'Writings for a Democratic Society: The Tom Hayden Reader,' by Tom Hayden

Democratic Society

The Tom Hayden Reader

Tom Hayden

City Lights: 592 pp, $21.95 paper

RECENTLY, Tom Hayden was animated. Excited, yes, but literally animated -- a computer-generated representation in the 2007 film "Chicago 10."

That figurative portrayal of the 1960s' most explosive trial depicted the through-the-looking-glass realities of a time when America's basic assumptions were up for grabs. Who was more moral: a bomb-dropping president or an indicted demonstrator? What should be illegal: racism or pot smoking? Families -- including Hayden's -- broke apart over politics and lifestyle. So did the Democratic Party and, for a while, the country as a whole.

"Writings for a Democratic Society" gathers almost 50 years of Hayden's work, as a prelude to a forthcoming "big book" that will posit social movements as a linchpin of American history. Some earlier views are reconsidered, but there's no apostasy concerning causes espoused and led, which assuredly will lead to Hayden being denounced as ossified or worse by one-time comrades who have vaulted to the right. Yet "Writings" offers a considerable counter-record to official misrepresentations such as Tonkin Gulf and "Mission Accomplished" -- as well as a surprisingly personal account of how one activist has tried to remain consistent, relevant and truthful across his own long, strange trip.

What Hayden calls the "arc" of the anthology runs from a "Letter" encouraging students to join a fledgling Students for a Democratic Society to a web piece postulating that torture is embedded in the U.S. campaign in Iraq. Early pieces, including an excerpt from SDS' founding document, the Port Huron Statement -- which Hayden began while jailed in Albany, Ga. -- attempt to define an antiauthoritarian "New Left" grounded in participatory democracy. They rub up against segregation, the Cold War, colonialism and cultural conformity.

Hayden had worked on the Michigan Daily and could analyze, write well and voice constructive criticism of budding movements. But he soon found that as a journalist, "I could not remain neutral." This would prove both a strength and a tension. The Port Huron Statement declared violence to be "abhorrent," but by 1967, Hayden was writing book-length material about the "Newark rebellion." He chronicled a passage from servitude to black power. But in the end, that same black power trumped interracial organizing. It was on to Chicago.