Authentic Lefty Tom Hayden Dies at 76

[georgephillip]

The term "lefty" is often misapplied, imho, to corporate clowns with names like Clinton and Obama. (Warren and Sanders?) Tom Hayden was the real deal; he cut his teeth being beaten and jailed across the US south while protesting Jim Crow.

Tom shot to fame as a member of the Chicago 8 (later reduced to the Chicago 7) after protests at the Democratic convention in 1968 brought a little of the Vietnam War home to roost.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nat...s-anti-war-activist-dies-76-article-1.2842366

"Police assaults on student demonstrators in Chicago seemed to confirm his (Hayden's) belief.

"But he later said he was wrong.

"'In 1968, I thought it was reasonable to anticipate a police state,' he recalled. 'But in 1972, the people who were running the Democratic Party four years before were out and the people who were in the streets were in. In the next year, the people who wanted to put me in jail began the road to jail themselves with Watergate.

"'The radical pressure caused the reforms,' Hayden said. 'But it's fair to say the system reformed itself.'"

 

[marvin martian]

Good thing he won't be alive to see what's become of his party. The Democrats have gone back to 1860.

 

[Arkady]

The term "lefty" is often misapplied, imho, to corporate clowns with names like Clinton and Obama. (Warren and Sanders?) Tom Hayden was the real deal; he cut his teeth being beaten and jailed across the US south while protesting Jim Crow.

Tom shot to fame as a member of the Chicago 8 (later reduced to the Chicago 7) after protests at the Democratic convention in 1968 brought a little of the Vietnam War home to roost.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nat...s-anti-war-activist-dies-76-article-1.2842366

"Police assaults on student demonstrators in Chicago seemed to confirm his (Hayden's) belief.

"But he later said he was wrong.

"'In 1968, I thought it was reasonable to anticipate a police state,' he recalled. 'But in 1972, the people who were running the Democratic Party four years before were out and the people who were in the streets were in. In the next year, the people who wanted to put me in jail began the road to jail themselves with Watergate.

"'The radical pressure caused the reforms,' Hayden said. 'But it's fair to say the system reformed itself.'"

I'm not convinced that the radical actions were productive. Keep in mind that public outrage about the "hippies" and the Yippies, and the violence in the streets helped to turn the tide from a long cycle of growing liberalism in the nation (the New Deal, the Fair Deal, the Great Society, and even Eisenhower-era infrastructure investment and desegregation), to the era when the Republicans would dominate the presidency for all but four years over the course of a quarter century. Nixon won that '68 election, and he won '72 in the biggest electoral landslide ever. The nation pushed hard to the right through the early 1990s, with huge upper-class tax reductions, a gutting of supports for the poor and working class, monstrous peace-time military spending, a vicious war on recreational drug users, and aggressive deregulation. And it was in significant part because guys like Nixon and Reagan got the "hard hats" to think of themselves as more like the establishment conservatives as like the radicals on the left.

 

[as seen on tv]

wow - look at the progress we've made, since Tom's heyday!

• police attacks on blacks are rare to non-existent
• massive funding to the inner city have resulted in stellar graduation rates, and put a big dent in joblessness
• we're no longer fighting in Vietnam. just Iraq, Syria, yemen, Somalia . . .

 

[georgephillip]

Good thing he won't be alive to see what's become of his party. The Democrats have gone back to 1860.

That is true if you're talking about main-stream Democrats, a group Tom was not among:

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/how_power_works_20161023

“America by the early twenty-first century had, in disturbing ways, come to resemble America in the late nineteenth century,'... 'In 1800 the three-fifths clause gave white voters political power from a black population that was itself barred from voting, and after 2000 prison gerrymandering was doing exactly the same thing in numerous states across the country.

"'After 1865, African American desires for equality and civil rights in the South following the American Civil War led whites to criminalize African American communities in new ways and then sent record numbers of blacks to prison in that region..."

"'...From 1965 onward, black communities were increasingly criminalized, and by 2005, African Americans constituted 40 percent of the U.S. prison population while remaining less than 13 percent of its overall population.

"'And just as businesses had profited from the increased number of Americans in penal facilities after 1870, so did they seek the labor of a growing captive prison population after 1970.

"'In both centuries, white Americans had responded to black claims for freedom by beefing up, and making more punitive, the nation’s criminal justice system.'”

 

[BitterPill]

I'm not convinced that the radical actions were productive. Keep in mind that public outrage about the "hippies" and the Yippies, and the violence in the streets helped to turn the tide from a long cycle of growing liberalism in the nation (the New Deal, the Fair Deal, the Great Society, and even Eisenhower-era infrastructure investment and desegregation), to the era when the Republicans would dominate the presidency for all but four years over the course of a quarter century. Nixon won that '68 election, and he won '72 in the biggest electoral landslide ever. The nation pushed hard to the right through the early 1990s, with huge upper-class tax reductions, a gutting of supports for the poor and working class, monstrous peace-time military spending, a vicious war on recreational drug users, and aggressive deregulation. And it was in significant part because guys like Nixon and Reagan got the "hard hats" to think of themselves as more like the establishment conservatives as like the radicals on the left.

I'm curious if you think radical actions are ever productive? I've come to the conclusion their productivity is tenuous at best.

 

[Drumcollie]

I'm not convinced that the radical actions were productive. Keep in mind that public outrage about the "hippies" and the Yippies, and the violence in the streets helped to turn the tide from a long cycle of growing liberalism in the nation (the New Deal, the Fair Deal, the Great Society, and even Eisenhower-era infrastructure investment and desegregation), to the era when the Republicans would dominate the presidency for all but four years over the course of a quarter century. Nixon won that '68 election, and he won '72 in the biggest electoral landslide ever. The nation pushed hard to the right through the early 1990s, with huge upper-class tax reductions, a gutting of supports for the poor and working class, monstrous peace-time military spending, a vicious war on recreational drug users, and aggressive deregulation. And it was in significant part because guys like Nixon and Reagan got the "hard hats" to think of themselves as more like the establishment conservatives as like the radicals on the left.

Was there a real point to be made...oh yes I see the greatest period of advancements in science, health, racial harmony was when republicans were in charge. and when Democrats were in control it went backwards. You made that point well.

 

[BitterPill]

Was there a real point to be made...oh yes I see the greatest period of advancements in science, health, racial harmony was when republicans were in charge. and when Democrats were in control it went backwards. You made that point well.

Is your whole life a delusional episode, or just large swaths of it?

 

[Drumcollie]

Is your whole life a delusional episode, or just large swaths of it?

What point were you making? Was there a point to be made? Are u mad bro?

 

[Drumcollie]

I'm curious if you think radical actions are ever productive? I've come to the conclusion their productivity is tenuous at best.

You party decided slavery was a good option and you started a civil war over it...so when you talk about racial issues, everything you say is shaded with your party's support for slavery, segregation, not voting for civil rights. But that is the vacuum you live in.

 

[georgephillip]

'm not convinced that the radical actions were productive. Keep in mind that public outrage about the "hippies" and the Yippies, and the violence in the streets helped to turn the tide from a long cycle of growing liberalism in the nation (the New Deal, the Fair Deal, the Great Society, and even Eisenhower-era infrastructure investment and desegregation), to the era when the Republicans would dominate the presidency for all but four years over the course of a quarter centur

Who gets the blame for Attica in 1971 and prison gerrymandering today, radicals or establishment (corporate) Republicans AND Democrats?

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/how_power_works_20161023

"On Sept. 9, 1971, prisoners at the Attica Correctional Facility in upstate New York rebelled in the face of intolerable conditions. They were sick of the racist-fueled violence of the white, rural guards; angry at poor medical care and the dearth of vocational and educational programs; underfed (the prison allocated only 63 cents a day to feed a prisoner); unhappy about their mail being censored, or destroyed if it was in Spanish; living in poorly ventilated cells with little or no heat or stifling heat; unable to buy basic commissary items on salaries that averaged 6 cents a day; and tired of being given only one bar of soap and one roll of toilet paper a month and allowed only one shower a week."

 

[Drumcollie]

Who gets the blame for Attica in 1971 and prison gerrymandering today, radicals or establishment (corporate) Republicans AND Democrats?

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/how_power_works_20161023

"On Sept. 9, 1971, prisoners at the Attica Correctional Facility in upstate New York rebelled in the face of intolerable conditions. They were sick of the racist-fueled violence of the white, rural guards; angry at poor medical care and the dearth of vocational and educational programs; underfed (the prison allocated only 63 cents a day to feed a prisoner); unhappy about their mail being censored, or destroyed if it was in Spanish; living in poorly ventilated cells with little or no heat or stifling heat; unable to buy basic commissary items on salaries that averaged 6 cents a day; and tired of being given only one bar of soap and one roll of toilet paper a month and allowed only one shower a week."

Elbridge Gerry was a democratic. How funny!

 

[georgephillip]

The nation pushed hard to the right through the early 1990s, with huge upper-class tax reductions, a gutting of supports for the poor and working class, monstrous peace-time military spending, a vicious war on recreational drug users, and aggressive deregulation.

Thanks to Democrats like Clinton, not radicals like Hayden:

http://www.truthdig.com/report/page3/how_power_works_20161023

"Much of the worst damage was done during the Clinton administration. President Bill Clinton signed into law, with Republican support, the draconian 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act.

"It provided $9.7 billion to build more prisons.

"By 1995 the prison population exceeded 1 million.

"It would soon double.

“'The fact that so many of these people now in prison had been arrested because they were drug addicts, mentally ill, poor, and racially profiled concerned few if any politicians, whether in a statehouse or in Washington, D.C.,'... 'Then, to make sure that this now enormous group of the incarcerated did not resist their deteriorating conditions of confinement via the nation’s legal system as they had done so effectively both before and after the Attica uprising, in 1996 legislators passed the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA).'”

"The PLRA made it difficult and often impossible for prisoners to use the courts to protect their Eighth Amendment right not to endure cruel and unusual punishment."

 

[georgephillip]

wow - look at the progress we've made, since Tom's heyday!

• police attacks on blacks are rare to non-existent
• massive funding to the inner city have resulted in stellar graduation rates, and put a big dent in joblessness
• we're no longer fighting in Vietnam. just Iraq, Syria, yemen, Somalia . . .

Look on the bright side

 

[marvin martian]

Look on the bright side

You're a good Democrat.

 

[Arkady]

I'm curious if you think radical actions are ever productive? I've come to the conclusion their productivity is tenuous at best.

I think they can be, but I see them as a high-risk maneuver, to be reserved for situations where nothing else is gaining traction. If things are moving the right way and you're just frustrated they're not moving faster, better to stick with the gradual approach, rather than risk the backlash that can be provoked by radicalism. Only if the gradual approach has completely stalled and you're willing to risk losing ground to bounce things out of the rut should you go with radicalism.

Then there's also the possibility of harnessed radicalism -- radicals who cooperate enough with the "lesser of two evils" to be able to pick their spots. For example, use radical tactics to bring attention to the war in Vietnam, but have the good sense not to screw over the Democrats with rioting during their convention. Unfortunately, real radicals don't often seem to be able to turn it on and off that way. In fact, real radicals often disproportionately direct their actions against the lesser of two evils, because they view them as the "release valve" that is preventing enough pressure from building up for revolutionary change. That's one thing I respect about Bernie Sanders. He has radical instincts, but isn't counter-productive like the Naderite radicals. He's willing to beat the snot out of the center-left when the time is right, but to reel it in when it starts doing more harm than good.

 

[Arkady]

Thanks to Democrats like Clinton, not radicals like Hayden

Bill Clinton was an effect of that push to the right, not the cause. After two decades of the Democrats getting their butts kicked over and over again by the conservatives, in the wake of 60s radicalism driving the majority in to the arms of guys like Nixon and Reagan, Clinton pushed for a new tactic, to peel that majority off for more gradual liberal change. He respositioned the party to capture the center, and succeeded. You don't have to tell me that there are problems with that tactic, because I'm well aware of them. But they got the nation moving in the correct direction again for the first time in decades, so I'm willing to give Clinton a pass on that.

 

[marvin martian]

That's one thing I respect about Bernie Sanders. He has radical instincts, but isn't counter-productive like the Naderite radicals. He's willing to beat the snot out of the center-left when the time is right, but to reel it in when it starts doing more harm than good.

More harm to his chances of getting a $600,000 beach house in exchange for pretending to run for president.

 

[as seen on tv]

Bill Clinton was an effect of that push to the right, not the cause. After two decades of the Democrats getting their butts kicked over and over again by the conservatives, in the wake of 60s radicalism driving the majority in to the arms of guys like Nixon and Reagan, Clinton pushed for a new tactic, to peel that majority off for more gradual liberal change. He respositioned the party to capture the center, and succeeded. You don't have to tell me that there are problems with that tactic, because I'm well aware of them. But they got the nation moving in the correct direction again for the first time in decades, so I'm willing to give Clinton a pass on that.

earth to arkady (history 101)

Nixon was a reaction to the outlandish war policies of LBJ; americans wanted victory

carter was a reaction to the crimes of Nixon

Reagan was a reaction to the ineptitude of carter

 

[Arkady]

More harm to his chances of getting a $600,000 beach house in exchange for pretending to run for president.

Republicans are so cute with their weird conspiracy theories.