Tom Hayden: The Problem Is Empire

[marmar]

via CommonDreams:



Published on Wednesday, September 3, 2008 by The Nation
The Problem Is Empire
by Tom Hayden


Tom Hayden delivered these remarks to a gathering of activists at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. It appears as part of the Moral Compass series, focusing on the spoken word.

Let me tell you some of my story and lessons I have learned over these past five decades. I have always tried to improve my country, always trying from the places around me.

I was smart and ambitious and athletic, but something never felt right in my suburb, school and church. I felt more at home with the underdogs and misfits than with the authorities. I was Holden Caulfield in Catcher in the Rye against Alfred E. Newman at Mad magazine.

I editorialized against overcrowded classes in high school. I editorialized against racist fraternity discrimination at the university. I went to the Democratic Convention in 1960 and was moved by Martin Luther King and John Kennedy, and a new student movement.

I moved to Georgia, became a Freedom Rider, got beaten up for civil rights. I helped start a movement on campuses called Students for a Democratic Society that believed in what we called participatory democracy, the right of everyone to a voice in the decisions affecting their lives. We wanted to bring the spirit of the Southern movement to the North.

I left graduate school and became a community organizer in the slums of Newark for four years. During that time the US government, led by the Democratic Party, invaded Vietnam with hundreds of thousands of troops after promising not to. The draft started up, and I was classified IY, the category for potential troublemakers. .......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/09/03-3

[barbtries]

1. i haven't read it

will when i get home from work. i just finished reading http://www.amazon.com/Against-Empire-Michael-Parenti/dp/0872862984/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1220469736&sr=8-1 Against Empire by Michael Parenti. i am radicalized.

[Bob Dobbs]

2. I shot video of Tom's speech to the Progressive Dems in Denver

and spoke to him briefly afterward.

He is brilliant, and a cool and friendly guy.

[katty]

3. a real trip through history-and still we don't learn from Empires

that cracked up and bore witness to their own implosion and ultimate demise.