{"id":1702,"date":"2019-08-01T09:17:37","date_gmt":"2019-08-01T09:17:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/?page_id=1702"},"modified":"2019-08-01T09:17:37","modified_gmt":"2019-08-01T09:17:37","slug":"the-port-huron-statement-1962","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/27-the-sixties\/the-port-huron-statement-1962\/","title":{"rendered":"The Port Huron Statement (1962)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The\nPort Huron Statement was a 1962 manifesto by the Students for a Democratic\nSociety (SDS), written primarily by student activist Tom Hayden, that proposed\na new form of \u201cparticipatory democracy\u201d to rescue modern society from destructive\nmilitarism and cultural alienation.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are people of this generation, bred in at least modest\ncomfort, housed now in universities, looking uncomfortably to the world we\ninherit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When we were kids the United States was the wealthiest and\nstrongest country in the world; the only one with the atom bomb, the least\nscarred by modern war, an initiator of the United Nations that we thought would\ndistribute Western influence throughout the world. Freedom and equality for\neach individual, government of, by, and for the people–these American values\nwe found good, principles by which we could live as men. Many of us began\nmaturing in complacency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As we grew, however, our comfort was penetrated by events\ntoo troubling to dismiss. First, the permeating and victimizing fact of human\ndegradation, symbolized by the Southern struggle against racial bigotry,\ncompelled most of us from silence to activism. Second, the enclosing fact of\nthe Cold War, symbolized by the presence of the Bomb, brought awareness that we\nourselves, and our friends, and millions of abstract “others” we knew\nmore directly because of our common peril, might die at any time. We might\ndeliberately ignore, or avoid, or fail to feel all other human problems, but\nnot these two, for these were too immediate and crushing in their impact, too\nchallenging in the demand that we as individuals take the responsibility for\nencounter and resolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While these and other problems either directly oppressed us\nor rankled our consciences and became our own subjective concerns, we began to\nsee complicated and disturbing paradoxes in our surrounding America. The\ndeclaration “all men are created equal…” rang hollow before the\nfacts of Negro life in the South and the big cities of the North. The\nproclaimed peaceful intentions of the United States contradicted its economic\nand military investments in the Cold War status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026 We ourselves are imbued with urgency, yet the message of\nour society is that there is no viable alternative to the present. Beneath the\nreassuring tones of the politicians, beneath the common opinion that America\nwill “muddle through,” beneath the stagnation of those who have\nclosed their minds to the future, is the pervading feeling that there simply\nare no alternatives, that our times have witnessed the exhaustion not only of\nUtopias, but of any new departures as well. Feeling the press of complexity\nupon the emptiness of life, people are fearful of the thought that at any\nmoment things might be thrust out of control. They fear change itself, since\nchange might smash whatever invisible framework seems to hold back chaos for\nthem now. For most Americans, all crusades are suspect, threatening. The fact\nthat each individual sees apathy in his fellows perpetuates the common\nreluctance to organize for change. The dominant institutions are complex enough\nto blunt the minds of their potential critics, and entrenched enough to swiftly\ndissipate or entirely repel the energies of protest and reform, thus limiting\nhuman expectancies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We would replace power rooted in possession, privilege, or\ncircumstance by power and uniqueness rooted in love, reflectiveness, reason,\nand creativity. As a social system we seek the establishment of a democracy of\nindividual participation, governed by two central aims: that the individual\nshare in those social decisions determining the quality and direction of his\nlife; that society be organized to encourage independence in men and provide\nthe media for their common participation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a participatory democracy, the political life would be\nbased in several root principles: that decision-making of basic social\nconsequence be carried on by public groupings;<\/p>\n\n\n\n

that politics be seen positively, as the art of collectively\ncreating an acceptable pattern of social relations;<\/p>\n\n\n\n

that politics has the function of bringing people out of\nisolation and into community, thus being a necessary, though not sufficient,\nmeans of finding meaning in personal life;<\/p>\n\n\n\n

that the political order should serve to clarify problems in\na way instrumental to their solution; it should provide outlets for the\nexpression of personal grievance and aspiration; opposing views should be\norganized so as to illuminate choices and facilitate the attainment of goals;\nchannels should be commonly available to relate men to knowledge and to power\nso that private problems–from bad recreation facilities to personal\nalienation–are formulated as general issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The economic sphere would have as its basis the principles:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

that work should involve incentives worthier than money or\nsurvival. It should be educative, not stultifying; creative, not mechanical;\nself-directed, not manipulated, encouraging independence, a respect for others,\na sense of dignity, and a willingness to accept social responsibility, since it\nis this experience that has crucial influence on habits, perceptions and\nindividual ethics;<\/p>\n\n\n\n

that the economic experience is so personally decisive that\nthe individual must share in its full determination;<\/p>\n\n\n\n

that the economy itself is of such social importance that\nits major resources and means of production should be open to democratic\nparticipation and subject to democratic social regulation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026 These are our central values, in skeletal form. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026 As students for a democratic society, we are committed to\nstimulating this kind of social movement, this kind of vision and program in\ncampus and community across the country. If we appear to seek the unattainable,\nas it has been said, then let it be known that we do so to avoid the\nunimaginable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Source: Students for a Democratic Society, The Port Huron Statement<\/em> (New York:\nStudents for a Democratic Society, 1962). Available online via Wikisource (https:\/\/en.wikisource.org\/wiki\/Port_Huron_Statement<\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 \u201cparticipatory democracy\u201d to rescue modern society from destructive militarism and cultural alienation. We are people of this generation, bred in at least modest comfort, housed now […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":818,"menu_order":6,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1702","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1702"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1702\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1703,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1702\/revisions\/1703"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/reader\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}