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Tom Hayden is the author of 20 books and many articles in The Nation since 1980. His most recent book is Listen, Yankee! Why Cuba Matters (Seven Stories). He has lectured and taught at Harvard’s Institute of Politics, UCLA Labor Studies, and Scripps, Occidental, and Pitzer Colleges. During 18 years in the California Legislature, he chaired committees on labor, environment and higher education, and authored bills creating the first Central American Studies program (at Cal State LA), the largest national resources bond in US history, back wages for sweatshop workers, trigger locks on handguns, criminal penalties for domestic violence, college savings trusts, a ban on carcinogens reaching drinking water, tripling of tobacco taxes, requirements for renewable energy set-asides, tattoo removal, Holocaust survivors insurance claims, and World War II slave labor compensation. He authored anti-sweatshop ordinances for the cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Hayden has spent over 50 years in social movements, beginning with the Freedom Rides of 1960, the founding of Students for a Democratic Society in 1962, community organizing in Newark 1964-68, leadership in the anti-war movement 1968-75, participation in the peace and justice movements, 2000-2015. He was Governor Jerry Brown’s first solar energy commissioner (1979) and continues in a leading role in forging a model green energy economy in California.
The Cuban people are beginning a new chapter in what José Martí called ‘‘our America.’’
As the nation marks the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War, the efforts of the anti-war movement are being erased from history.
The man who helped spark Berkeley’s Free Speech Movement fifty years ago would have championed today’s activism, from the Dreamers to Occupy to Ferguson.
In the 1960s, the agency sought to fight Communism through the students’ rights movement. There’s little reason to think its tactics have changed.
Because our leaders didn’t listen, or listened too late, the end came in Vietnam as a total catastrophe. It’s not too late to avoid a repeat in Syria.
To reject the “Long War” doctrine, the American left first has to understand it.
To understand the present crisis over downed Malaysian flight MH17, we need to look at the roots of the new Cold War.
The Vermont senator has given progressives leverage and a platform, a potent combination.