Abstract

Tom Hayden's New Workout

Tom Hayden, searching for "a new political center for the Democratic Party," has closed down his ten-year-old Campaign for Economic Democracy (CED) and has established a new organization, Campaign California. At its height, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, CED, had thirty chapters and 8,000 members; it was California's largest single organized force on the left. Hayden came up with the idea for the group in 1975, arguing that Watergate and the U.S. defeat in Vietnam had created an opening in electoral politics that the left should explore. His campaign for the Senate the following year was a test of that theory. The organization attacked corporations for endangering the environment with toxic emissions; it organized renters to fight landlords, argued that research and development of solar energy were being thwarted by the energy multinationals, and made pro-choice politics a top priority.