortably to the world we inherit. “The environmental crisis, but Rachel Carson’s book hadn’t come out. It remains vital to understand their denial or attainment in the context of the modern world. He does not feel the Occupy movement needs to look to the Port Huron statement for guidance. SDS called for the creation of a “New Left,” that is, a new kind of liberalism. It is to this latter yearning, at once the spark and engine of change, that we direct our present appeal. James Miller, a professor of politics at the New School for Social Research and author of “Democracy Is in the Streets: From Port Huron to the Siege of Chicago,” suggests that the very concept of consensus at all costs meant that moderates compromised and militants eventually predominated. It raises a host of concerns that shaped the New Left of the 1960s—poverty, racism, the misguided priorities of an affluent society, the proliferation of nuclear bombs, the paranoia of the anticommunist crusade. . would fracture, his concept would in ensuing decades be codified in school decentralization, community planning boards and freedom of information acts. Similar? . Summary of “The Port Huron Statement” – Humanities Essay (100 Level Course) The first passage, an agenda for a generation, begins with the author diving into an explanation that we as children of the United States grew up into the best and most comfortable world. So begins the legendary Port Huron Statement (PHS), the 75-page manifesto published June 15, 1962, that would come to define the historic student movement of the 1960s. Tom Hayden was a student at University of Michigan then he went to Mississippi in 1961 to report on SNCC’s voter registration project. It is also, at just over 25,000 words, undoubtedly the longest one. The Port Huron Statement was a 1962 manifesto by the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), written primarily by student activist Tom Hayden, that proposed a new form of “participatory democracy” to rescue modern society from destructive militarism and cultural alienation. These are our central values, in skeletal form. 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. education retreat northeast of Detroit in 1962. But Occupy has learned the lessons of S.D.S., says Todd Gitlin, a Columbia University professor and author of the forthcoming “Occupy Nation.” “The primacy of nonviolence is a reaction to the ’60s, as is don’t have hierarchal organizations and don’t have visible leaders,” said Professor Gitlin, who was president of S.D.S. The Port Huron Statement resonates to this day – for example, in the 17 September manifesto of Occupy Wall Street, which called for a “direct and transparent participatory democracy”. The declaration “all men are created equal . [W]e can develop a fresh and creative approach to world problems which will help to create democracy at home and establish conditions for its growth elsewhere in the world. began as the student arm of the League for Industrial Democracy), by elevating the university to the apex of activism and by validating liberalism and the two-party system, Tom Hayden and his colleagues forged a manifesto that still reverberates. Feminism, but Betty Friedan’s book wasn’t out. Mr. Hayden, who was steeled by a Catholic social conscience, was 22 when he began drafting the manifesto in March 1962 in his Manhattan apartment. . . . Start studying The Port Huron Statement (1962). First, it sharply challenged the nation’s basic, bipartisan foreign policy: that every price must be paid, every effort made, to … Freedom and equality for each individual, government of, by, and for the people – these American values we found good, principles by which we could live as men. 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