Long Sixties: From 1960 to Barack Obama / Edition 1

by Tom Hayden

Overview

In this unique and compelling book Tom Hayden argues that Barack Obama would not have been able to mount a successful presidential campaign without the movements of the 1960s. The Long Sixties shows that movements throughout history triumph over Machiavellians, gaining social reforms while leaving both revolutionaries and reactionaries frustrated. Hayden argues that the 1960s left a critical imprint on America, from civil rights laws to the birth of the environmental movement, and forced open the political process to women and people of colour. He urges President Obama to continue this legacy with a popular programme of economic recovery, green jobs and health care reform. The Long Sixties is a carefully researched history which will be of interest to activists, journalists and historians as the fiftieth anniversary of the 1960s begins.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781594517396
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	10/30/2009
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Author of the famed Port Huron Statement, TOM HAYDEN was a leader in the student, antiwar, and civil rights protests in the 1960s. He took up the environmental cause in the 1970s, leading campaigns to shut down nuclear power plants and serving as California's first solar energy official. He was elected to the Califorinia legislature in 1982, serving for eighteen years. He continues to write as an editor of The Nation, and has taught at many campuses from Harvard's Institute of Politics to UCLA's labor studies center.

Table of Contents

Part I The First Sixties, 1955–1965; Introduction; Chapter 1 Dawn; Chapter 2 The Port Huron Vision of SDS; Chapter 3 New Left versus New Frontier; Chapter 4 From the Washington March to the Assassination of JFK; Chapter 5 The Mississippi Freedom Democrats’ Challenge; Chapter 6 The Berkeley Free Speech Movement, 1964–1965; Chapter 7 The Counterculture, 1964–1965; Part II The Second Sixties, 1965–1975; Chapter 8 America Invading Vietnam, Vietnam Invading America; Chapter 9 Toppling the Ivory Tower: The Student Strikes at Columbia and San Francisco State, 1968–1969; Chapter 10 The Chicago Conspiracy; Chapter 11 Cambodia, Yale, and Kent State; Chapter 12 The Watergate Coup and the Antiwar Movement; Chapter 13 Wounded Knee and the End of the Sixties; Part III The Sixties at Fifty; Chapter 14 Che Guevara and the Sixties; Chapter 15 The Underground in America; Chapter 16 The Old Revolutionaries of Vietnam; Chapter 17 Peace in Northern Ireland; Chapter 18 From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime; Chapter 19 Liberation Theology; Chapter 20 Reverend Jeremiah Wright and Black Liberation Theology; Chapter 21 The Spirituality of the Counterculture; Part IV The Sixties in the Obama Era; Chapter 22 A Call to Progressives for Obama with Barbara Ehrenreich and Bill Fletcher Jr. (March 10, 2008); Chapter 23 Dreaming Obama in North Carolina: A Story of Race and Inheritance; Chapter 24 Bobby and Barack; Chapter 25 Barack Obama between Movements and MachiavellianspartV A Sixties Timeline;

Editorial Reviews

Hayden, a longtime proponent of progressive thought and action, is a fine witness to the pivotal events of the Sixties. In a book both sweeping and reflective, he offers a primer on the era's political and cultural upheavals and an early assessment of President Obama measured against Sixties ideals. Hayden was everywhere then, from Newark to Berkeley, Hanoi, Cuba, Chicago, and Northern Ireland, and he knew everybody who was in power or a threat to power. Writing of the beginnings of the counterculture, feminist, and environmental movements, he highlights parallels between Vietnam and Wounded Knee; explores liberation theology, Jack Kerouac and the Beats, urban violence and poverty, and his strained relationship with Bill Ayers and the Weathermen; and writes movingly of a 2007 visit to old friends in Vietnam. Hayden is optimistic about Obama's leadership but concerned about current war policies and critical of current economic policies. He lists suggestions for Obama and indicates that a New Left is needed to advance a truly progressive agenda. VERDICT This book will introduce a new generation of readers to Hayden and provoke discussion of the impact of the Sixties on the current political scene. With fine notes and a useful 50-page time line; highly recommended.—Thomas A. Karel, Franklin & Marshall Coll. Lib., Lancaster, PA

Library Journal

The big news, for those who keep track of such things: Tom Hayden, New Left enfant terrible, never dropped acid. "Marijuana was another matter," he writes, "although I came to believe that it made no sense to be stoned when under police surveillance." This salvo of a book is only incidentally about drugs and their counterculture users. Instead, it is about what Hayden calls the "coming ‘battle over memory' "-though that battle has long been here, as witness the swiftboaters of the 2004 presidential race and the furor over Weather Underground veteran Bill Ayers in 2008. Even though the '60sare not yet over, Hayden notes that one aspect of Barack Obama's presidency has been a clear desire to move beyond the messy issues of the time. Not so fast, the author writes. Afghanistan and Iraq have uncomfortable similarities to Vietnam, and though the sitting president didn't get us into the mess, he seems to be having a hard time getting us out of it. Hayden updates the protest movement of old to what he calls a "movement against Machiavellians." He admits, however, that the term is both a little "gimmicky" and a bit unfair to Machiavelli, whose work was more subtle than the decidedly unsubtle adjective for "power technicians...who represent the institutional hierarchies of business, government, the military, the intelligence agencies, the media, and organized religion." The movement to elect Obama, Hayden writes, was one such anti-Machiavellian endeavor, and highly reminiscent of the movements of old, which accomplished quite a bit, not least "the fall of two presidents." What the current one needs, says Hayden, is a new New Left to keep things moving. With elements of a new Rules for Radicals andknowing takes on such old New Left moments as The Port Huron Statement, Hayden's book could be a worthy foundational document.

Kirkus Reviews

"Hayden, a longtime proponent of progressive thought and action, is a fine witness to the pivotal events of the Sixties. In a book both sweeping and reflective, he offers a primer on the era's political and cultural upheavals and an early assessment of President Obama measured against Sixties ideals. . . . This book will introduce a new generation of readers to Hayden and provoke discussion of the impact of the Sixties on the current political scene. With fine notes and a useful 50-page time line; highly recommended."
—Library Journal

"This book is valuable as a portrait of an activist of that turbulent era. Recommended."
—CHOICE

"With the approach of a decade of anniversaries of the 1960s, iconic figure Hayden stakes a strong claim in the ongoing debate over memories of the turbulent time. ... Hayden’s analysis offers a sense of the sweep and depth of reform movements across the U.S. that had been brewing for decades and ignited in the ’60s, including civil rights, women’s rights, gay and lesbian rights, and the green movement. ... [He] combines the fervor of his radical youth and continued commitment to progressive politics, the introspection of his years, and the research and analysis of his academic career in this insightful, passionate look at progressive reform."
—Booklist Starred Review

“A compelling effort to get at the essence of the sixties and their continuing impact in the Obama era—by one who was not only a central participant but has continuously reflected on those times for the past fifty years.”
—William Gamson, Boston College

“Tom Hayden thinks the movements of the turbulent sixties were pivotal in shaping much of what came after in American politics. He makes his case brilliantly, drawing on the wisdom bred by half a century of political activism and scholarship, and also on the passion and commitment that made him a leading figure in the movements he analyzes.”
—Frances Fox Piven, author of Challenging Authority: How Ordinary People Change America (2006)

“The Long Sixties is a remarkable fusion of Tom Hayden’s deep reflections on his own experience as a key movement organizer and his deep reading of social movement theory and history. The result not only illuminates that era but helps reframe the half century since. Its synthesis of lived experience and cool analysis makes it the best sixties book for today’s students.”
—Richard Flacks, University of California-Santa Barbara and a collaborator with Tom Hayden on the original Port Huron Statement

“Tom Hayden is an American original. This memoir is more than a riveting guide into the eye of the 1960s revolutionary storms that Hayden himself led. It is a trek into the history and heart of social movements today, showing that the sixties spirit has resurfaced in the people’s voice that elected Barack Obama and will make our future.”
—Charles Derber, author of The Wilding of America and The New Feminized Majority

“Nobody can tell the story of the 1960s and its meaning for today more effectively and movingly than Tom Hayden. A champion of his generation whose Port Huron Statement remains a clarion call for today's youngsters, all these years later, Hayden here places the current dilemmas of the United States before us, insisting they must be solved and then can be solved, not by great experts working in secret but by ordinary Americans engaged in democratic practice.”
—Paul Buhle, editor of Students for a Democratic Society: A Graphic History, The Beats, and Studs Terkel’s Working: A Graphic Adaptation

"Valuable reading for activists, journalists, and historians ... a must read."
—Free Venice Beachhead

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