The Port Huron Statement: Still Radical at 50

http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/13053/the_port_huron_statement_still_radical_at_50/

For five days in June 1962, members of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) gathered at a UAW camp near Port Huron, Mich., for the group’s first national convention. The result was The Port Huron Statement: a 25,700-word manifesto that articulated the fundamental problems of American society and laid out a radical vision for a better future. It marked a seminal moment in the development of the New Left.

Today, the Occupy movement has lit a match not unlike the one struck at Port Huron. To mark the 50th anniversary of Port Huron–and what we hope is the dawn of an enduring youth movement–In These Times asked 14 activists, ranging in age from 21 to 72, including three people who attended the Port Huron convention, to reflect on what that statement offers us today. Their responses follow, preceded by the portion of the statement they found significant. –The Editors

Carl Davidson: “Our Identity as a New Left”

“We are people of this generation, bred in at least modest comfort, housed now in universities, looking uncomfortably to the world we inherit.”

This simple but eloquent assertion is what drew me. It defined politics as generational, and given that we were the leading edge of what was being described as the “baby boom” – of coming-of-age youth – we were more generationally conscious than most. The “silenced generation” of the 1950s stood between us and the labor-oriented politics of the 1930s and the popular front politics of the early 1940s. McCarthyism had separated us from deeper roots, leaving us with our own forms of cultural alienation and revolt – the Beat Generation, crossing the color line, the emergence of rock ‘n’ roll – to help shape our identity as a New Left.