Thomas Emmet Hayden, known as Tom Hayden, is an American social and
political activist, author, and politician, who is director of the Peace
and Justice Resource Center in Culver City, California. Known best for his
major role as an anti-war, civil rights, and radical intellectual counterculture
activist, Hayden is the former husband of actress Jane Fonda and the father of
their son, actor Troy Garity. Early life
Tom Hayden was born in Detroit, Michigan, to parents of Irish ancestry,
Genevieve Isabelle and John Francis Hayden. He graduated from Dondero High
School in Royal Oak, Michigan, class of 1956. He later attended the University
of Michigan, where he was editor of the Michigan Daily and, disenchanted by the
anti-radicalism of existing groups like the National Student Association, was
one of the initiators of the influential leftist student activist group Students
for a Democratic Society. During 1961, Hayden married Casey Cason, a Texas-born
civil rights activist who worked for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee. Hayden became a "freedom rider" in the South and then served as
president of SDS from 1962 to 1963. Radical activism
Hayden drafted SDS's manifesto, the Port Huron Statement. The objective of the
Port Huron Statement was the creation of a "radically new democratic political
movement" in the United States that rejected hierarchy and bureaucracy.
From 1964 to 1968, Hayden lived in Newark, New Jersey, where he worked with
impoverished inner-city residents as part of the Newark Community Union
Project. He was also witness to the city's race riots of 1967 and wrote the
book Rebellion in Newark: Official Violence and Ghetto Response.
In 1965, Hayden, along with CPUSA member Herbert Aptheker and Quaker peace
activist Staughton Lynd undertook a controversial visit to North Vietnam and
Hanoi. The three toured villages and factories and met with an American POW
whose plane had been shot down. The result of this tour of North Vietnam, at
a high point in the war, was a book titled The Other Side. Staughton Lynd
later wrote that the New Left disavowed "the Anti-Communism of the previous
generation" and that Lynd and Hayden had written, in Studies on the Left, "We
refuse to be anti-Communist, We insist the term has lost all the specific
content it once had." In 1968, Hayden played a major role in
the protests outside the Democratic National Convention in Chicago,
Illinois. Six months after the convention he and other protesters
including Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin were indicted on federal charges of
conspiracy and incitement to riot as part of the "Chicago Eight". Hayden and
four others were convicted of crossing state lines to incite a riot, but the
charges were reversed on appeal. Tom Hayden made several other
well-publicized visits to North Vietnam as well as Cambodia during America's
involvement in the Vietnam War, including an especially controversial
one during 1972 to North Vietnam with his future wife, actress Jane Fonda. The
next year he married Fonda and they had one child, Troy Garity, born on 7 July
1973. In 1974, while the Vietnam War was still ongoing, the documentary film
Introduction to the Enemy was released, a collaboration by Fonda, Hayden,
Haskell Wexler, and others. It depicts their travels through North and South
Vietnam in the spring of 1974. Hayden also founded the Indochina Peace
Campaign, which operated from 1972 to 1975. The IPC, operating in Boston, New
York, Detroit, Santa Clara, mobilized dissent against the Vietnam War,
demanded unconditional amnesty for U.S. draft evaders, among other aims. Jane
Fonda, a supporter of the IPC, later turned this moniker into a name for her
film production firm, IPC Films, which produced in whole or in part, movies and
documentaries such as F.T.A., Introduction to the Enemy, The China
Syndrome, Nine to Five, and On Golden Pond. He and Jane divorced in 1990.
Writing about Hayden's role in the 1960s New Left, Nicholas Lemann, national
correspondent for The Atlantic, said that "Tom Hayden changed America",
calling him "father to the largest mass protests in American history", and
Richard N. Goodwin, who was a speechwriter for presidents Lyndon B.
Johnson and John F. Kennedy, said that Hayden, "without even knowing it,
inspired the Great Society. Staughton Lynd, though, was critical of the Port
Huron and New Left concept of "participatory democracy" stating, "we
must recognize that when an organization grows to a certain size, consensus
decision-making is no longer possible and some form of representative
government becomes necessary." In 2007, Hayden made news for his speech
at the wedding of his son Troy, where, as Hilton Als wrote in The New Yorker,
he "said that he was especially happy about his son's union with actress
Simone Bent, who is black, because, among other things, it was 'another step
in a long-term goal of mine: the peaceful, nonviolent disappearance of
the white race.'" Political career
During 1976, Hayden made a primary-election challenge to serving
California U.S. Senator John V. Tunney. Starting far behind, Hayden mounted a
spirited campaign and finished a surprisingly close second in the
Democratic primary. He and Fonda later initiated the Campaign for Economic
Democracy, which formed a close alliance with then-Governor Jerry Brown and
promoted solar energy, environmental protection, and renters' rights policies
as well as candidates for local office throughout California, some 100 of whom
would be elected. Hayden later served in the California
State Assembly and the State Senate. During this time, he was frequently
protested by conservative groups, including Vietnamese refugees, veterans
of the US military, and Young Americans for Freedom. He mounted a bid in the
Democratic primary for California Governor during 1994 on the theme of
campaign finance reform, and ran for Mayor of Los Angeles during 1997, losing
to incumbent Republican Richard Riordan. As a member of the State Assembly,
Hayden introduced the bill that became Chapter 1238 of the California Statutes
of 1987. Chapter 1238 enacted Section 76060.5 of the California Education
Code. Section 76060.5 allows the establishment of "student representation
fees" at colleges in the California Community Colleges System. The fee has
been established at several dozen colleges and it may be used "to provide
support for governmental affairs representatives of local or statewide
student body organizations who may be stating their positions and viewpoints
before city, county, and district governments, and before offices and
agencies of state government". Student representation fees are used to support
the operation of the Student Senate for California Community Colleges.
During 1999, Hayden made a speech for the Seattle WTO protests. During 2001,
he unsuccessfully sought election to the Los Angeles City Council. He lives in
Los Angeles and is married to actress Barbara Williams. They adopted a son,
Liam, born during 2000. Hayden serves as a member of the
advisory board for the Progressive Democrats of America, an organization
created to increase progressive political cooperation and influence
within the Democratic Party. He also serves on the advisory board of the
Levantine Cultural Center, a nonprofit organization founded in Los Angeles in
2001 that champions cultural literacy about the Middle East and North Africa.
During January 2008, Hayden wrote an opinion essay for the website The
Huffington Post endorsing Barack Obama's presidential bid in the Democratic
primaries. and the same year helped initiate Progressives for Obama, a group
of political progressives that provided assistance for Obama in his initial
presidential campaign. Hayden is known widely in California as
a staunch endorser of animal rights and was responsible for writing the bill
popularly known as the Hayden Act, which improved protection of pets and extended
holding periods for pets confined as strays or surrendered to shelters.
Academic career Tom Hayden has taught numerous courses
on social movements, including a course called "From the '60s to the Obama
Generation" at Pitzer College in Claremont, CA, two courses at Scripps
College, a sister school to Pitzer—one on the Long War and one on gangs in
America, and has taught at Occidental College and at Harvard University's
Institute of Politics. He is currently teaching a class at UCLA on protests
from Port Huron to the present. Hayden is the author or editor of 19
books, including The Long Sixties: From 1960 to Barack Obama, Writings for a
Democratic Society: The Tom Hayden Reader, and his memoir, Reunion, and
serves on the editorial board of The Nation.
During 2007, Akashic Books released Hayden's Ending the War in Iraq. In a
discussion about the book with Theodore Hamm, published in the Brooklyn Rail,
Hayden argues: "The apparatus of occupation is never going to turn into a
peacekeeping economic development agency. We need to withdraw our stamp of
approval and our tax dollars from supporting the occupation. That doesn't
mean that there can't be some attempts at remedies but there should never be
used as an excuse to stay." Bibliography
The Port Huron Statement The Other Side
Rebellion in Newark: Official Violence and Ghetto Response
Trial The Love of Possession Is a Disease with
Them Vietnam: The Struggle for Peace, 1972–73
The American Future: New Visions Beyond Old Frontiers
Reunion: A Memoir The Lost Gospel of the Earth: A Call for
Renewing Nature, Spirit and Politics Irish Hunger
Irish on the Inside: In Search of the Soul of Irish America
The Zapatista Reader Rebel: A Personal History of the 1960s
Street Wars: Gangs and the Future of Violence
Radical Nomad: C. Wright Mills and His Times with Contemporary Reflections by
Stanley Aronowitz, Richard Flacks and Charles Lemert
Ending the War in Iraq Writings for a Democratic Society: The
Tom Hayden Reader Voices of the Chicago 8: A Generation on
Trial The Long Sixties: From 1960 to Barack
Obama Bring on the Iraq Syndrome: Tom Hayden
in Conversation with Theodore Hamm Listen, Yankee!: Why Cuba Matters
References External links
TomHayden.com HaydenAct.com
Tom Hayden's blog at The Huffington Post Appearances on C-SPAN