Port Huron Platform

From Unawiki

Port Huron Statement

The 1960s was a period of societal ills and unrest. Civil rights, the Vietnam War, and the Cold War, were a constant reminder of the growing internal divide of American society. As a result, a radicalization of American students, especially, across the Northern states, began crystallizing into what became known as the New Left. The Port Huron Statement was their most influential programmatic statement. The Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), formed in Michigan by Thomas Hayden and others, was one of the most outspoken student activist organizations. In 1962, the SDS declared their beliefs in the Port Huron Statement, expressing their disillusionment with the society they had inherited, and their determination to build a new politics. The opening statement read:

“We are people of this generation, bred in at least modest comfort, housed now in universities, looking uncomfortably to the world we inherit. As we grew, however, our comfort was penetrated by events too troubling to dismiss. First, the permeating and victimizing fact of human degradation, symbolized by the Southern struggle against racial bigotry, compelled most of us from silence to activism”

The student movement resulted in campus demonstrations, riots, and building seizures. Not many people accepted the radical political philosophy, but many supported the more direct policy positions of groups like the SDS. In contrast, small groups of radicals – such as the “Weathermen”– cast a shadow on the student activist groups, by being responsible for cases of arson, and bombing.