Tom Hayden, election activism, and the trauma of political assassinations

Tom Hayden spoke at the University of Illinois at Springfield Thursday night, perhaps reviving a little of the Sangamon State University activist spirit. He's known for many things, including being the primary author of the Port Huron statement (with help from The Dude, of course).

He covered a wide range of topics, including the arc of movements, and the fight over how a movement is remembered. Most movements aren't covered in basic history courses, and dramatic change is wrongly credited to government action, in his view. Not enough is taught about the activist movements that preceded and provoked a government response.

He briefly mentioned the murder of Martin Luther King and the Kennedy's as being one of the reasons that movements of the 60's lost steam. It had a broad psychological impact on movement leaders and activists. That's something I've noticed before. It's obvious if you talk with enough people who lived through that time and are still involved in politics and activism. But, it's odd that I rarely hear people acknowledge it directly or talk in detail about how it damaged the movements of the baby boom generation.

Hayden believes the protest in Quebec is the most successful student movement today. Students got what they wanted after the recent election in Quebec. New leaders were put into office, partly thanks to the student movement. The next day tuition increases were reversed, and the excessive laws to ban protest were repealed. This is an example of successfully using both protest and electoral politics to get results.

I found it very refreshing to hear someone from an activist movement background say that elections matter. It made me realize how cynical I've gotten about cynics on the left. Punditry and blogs on the left are dominated by "both parties are the same" cynicism. The exaggerations and speculative accusations made against Obama are often as misleading as Fox News. They rarely get called on it because it's pretty easy to pander to the cynicism of liberals. At least two generations of activists have no idea what it's like to have a liberal ally in the White House and I suspect many don't know how to do anything other than fight the guy in charge.

My impression is that it's a source of division in the Occupy movement. Some people are turned off by the dominant attitude that voting at all is a waste of time and it makes no difference who you vote for. There's a division between most of the activist left who feel that voting alone isn't enough, and on the other hand, a large number of people in the Occupy movement who think any involvement in electoral politics is a waste. Some Occupy groups have managed to maintain cooperation between the two groups, while others see their numbers dwindle as some people spend more time on election campaigns. It will be interesting to see what happens after election day.

My big disappointment of the night is that he kept saying he wanted to talk about Lincoln, but he never did! Why would someone tease about talking Lincoln?! I guess I'll have to write and ask him what he was going to say.

If you missed it you can watch his 1 1/2 hour discussion here.