Barack Obama would not be possible without the Sixties, Tom Hayden writes in his unique and compelling new book. Obama was conceived because of changing mores on interracial marriage; was electable because of the civil rights movement and voting rights laws; and was successful because of a new social movement that applied participatory democracy online and door to door. Hayden shows that movements throughout history triumph over Machiavellians, gaining social reforms while leaving both revolutionaries and reactionaries frustrated. Only the assassinations of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King prevented the Sixties from ending with a progressive presidency propelled into power by social movement activism, Hayden says. But the Sixties did leave a critical print on America, from civil rights laws to the birth of the environmental movement, and forced open the political process to women and people of color. Hayden portrays the Reagan and Bush eras as counter-movements against the Sixties which ultimately failed, and the Obama presidency as a delayed achievement. Chicago's Grant Park was consciously chosen for Obama's 2008 victory celebration, according to campaign manager David Axelrod, to "symbolically overcome the damage done to American idealism forty years before." Hayden's carefully researched history includes formidable, if sometimes forgotten, coverage of Sixties achievements as well as a valuable dateline for activists, journalists and historians as the fiftieth anniversary of every episode of that decade approaches. While accepting President Obama's centrist positioning, Hayden reminds the new president that the peace movement was critical to his 2008 victory and only a radical populism will make his economic recovery, green jobs and health care promises come to fruition.
Show moreBarack Obama would not be possible without the Sixties, Tom Hayden writes in his unique and compelling new book. Obama was conceived because of changing mores on interracial marriage; was electable because of the civil rights movement and voting rights laws; and was successful because of a new social movement that applied participatory democracy online and door to door. Hayden shows that movements throughout history triumph over Machiavellians, gaining social reforms while leaving both revolutionaries and reactionaries frustrated. Only the assassinations of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King prevented the Sixties from ending with a progressive presidency propelled into power by social movement activism, Hayden says. But the Sixties did leave a critical print on America, from civil rights laws to the birth of the environmental movement, and forced open the political process to women and people of color. Hayden portrays the Reagan and Bush eras as counter-movements against the Sixties which ultimately failed, and the Obama presidency as a delayed achievement. Chicago's Grant Park was consciously chosen for Obama's 2008 victory celebration, according to campaign manager David Axelrod, to "symbolically overcome the damage done to American idealism forty years before." Hayden's carefully researched history includes formidable, if sometimes forgotten, coverage of Sixties achievements as well as a valuable dateline for activists, journalists and historians as the fiftieth anniversary of every episode of that decade approaches. While accepting President Obama's centrist positioning, Hayden reminds the new president that the peace movement was critical to his 2008 victory and only a radical populism will make his economic recovery, green jobs and health care promises come to fruition.
Show morePart 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;
Tom Hayden is an activist, former senator and Professor at Occidental College, California. His most recent book is Rebel: A Personal History of the 1960s (2003).
"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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