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[Paksoy, Hb]

The Chronicle of Higher Education Magazine & journal reader.htm 
http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/documents/huron.html 

<<...OLE_Obj...>> 

Thursday, July 25, 2002 

A glance at the August issue of The Nation: The Port Huron Statement, 40
years later 
On its 40th anniversary, the Port Huron Statement
<http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/documents/huron.html> still has
relevance to American society, write Tom Hayden and Dick Flacks, two authors
of the document, which became the founding manifesto of Students for a
Democratic Society, in 1962. Mr. Hayden is a political activist and a former
state legislator in California. Mr. Flacks is a professor of sociology at
the University of California at Santa Barbara. Describing the work of some
60 young people who drafted the final document, they write that the demand
for a participatory democracy was born out of disillusionment with the
politics of the time: "The denial of dignity and the vote among blacks was a
window into powerlessness in many forms. ... We demanded the right to vote
as a first step toward a right to a voice and vote in all the decisions that
affected our lives." 

The resulting statement, Mr. Hayden and Mr. Flacks write, called for "a new
insurgency to shift priorities from cold-war militarism to the quality of
life at home, spearheaded by the civil-rights revolution, the revival of
peace sentiment, a labor movement committed to organizing, and a new
consciousness among students and intellectuals in the universities." 

Of the legacies of the Port Huron Statement, Mr. Hayden and Mr. Flacks
suggest that the most important is its lasting introduction of the "concept
of participatory democracy to popular discourse and practice. It made sense
of the fact that ordinary people were making history, and not waiting for
parties or traditional organizations. ... It proved to be a contagious idea,
spreading from its academic origins to the very process of movement
decision-making, to the subsequent call for women's liberation." 

This article is available online at
<http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020805&s=hayden>