This may annoy a whole bunch of you. But, that’s too bad. Because Tom Hayden and 58 other folks made a bold statement 54 years ago. And, while it was changed two years later (when it became far more widely distributed), the direction and observations have tremendous relevance today. Which is the biggest problem with the Port Huron Statement. It should no longer be relevant.

But, the preamble alone should put everyone on notice.
                   WE ARE PEOPLE OF THIS GENERATION, bred in at least modest                        comfort, housed now in universities, looking uncomfortably to the                      world we inherit.
The members of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) knew that they were privileged enough to be part of the middle class (even if they were in the lower echelons of that strata) and were being afforded the opportunity of a college education. But, they recognized that the world needed improvement. Immediately.

And, you should recognize that the year was 1962 at the first writing and 1964 when it was edited and (in my opinion) improved- long before most of America knew about Vietnam and the kinds of hot (not cold) wars that were engaging the world, before White folks considered the plight of the “Negroes” (the term at the time), before the power of corporations was a prime issue, but nuclear Armageddon was more palpable.

What were the major components of the Port Huron Statement (PHS)?

The development of values- and those values should be the basis of a program to make the world better. Or, to employ the actual words of the statement “It has been said that our liberal and socialist predecessors were plagued by vision without program, while our own generation is plagued by program without vision.”

The PHS viewed politics as not something politicians use as a weapon against the people but “the art of collectively creating an acceptable pattern of social relations”, a “means of finding meaning in personal life”.

The economic culture of the US meant “work should involve incentives worthier than money or survival” with “a respect for others, a sense of dignity and a willingness to accept social responsiblity…”

Amazing to my children, the PHS was a manifesto against economic inequality and the power of corporations and big banks. 50 years before it became more mainstream. Likewise, evangelical Christians would be comfortable with much of the statement, in that radical individualism was rejected, and the PHS recognized that ‘loneliness, estrangement, and alienation’ amongst humans was more important than gadgets or things.  (Yes, even the Internet of Things, IoT.)

And, the SDS rejected the violent tactics of the Weatherman, who were removed from the SDS.  (Note:  There IS a difference between Muslims and Terrorists, too!)

The PHS also included what the outside world called universal disarmament; the term so employed to afford them the ability to dismiss it as idealist prattle. Except, the PHS clearly stipulated “universal controlled disarmament”- because deterrence and arms control don’t work. (Or, maybe you missed the fact that Putin just decided to cease complying with the Nuclear Security Pact. Again.)

It called for reform of the Democratic Party. (Even then, folks knew that the GOP was built on principles so counter to the idealism and goals of the Declaration of Independence and was beholden to corporate interests, that it was omitted as a target.) The PHS demanded voter registration rights, especially in the South, where Southern Democrats [who, after the passage of the Voting Rights act became the Republican South- and with and by whom the problem persists] stymied the rights of Blacks.

The PHS expected that a campaign should be initiated that would demonstrate to every housewife, doctor, professor, and worker the damage done to their interests every day a racist occupies a place in the Democratic Party. A problem that persists today, again more prevalent in the GOP, who gladly accepted those folks as they fled the Democratic Party since the PHS was printed.

Yes, we were idealistic. But, we recognized that “…Our work is guided by the sense that we may be the last generation in the experiment with living. But we are a minority—the vast majority of our people regard the temporary equilibriums of our society and world as eternally-functional parts.”

Except the Great Recession and the 1% response has revived interest in these issues.

You can thank Tom Hayden for leading the way. And, now that he is dead (along with many others who helped write the PHS) and those who remain living are old farts, it’s time for the millennials and GenX’ers to stop squawking about what could have been with their (and my) hopes for Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

Now it’s time to make those ideals become real- soon.